You could soon buy a historic 19th century building in the town of Franklin for as little as $1.
The South Franklin Congregational Meeting House is a small white church built in 1856, with imposing Doric columns outside and detailed plaster work inside. In 1972, the town took ownership and turned it into a history museum, but it has sat vacant since 2007.
In 2020, the town hired LLB Architects to study the building and see how much it would actually cost to preserve the building and bring it up to code. The estimate was about $2 million.
That steep price tag is why the town plans to open an invitation for bids on March 2. They're hoping to sell the meeting house to a buyer who is willing to preserve the historic exterior for the life of the building, said Franklin Town Administrator Jamie Hellen. He's hopeful that asking for a nominal selling price could save it from being knocked down.
"Typically, when you have a property like this, it's going to be financially difficult for any builder, developer or preservationist to come in and pay a high price for the property or the building, right?" Hellen explained. "They're already going to be investing a lot of money into the restoration of the building."
He said the structure is well built, with the beams, walls and roof all in excellent shape.
But, he added, it looks kind of like a haunted house these days. There's cobwebs. Beetles have eaten away at some of the supports underneath the floorboards. There's bird droppings in the bell tower.
"It's kind of standing there in time," said Brian Valentine, principal at LLB Architects. "Not a lot has been modified to it, so it's definitely got a lot of character."
Any buyer will have to prepare to clean out the interior and update the electrical and plumbing systems. Perhaps the most important component, though, is a strong vision.
"There's a lot of potential out there," said Valentine. "It's just going to find the right person, and the one that's willing to fall in love with it and bring it back to its glory with a little bit of creativity."
The town's invitation for bids will be open to all types of uses, from offices to a residence, or even getting back to its historical roots as a church.
Franklin has passionate support for preserving its history, Hellen said. The town was able recently to refurbish and expand its library, which got its start with a donation of books in 1790 from Benjamin Franklin, after whom the town is named.
Hellen said the push to find a way to save the meeting house reflects that passion for preservation, considering that a $2 million price tag was outside the town's means.
"There really wasn't a tremendous amount of hope for this building up until a couple of months ago until we got that [architectural] study done," Hellen said. "We saw the cost. And now the elected officials are really stepping up and saying, 'Let's go out there and see if we can get a good public-private partnership going and save this building.'"
