Heritage Strategies kicks off Concord preservation plan; outreach, MACRIS verification and MCI site flagged as priorities

Consultants from Heritage Strategies told the Concord Historical Commission on Jan. 26 that they will lead a four‑phase historic preservation planning process that will include an inventory verification, stakeholder interviews and a required public meeting. Elizabeth Watson, a consultant with Heritage Strategies, said the process includes a "quiet period" required by the Massachusetts Historical Commission and that the team will need additional time to complete inventory and outreach tasks.

"This is the beginning of a historic preservation planning process," Watson said, introducing the project and the consulting team. She told commissioners the town's MACRIS inventory contains about 1,928 entries but cautioned that duplicate records exist and said consultants will verify and characterize the dataset before relying on counts.

The plan is structured in four phases: an initial data and inventory phase, a public and stakeholder outreach phase, a recommendations draft, and a second draft for review. Peter Benton, Watson's colleague at Heritage Strategies, said consultants will assemble historic context by reviewing town master plans and historic maps and then link that narrative to National Register nomination work.

Watson said Phase 2 public outreach will include individual interviews, focus groups, a public meeting (a Massachusetts Historical Commission requirement) and an online public survey. She and Benton emphasized stakeholder outreach—museums, conservation groups, tourism entities and town boards—and said they will prepare a prioritized stakeholder list and ask commissioners for introductions.

Commissioners pressed the team about timing and priorities. Watson and Benton said completing full outreach before town meeting is unlikely and recommended allowing an extra month—shifting the completion target toward the end of the year rather than an earlier September finish. "We don't think that's possible" to finish outreach before town meeting, Watson said, urging the commission to take advantage of timing rather than compress the process.

Members raised topics they want the plan to address. Melissa Sophyll, a commission member, urged prioritizing preservation of buildings at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution (MCI) Concord site, calling those structures "a real opportunity" and saying she would "feel it a huge failure if we cannot preserve those 2 buildings." Nancy Frassella Lee, a commission member, and others emphasized education and outreach to residents who are not already engaged with Concord's history.

Watson identified several programmatic themes the consultants will explore: the town's high share of individually inventoried buildings (many tied to Minute Man National Historical Park), the 32% of permanently protected open space noted in Envision Concord, housing pressures and intersections between preservation and affordable housing, and ways to weave diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) into interpretation and outreach for the town's 250th commemoration.

On housing and demolition pressure, consultants and members discussed possible tools to analyze in the plan—demolition mitigation fees, mitigation funds for preservation, right of first refusal, accessory dwelling units and targeted engagement with local builders. Watson said the plan will surface policy options while respecting the limits of local authority and state law.

The consultants said they will provide sample preservation plans for Concord to consider, draw on models from Massachusetts, and supply vision and goal drafts for the commission to refine. They also said they will meet monthly with the commission, focus immediately on required MHC deliverables and then expand outreach and visioning work once the written tasks are under way.

The meeting closed with commissioners offering to help with stakeholder contacts and with the consultants thanking the commission; there were no formal votes or motions at the session. The next substantive steps are for Heritage Strategies to verify the MACRIS inventory, prepare a stakeholder list for commission review, and set a public outreach schedule that accommodates town events and the 250th commemoration.

Details from the meeting: consultants said the town's MACRIS entries are about 1,928 but include duplicates that require verification; survey work from 1989–1992 was cited as key background; consultants said they expect to provide two Massachusetts examples of preservation plans and to extend the schedule by roughly one month to avoid compressing outreach before town meeting.