After a two-hour meeting Wednesday night, the Hawthorne Reuse Advisory Committee agreed that the building at the Hawthorne Street property will need to be torn down. However, there seemed to be less consensus around what else to do with the land.

The advisory committee was formed to provide recommendations to the Select Board on the future use and redevelopment of the current Hawthorne-by-the-Sea Restaurant. Swampcott acquired the property in 2022 following a special Town Meeting vote, with the intention to create a new feature downtown. 

“We’re starting to have those discussions that everybody really has been eager to have,” Chair Brian Watson said. “One of the major factors is the financial picture that would come from each plan.”

Watson emphasized that the Select Board will not dictate what is “appropriate for the site.”

“They have explicitly told us to feel free to study a wide range of plans and make a recommendation balancing what the town thinks it wants, what financially works and so forth and so on,” Watson said. “The Select Board is quite clear. They want us to study this, to become learned about the issues and then get back to them with the recommendation. If we’re thoughtful, I think they’ll take our recommendation very seriously.” 

Vice Chair Joe Markarian presented financial organization and site analysis at Wednesday’s meeting.

“We’ve got a parcel of land and effectively it’s going to have three components,” Markarian said. “It’s going to have the mandatory coastline, public access walkway. It’s going to have designated park land, and it’s going to have – or at least we think it’s going to have – a development pad where a building would go on.”

The committee agreed that the current building on the property will need to be torn down or else it would be a “huge cost to the town.” Many also agreed the current shape of the building is an “eyesore.”

“My view is that the building is dated. It’s worn out. It’s not functional for any other use than a restaurant,” Markarian said. “For the town to retrofit that building into a community building of some sort, I think it would be enormous money.”

The property consists of 64,167 square feet of land. The official report has a bit more space, but Markarian suggested that it includes an easement. 

The committee will need to decide if they would like multiple buildings on the property or just one. If it is the former, the discussion will also need to be around if they are all for the same use or if there can be a mix of residential and commercial spaces.

Members described the property as “a blank slate,” with possibilities extending beyond those discussed at the meeting. Watson called it “open questions” that the committee does not necessarily need to have answers to at the moment but will need to revisit consistently throughout the decision making process.

Committee Member Tara Cassidy-Driscoll called it a “balancing act.”

Watson noted there is “no way” the town will invest money in the site without expect some revenue return.

“The townspeople won’t buy that,” Watson said, adding that the Town Meeting Members will have the final vote on what happens to the property. 

One idea that was brought up in the meeting was to have a large venue space or restaurant in coordination with the potential boutique hotel where the former Hadley School was located. Select Board Member Mary Ellen Fletcher attended the advisory meeting and shared that the hopeful hotel developers believe “having a restaurant that size on that location would be added value to the business of the hotel because there are very few places on the North Shore that have large function areas where you can actually have weddings, meetings, etc. in there.” 

“They see it as a major asset to that entire corridor there…If you have a function center and you have a hotel, that’s going to bring more people to the hotel. What’s good for them is going to be good for this town because of the 6% tax on revenue that they’re going to be bringing in,” Fletcher said, adding that there was no discussion yet as to if the developers would issue a proposal bid. 

Laurie Lebbon, a member of the Hadley Elementary School Reuse Advisory Committee, said that her group “really felt strongly that we had to support the local businesses, bring people into the downtown area and really activate that corridor.”

Another option discussed Wednesday was creating additional building spaces on Humphrey Street, which “creates the opportunity for real commerce, real development, real tax revenue.” There were concerns raised about what people who live nearby would think.

One “predominantly park” plan could include paths and structures around the green space. The disadvantage seen was the money put in to clean up the area would not come back to the town. Committee Member John Bonn pointed out that this “creates no revenue,” so instead he would be in favor of “some balance between uses.”

Another suggestion was for about half of the space to be a park with a line of buildings, which could vary in size and height. There would be an option for some spaces to be residential, but that did raise the concern that the open space would feel like it would not benefit the full community but rather the people directly living there. That said, the committee seemed to like this plan for the open space and mixed use. It could also preserve parts of the sea view, which some members were keen to.

At the end, the committee agreed to all go home and think about the plans.

“We don’t have to go that fast,” Watson said. “If we eliminate all the plans and we’re done, I think that’s too fast. I think we have to give ourselves a chance. We aren’t ready as a committee to say this is the proposal.”