By Alex Malm
When Richard Flier bought 2 Litchfield Road, he knew at the time it had a historic preservation easement deed attached to it.
Now Flier is hoping the town will remove the covenant as he hopes to sell the property. He said right now it’s been difficult to sell the property due to the restrictions.
Flier explained that the easement is for the outside and the inside of the property, which provides controls over historical items, but said all historical items have been removed from the rooms.
Another concern Flier pointed to is that one section of the house had “bouncy floors” and said the walls aren’t insulated.
Flier also said that if they were to have someone live there, they would have to do some work in the kitchen to make it a “real kitchen”
He stated that the Democratic Party had been paying to rent it, but said, “They recently ran out of funding,” and that he wasn’t collecting any rent for it.
According to Flier, based on the condition of the property it likely wouldn’t qualify for historical funding.
Flier said they had a number of commercial potential tenants like law firms and a management companies to possibly rent the property, however, they weren’t interested based on the agreement.
At one point Flier said they were looking to add a bank there and to restore it, but it was ultimately shut down.
Ex-Officio, Jim Butler, who was one of the commissioners who inspected the property, said it could be difficult to sell it.
“There is a problem. There is a major problem here,” Butler said.
Vice Chair, Art Rugg, said the owner previously wanted to maintain the house as a historical property.
“I think we all love that building, its part of the town in a very visible location,” Rugg said.
Town Manager, Mike Malaguti, said that himself and Assistant Town Manager, Kellie Caron, have spoken with Flier
He stated that the Town Council would ultimately have to approve any changes to the deed restrictions, unless Flier decided to go to court, but wanted to bring it in front of the Heritage Commission as a first step.
Malaguti said it made sense to at least explore looking at changing the restriction.
“You can’t have historic preservation in this case without commercial viability,” Malaguti said.
Malaguti said they would at a minimum have a public hearing before any decisions are made in order to give people in the public to provide input.
“I don’t think this is something that should be rushed,” Malaguti said.
Following the meeting, Chris Paul, who was the previous owner of the property, said his wife Deb and himself spent hundreds of hours working on the property when it was used as their newspaper publishing office.
While owning the property, Paul said he resided the house, painted it several times, replaced the roof and and furnace, resurfaced floors, repainted every room in the house, repaired the kitchen fixtures, and replaced cabinets. He added that they never put a stove inside the house because he was told by the town that it would then require sprinklers throughout the entire house then.
The Heritage Commission agreed to have staff work with their attorney and Town Council to explore what would need to be done to make the property commercially viable.