Hartford Village
Under the agreement, the Hartford Historical Society can purchase the property from former Elks member Richard Daniels for $592,000 between now and the end of October, according to Martha Knapp, president of the Hartford Historical Society.
“We’re so happy he signed it. We’ve been going back and forth with meetings,” Knapp said on Tuesday. “We just finally got an agreement.”
Knapp said the contract is critical to the non-profit’s fundraising campaign, because up until now, prospective donors had to accept a level of uncertainty about whether the deal would go through.
“It was hard to raise money when we didn’t have a purchase and sales agreement,” Knapp said. “Now it’s full steam ahead. We’re letting everybody know.”
Daniels, who is also the president of RSD Transportation, has been both creditor and member of the Elks Lodge No. 1541, which struggled with hundreds of thousands of dollars in liabilities that it incurred while fighting a lengthy courtroom battle over the lodge’s sexual discrimination against seven women who applied for membership, but were denied because of their gender.
The lodge eventually lost a 2008 appeal before the Vermont Supreme Court, and in 2013, court documents say, it owed more than $1 million to Daniels, mostly for unpaid rent. In 2015, an attorney for the women said the lodge still owed an additional $750,000 in damages and legal fees.
Efforts to reach Daniels for comment on Tuesday were unsuccessful.
In all, the Historical Society hopes to raise $900,000 for the purchase and renovation of the Horace Pease House, which is also known by the name Summeracre.
Pease, whose business concerns included a nearby hotel in Hartford Village, bought the Maple Street property in 1883 and built the home as a wedding gift for his bride, Seraph Pease, according to the property description on the National Register of Historic Places. Ten years later, the couple donated the land that was used to host the Hartford Library.
Today, the building is part of the Hartford Village Historic District, which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1998.
The building is still used as a meeting place for organizations like the Emblem Club, and hosts weekly bingo games, but the Elks group has disbanded, and the bar they once used to raise money is no longer stocked with alcohol and other drinks.
Knapp declined to reveal how much money the Historical Society has successfully raised toward the purchase price of the building, which town records show has an appraised taxable value of $573,300.
In mid-July, the group had raised $225,000, and Knapp said on Tuesday that the campaign has still not triggered a $100,000 matching donation that was promised by an anonymous donor when $400,000 was raised.
If the purchase price is not raised by the end of October, Knapp said it was possible that the organization would seek a loan.
However, she said, she was confident that Tuesday’s news would allow for the campaign to meet its goals without resorting to that measure.
“The purchase and sales agreement … we think, is going to be the deciding factor,” she said.
The campaign to acquire the building has been driven by both the desire to preserve the Pease House, and to expand the space available to the Society itself, which currently operates out of the Garipay House, also located on Route 14.
Board member Mary Nadeau has described the Garipay House, as “bursting at the seams” while staff struggles to make it serve the triple purposes of office space, storage space, and display space for the town’s collection of artifacts.
Pat Stark, the Society’s archivist, said that because of the crunch, she’s had to, for the first time, pick and choose which historical materials can be accepted.
“We don’t have any space to put anything,” she said. “I’ve had to turn down donations because of that. We hate to do that.”
And Knapp said that the materials they do accept are being tucked into odd corners as a temporary measure, as was the case when a former teacher recently showed up with some antiquated school books that once graced the desks of generations of Hartford elementary schoolchildren.
“Two boxes of them,” Knapp said. “Dick and Jane and Sally. They’re historical teaching books.”
Stark said the group’s planned renovation will also allow for the Pease House to function as a community center for the village.
Matt Hongoltz-Hetling can be reached at mhonghet@vnews.com or 603-727-3211.