Community Corner

What's Next for the Stramski House?

Now that a proposed pier project for Stramski Beach is full steam ahead, members of the Recreation and Parks Commission are focusing on a town-owned home nearby.

The company planning a pier project at Stramski's Beach is waiting for materials and should get started sometime in the next few weeks, but what is going on with the Stramski House next door?

Now that work to at is expected to begin sometime next month, Recreation and Parks Commission members are turning their sights toward a town-owned home on the property.

At their meeting Tuesday night, commission members sat down with , a local architect with an office on Pleasant Street, to discuss their longterm goals for the "Stramski House," an uninhabited home near the beach that the town purchased for $125,000 in 1968. 

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"We do a lot of work in town and we thought this would be a good way to give something back," Jacob said. "I thought it would be good way for our office to introduce ourselves to residents by working with the town."

Jacob told commission members that before reviewing the home's structural integrity, he would want to get an idea of some of the ways they hoped to utilize the property moving forward.

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"Whenever we do work with anybody, we try not to talk too much at the first meeting, we just want to listen to what you want," Jacob said. "Then we come back and we show you what you asked for. The idea here is that we don't want do something and then find out later on that you wanted us to do something else."

Commission Vice Chair Derek Norcross told Jacob that the board had come to an agreement that they would want to work on the building "from the bottom up" and begin by installing boat lockers in the garage and getting laundry and bathroom facilities going in the basement.

"Our short-term vision is to try to stabilize the building if in any way it is in worse shape than we think it is. Structurally we think it is fine," Norcross said. "In the bottom we'd like to have some storage lockers, boat lockers, a shower and possibly a laundry facility over by where the plumbing is and getting the bathrooms going would be a good first step."

Norcross went on to say that said commission members would like to turn the space on the first floor into a water-front store for visitors to the park and boaters using the soon-to-be-constructed pier.

"We think that we can make a lot of money just selling ice and boating supplies with the long-term possibility of opening a picnic area on the porch above the garage," Norcross said. "Then on the second floor, we would like to think about making those into function rooms."

Although much of this planning is still very preliminary, commission members seemed pleased with Jacob's enthusiasm and made plans to meet with him again in the future.

"This is a great opportunity to serve the community at a waterfront location," Norcross said.

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