THOMASTON, MAINE — Four years after a collision in Long Island Sound nearly sank the Schooner Hindu, a stem-to-stern rebuild of the historic boat has progressed enough to put her back in the water next month, according to owners Josh Rowan and Erin Desmond.
Schooner Hindu
TOWN MEETING
Two Housing Projects, PAAM, and Schooner Hindu Are on the Warrant
Community Preservation Committee recommends $1 million in grants
PROVINCETOWN — Every year since 2006, town meeting voters have dispensed special funding measures called community preservation grants. The money comes from a 3-percent surcharge on property taxes and can be used for historic preservation, affordable housing, outdoor recreation, and open space.
This year, the community preservation committee has recommended just over $1 million in grant requests to town meeting voters. They appear on the warrant as Article 8 and include funding for two affordable housing projects, the affordable housing trust fund, the Chelsea Earnest Memorial Playground, the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, and the Schooner Hindu.
The largest recommended grants this year are, as they have been almost every year, for affordable housing. The warrant contains a $500,000 grant request to The Community Builders Inc., the Boston-based nonprofit that is building 65 units of affordable housing at the former VFW Hall site at 3 Jerome Smith Road.
In past years, Provincetown approved grants to support affordable units in projects at Seashore Point, Province Landing, and Stable Path. What’s unusual this year is that warrant Article 11 asks to transfer $2,250,000 to The Community Builders for the same project. That money comes from free cash ($600,000) and from the town’s tourism fund ($1,650,000), which is itself funded by the rooms tax on stays in hotels and short-term rentals.
The Community Builders bought a parcel of land on Captain Bertie’s Way for $1.4 million last year to add to the Jerome Smith project, Town Manager Alex Morse told the select board at this year’s budget meetings. The town would otherwise have bought that land directly at a special town meeting, Morse said, but the developer was able to purchase it faster and for the same price. The relatively large contribution to the 65 units on Jerome Smith Road should be seen, at least in part, as financing the purchase of that land, Morse said.
Article 8 also asks to transfer $225,000 to the affordable housing trust fund. The third housing grant in the article is $75,000 for the 46 affordable apartments at Juniper Hill, the new name for the 95 Lawrence Road project in Wellfleet.
That request drew extensive discussion at the community preservation committee meeting on Feb. 16. Voters are often skeptical of giving money to other towns for their housing projects, said Chair Kristin Hatch.
“We spent half an hour at town meeting debating $20,000 for the Cape Cod Five project in Orleans” in 2021, Hatch said.
Provincetown was the first town on Cape Cod to offer support to another town’s housing project, Hatch added, but that was a special case: $50,000 for a supportive living center for adults with autism, also in Orleans.
Some committee members wondered whether these transfers between towns weren’t simply canceling each other out. Others were not pleased that Wellfleet voted not to support a similar grant request for The Community Builders’ Jerome Smith project in Provincetown this year.
Jay Coburn, CEO of the Community Development Partnership, which is developing the Juniper Hill project in Wellfleet, told the committee there were reasons for the requests that weren’t strictly financial.
“By funding each other’s projects, it demonstrates strong regional commitment to the DHCD,” he said. The Dept. of Housing and Community Development is the state agency that makes the $20-million awards that actually fund these projects, Coburn said. “We are working very closely with The Community Builders, Rep. Peake, and Sen. Cyr to pressure DHCD to fund both of these projects this year.”
Despite several board members voicing their disappointment with Wellfleet, the board voted unanimously to recommend a grant of $75,000 — reduced from the original request for $100,000 — to town meeting voters.
PAAM and Hindu
An open space and recreation grant for $100,000 to replace the sand in the Nickerson Street playground, formally known as the Chelsea Earnest Memorial Playground, with a poured rubber surface was approved by the committee with little discussion. It follows a similar project in the Mildred Greensfelder Park in the town’s East End.
The two historic preservation grants on the warrant sparked more discussion. The committee heard from a state expert in community preservation spending on Jan. 24, had a public hearing on Feb. 7, and ultimately decided on Feb. 16 to divide its available money for historic preservation projects equally between the two applicants.
The Provincetown Art Association and Museum had requested $100,000 to help replace a roof at the museum, and the Schooner Hindu was seeking $144,580 to pay for the replanking of the deck of the historic vessel, part of a half-million-dollar rebuild of the boat that is currently taking place in Maine. (This reporter was a part-time deckhand on the Schooner Hindu from 2015 to 2019.)
The committee forwarded each project to town meeting voters with a recommended grant of $73,500.
PAAM has received grant money from town meeting voters before. In 2020, $60,000 went to a restoration of the museum. The Schooner Hindu has applied before, in 2021, but the committee voted its application down before it reached town meeting voters.
At that time, committee members said that a for-profit company should not receive funds; that the vessel was not properly validated as historic; and that the boat could leave for another port, such as Newport, R.I. or Madagascar, and the town would be out its money.
In the two years since then, the owners of the boat moved to address the committee’s concerns, said Erin Desmond, who is now the president of the nonprofit organization that will receive ownership of the boat.
The Hindu is being transferred from Desmond’s husband, Capt. Josh Rowan, and his father, William Rowan, to the nonprofit Sail As You Are. That transfer should be complete by town meeting on April 3, Desmond told the Independent this week.
Provincetown’s historical commission (distinct from the historic district commission) also made a first-ever determination last fall that the Schooner Hindu had “local historic value” and should be designated a historic vessel.
Desmond told the community preservation committee that she could accept various kinds of conditions on the grant funding, including a “claw-back clause” that would refund the money if the boat were to sail away and not return. The expert presentation on Jan. 24 had included a discussion of such restrictions.
Committee Chair Hatch said on Feb. 16 that “much to my surprise, I am sold on this as a historic asset.”
Committee members were initially divided, but eventually voted 7-0, with one abstention, to approve $73,500 for the Hindu with various conditions included.
All six grants will now come to a vote at town meeting. They are currently set to be voted on as a group as Article 8, but should a voter request it, they could be considered and voted on separately.
PRESERVATION
Committee Votes Down Grant for Schooner Hindu
Motta Field, home repair grants get nod from CPC
PROVINCETOWN — The community preservation committee (CPC) voted down the Schooner Hindu’s application for $100,000 in Community Preservation Act funds at its meeting on Feb. 22. Had it been approved, the request would have gone to a vote at town meeting this spring.
Members of the CPC pointed out that the Hindu is owned by a for-profit company, has not been deemed historic by any agency, and is movable, so could theoretically decamp to Madagascar or Newport, R.I. at any time.
Josh Rowan, who owns the boat with his father, William Rowan of Key West, Fla., countered that the Hindu has immense historic value to Provincetown, is widely beloved, and is undergoing a costly high-quality rebuild for which the funds would be used. Rowan’s fiancée, Erin Desmond, added that she has repeatedly sought meetings with the Provincetown Historical Commission to gain a designation of local historic significance, but the commission has not met in many months. The most recent posted agenda for the historical commission on the town website is from February 2020.
Polly Burnell, the historical commission’s representative on the community preservation committee, confirmed that the commission was unable to meet with Desmond, and suggested the CPC delay its vote until after the historical commission could consider the Hindu’s request. Several motions were advanced and withdrawn, but ultimately the committee decided they had other grounds on which to reject the application.
CPC chair Kristin Hatch pointed out that the CPA money dedicated to historic preservation is currently exhausted because of debt service on improvements to town hall, so the money would need to come from the unallocated portion of CPA funds.
Alfred Famiglietti pointed out the boat could sail off to Madagascar, and that the applicant had to be on either a local or state historic registry prior to approaching the CPC, so the application was improperly before the board.
The committee considered seeking town counsel’s advice, but then took the vote, with one person voting for the application, four against, and one abstention.
Pennrose and Home Improvements
The CPC also debated allocating $100,000 of Community Preservation Act funds to the affordable housing complex being developed at the old Cape Cod Five headquarters in Orleans. That project is being done by Pennrose Development of Philadelphia, which is asking for contributions from eight Lower and Outer Cape towns.
After some debate about the proximity of Orleans to Provincetown, and the likelihood or unlikelihood of Provincetown residents choosing to live there, the committee voted to reduce the grant request to $20,000 and forward the proposal to town meeting floor. Pennrose said a $100,000 contribution would secure Provincetown a place in a small local-preference lottery that would include residents of every town that contributes in this way. With 62 total units in the planned development, that lottery would be for six units total, divided among all the towns that contribute. This seemed of uncertain value to the committee members.
A proposal to authorize up to $100,000 for micro-grants to lower-income home owners was approved unanimously. The grants of up to $5,000 each would be for necessary physical maintenance projects on single-family homes or condos, for people making 100 percent or less of area median income, which in Barnstable County is $67,620 for a household of one, or $96,600 for a household of four.
Provincetown Housing Specialist Michelle Jarusiewicz pointed out that any unused money would be returned to the CPA account at the end of the year — or rather, never withdrawn in the first place.
The board also approved up to $100,000 for a community process and preliminary design program for a renovation of Motta Field.
All of the approved measures will go to town meeting floor for a vote.
PRESERVATIVES
Funding Sought for Restoration of Schooner
Hindu, Motta Field, and housing are on CPA agenda
PROVINCETOWN — A $100,000 grant request to help pay for the ambitious restoration of the Schooner Hindu is one of a handful of applications that will be up for discussion during the community preservation committee’s annual pre-town meeting hearing at 1 p.m. on Monday.
The committee is expected to make its decisions on the applications either at the meeting or shortly thereafter. Only those projects that win the committee’s support will proceed to town meeting for a vote.
This year’s requests total a little over a half million dollars. Besides the Hindu request, other big-ticket applications include $100,000 for the town’s recreation dept. for development of a master plan for Motta Field; $100,000 to assist low-to-moderate-income home owners with critical repairs; and $100,000 toward the proposed development of 62 units of affordable rentals in Orleans.
Designed by William Hand Jr. and built in 1925 by Hodgdon Brothers in East Boothbay, Maine, the wooden schooner Hindu has been sailing in Provincetown Harbor since 1947.
Her early history includes voyages to India for the spice trade and a stint in the “Hooligan Navy” during World War II, when yacht owners and fishermen patrolled the eastern seaboard for German U-boats under the direction of the Coast Guard.
Captain Al Avellar purchased the Hindu after the war and brought her back to Provincetown, where she was refurbished and embarked on a career of pleasure cruises. After changing hands a few times over the ensuing decades, the schooner was bought in 2011 by the Rowan family, who continued the business.
Plans for a major restoration of the 95-year-old Hindu were already in the works when a bizarre accident in Long Island Sound last July nearly sank her. The schooner collided with a submerged yacht.
Josh Rowan, the captain and Hindu Charters president, has since brought the schooner to Maine where she is being rebuilt by hand in Thomaston, using the original designs from 1925. The project carries a $500,000 price tag.
Insurance payments from last summer’s accident put only $120,000 toward the work and a GoFundMe page, “Promise to the Schooner Hindu,” has so far contributed another $45,000, leaving the owners far from reaching their goal.
The money from the town’s community preservation account would go toward replacing the deck, covering the cost of Burmese teak planks and other materials plus labor. While all the new framing will be concealed under the planking of the hull, Rowan said in a phone interview that he had picked improvements that would be visible to the public for the grant request.
When the Hindu is on the water, “she is spellbinding,” Rowan said. “There is this magic about her that takes everybody who goes aboard her back in time.”
The restoration should be finished by December or a few months after that, in time for the 2022 season in Provincetown, he said.
Several letters of support accompany the application. Susan and Mary-Jo Avellar, granddaughters of Al Avellar, wrote that the Hindu “is a daily reminder of our town’s glorious fishing and maritime history.”
Motta Field
The aim of a $100,000 funding request from the recreation dept. and recreation commission is to explore what the public sees as the best use of Motta Field and put together a master plan for the work. Currently, the field, owned by the town since the 1950s, features three tennis courts, a T-ball field, and a picnic area. The property is in need of many renovations, said the recreation dept. in its application, but the work should be done “in a coordinated way that reflects the needs of the community.”
A large chunk of Motta Field was donated by the state in 1953 for athletic and playground use, but there are potential improvements that could attract more people. The department hopes to hire a consultant who would survey residents and use the results to direct a final plan for the property. The department would use that plan to apply for state grant money and town capital improvement funding.
Affordable Housing in Orleans
Seven towns on the Lower and Outer Cape will be asked for $100,000 each in community preservation funds to help cover the cost of a $28-million project proposed for the former Cape Cod Five property in Orleans. Pennrose Development plans to build a complex of 52 affordable units, which will be rented to households making less than 60 percent of the area median income, and 10 workforce apartments for households earning up to 120 percent of the area median income. A comprehensive permit application for the project is currently being considered by the Orleans Zoning Board of Appeals.
It’s not unheard of to ask neighboring towns to support housing this way. Pennrose was the developer of Eastham’s 65-units of affordable rentals in the Village at Nauset Green. Wellfleet and Orleans each chipped in $100,000 for that project.
