WELLFLEET — When Helen Miranda Wilson spent $900,000 to purchase the 3.7-acre property at 177 Peace Valley Road in late May, she hoped to restore at least part of the condemned 19th-century house there. The property had been part of a state program meant to help communities rescue neglected houses and make them habitable again.
It appears that the program was no match for an uncooperative owner, however.
The Mass. attorney general’s office first began working with the town to require repairs at the property in April 2023. Seeing little change after a year, it started the process of placing the house in receivership in May 2024, but the then-owner, Robert Bonds of Boston, avoided that outcome by signing an agreement that July to get the repair work done within 270 days.
When by December no work had been done beyond clearing away brush and gutting the interior, a judge in the Southeast Housing Court warned Bonds that the pace had better pick up. Missing windows left the house open to the elements all the while.
Wilson told the Independent on June 29 that an expert she consulted after buying the house concluded that the structural damage to the antique has been too extensive for repairs. She has now filed a request with the town’s building commissioner to demolish the house.
Because the structure is over 75 years old, the demolition request must be reviewed by the Wellfleet Historical Commission under the town’s demolition delay bylaw. The panel has scheduled a hearing for July 9 to decide whether to impose an 18-month delay, during which alternatives to demolition can be considered.
Open Space Instead?
The original house, described as a “modest” half- or three-quarter Cape in the historical inventory on the state’s MACRIS website (the Massachusetts Cultural Resource Information System), was built in 1850. A second house was added along with Queen Anne-style elements in the 1880s.
Wilson said that if the historical commission allows demolition to move forward without a delay, she plans to leave the property as open space and conservation land.
“I’m not applying for any kind of new structure to be built now,” she said. The property includes a little under 2 acres of lowland and 1.5 acres of upland, according to Wilson’s application for demolition.
Wilson plans to subdivide the land, carving away the wetland portion and donating it to the town’s conservation commission to be protected. Then, she said, “there is enough upland there that, in the future, you could put a unit on it, but it couldn’t be huge.” She does not plan to build anything, though.
Wilson, whose own residence on Money Hill Road abuts 177 Peace Valley, said she and others had expressed interest in buying it over the years, but the owner never responded to their offers.
Demolition by Neglect
Bonds, a Boston businessman who had owned the house since 1983, never lived there himself. He rented it out, mostly in summer, while doing practically no maintenance. The owner’s neglect of the house led to complaints from neighbors and regulatory officials starting in 2001. The house was condemned by the town in 2018 for health and safety violations.
Under the state attorney general’s office program, called the Abandoned Housing Initiative, Bonds was compelled to take steps to save the house, but over the course of two years he did little, and the house continued to fall into ruin.
Living next door, Wilson has witnessed both human and wildlife squatters, mischief makers breaking in and leaving the front door wide open, and water pouring in through broken windows and holes in the roof. Nonetheless, she said, she was unprepared for that first look inside after her purchase. “I walked in and I was floored at the shape it was in,” she said.
After the state threatened to put the house in receivership, Bonds apparently did take one step to comply with the attorney general’s office: he hired a contractor to do interior demolition last summer as a first step in renovating the house. “It was pretty much gutted, so for the first time, you could see the bones,” Wilson said. The floors were rotted and there was extensive mold, she said.
Wilson hired structural engineer Michele Cudilo of Centerville to study the house’s condition. “The structural engineer’s report confirmed what I thought I was seeing,” Wilson said. “It’s really, really sad. It was allowed to go too far into complete deterioration.” That report will be submitted to the historical commission at the July 9 hearing.
Sarah Korjeff, the Cape Cod Commission’s historic preservation specialist, said she always suggests getting a second opinion from a “preservation-minded” architect about whether a historic building can be saved. “There can be widely differing opinions among architects and builders about whether a building is salvageable.”
Wilson said she’s had three builders go through the house in addition to the structural engineer.
Bonds, as part of his negotiations with the state, had claimed the house was salvageable. David Freed, a Quincy architect hired by Bonds, told the historical commission in March that no demolition was planned because the house was structurally sound. Freed said he had not been inside the house but that someone from his office had done three-dimensional imaging that showed the structure was solid.
While the historical commission was pleased to hear there would be no demolition and were enthusiastic about Freed’s renovation plan, then-co-chair Merrill Mead-Fox expressed some doubt about the house’s condition, pointing out it had been open to the elements for years. Bonds had not hired a structural engineer.
A Special Case?
In addition to the July 9 hearing before the historical commission, Wilson must go to Southeast Housing Court on Aug. 12 to report on her plans for the property.
Sabrina Zafar, deputy press secretary for the attorney general, said in an email that while the goal of the Abandoned Housing Initiative is to rehabilitate properties and restore them to habitability, there are circumstances when demolition may be the most effective way to address code violations that pose a risk to trespassers, neighbors, and others.
The program has had four cases over the last five years where owners have argued that the cost of repairs would exceed the market value of the house, making demolition the only reasonable option. Peace Valley Road may become the fifth.
Wilson told the Independent that restoring the severely deteriorated house would cost more than she had paid for the property. Anything short of that would simply be a “Band-Aid,” she said.
During the last five years, more than 48 properties have been returned to habitability through receivership actions. Many other properties have been repaired and restored outside of formal receivership as a result of the program, according to Zafar.
How Orleans Addresses Neglect
Some communities have enacted Demolition by Neglect bylaws that set minimum maintenance standards for significant buildings, requiring that they be weather-tight to prevent deterioration. Owners are required to replace or repair any structural element or exterior architectural feature that would be damaged if left unattended.
To date, Orleans is the only town in Barnstable County with a Demolition by Neglect bylaw, Korjeff said.
The Orleans bylaw applies to buildings in commercial use or an income-producing residential use as well as any unoccupied single-family residential structure. If the Orleans Historical Commission has reason to believe that a significant building is undergoing demolition by neglect, it notifies the building inspector and the property owner. The commission then holds a hearing and forges an agreement with the property owner to get the required repairs done. If there is no follow-through, the commission can take the owner to court.
Korjeff said several other historical commissions in the region have expressed interest in enacting similar bylaws.
“It’s a challenge for towns to craft and adopt a demolition by neglect bylaw because the procedures require coordination between the historic board, building department, and town staff,” she said.
Still, she added, the will is there: “I believe I’ve fielded questions from Chatham, Sandwich, Barnstable, and Truro in recent years.”
