Amherst Historic Preservation Commission·July 14, 2026

Two Nominations Head to the Board · A Landmark's Doors Restored · A New Commissioner · A Grant-Writer's Warning

Next Stop, the Town Board

In a brisk 27 minutes, the Historic Preservation Commission set the table for a bigger night two weeks out: on Monday, July 27, two of its five pending landmark nominations — the Key Bank building on Main Street and One Cloister Court — go before the Amherst Town Board, with the remaining three expected at the board's second August meeting. The commission also approved a full restoration of the Harlem Road Community Center's historic front entry, funded with federal community-development money and headed next to the state preservation office; welcomed its newest member, Kate Clark, seated by the Town Board barely a day earlier; and heard a veteran commissioner draw a line in the sand on grant writing — no more volunteer applications for the town, they said, until the town board shows “actual movement forward” on the landmarks the commission keeps sending it.

26.9 minutes of audio · faster-whisper “medium” model · transcribed from the town's meeting video · several proper names garbled in transcription are rendered conservatively

The commission recommends; the Town Board designates — and on July 27 that handoff happens for the first two of five pending nominations. Commissioners settled logistics Tuesday: staff will transmit the full nomination packets ahead of the meeting, presenters get an estimated ten to fifteen minutes with their PowerPoint decks as a backdrop, and public comment runs three minutes a speaker. The board meets at 7 p.m. The other three nominations are expected to follow at the Town Board's second meeting in August — commissioners penciled August 31 at 7 p.m. — because the board's first August session, an afternoon meeting, was judged a poor fit for public turnout.

Hanging over the scheduling talk was a candid note of institutional fatigue. Discussing newly opened state preservation grants — applications for the fiscal-year-2026 Certified Local Government round are out, with a September 15 deadline — a long-serving commissioner said flatly that they were “done writing grants for the village, for the town, for free, unless there's actual movement forward with nominations.” The commissioner described years of grant work, including awards “pulled at the last minute and not awarded because of the actions of the town board.” The message, softened but unmistakable: the commission's unpaid labor is contingent on the board taking preservation seriously — starting with the nominations arriving on its desk July 27. Colleagues agreed to begin drafting grant narratives in the meantime.

The night's one certificate of appropriateness was a clean approval with real craft in the details. The Harlem Road Community Center — a local landmark and former school building — is getting a full restoration of its front entry, presented by project architect Jeff Kletzer^[*]: the wood doors stripped and repainted based on the condition found beneath the paint, the historic transom window protected and restored, damaged moldings replaced, and an extensive hardware package swapped piece-for-piece in matching finishes — predominantly satin brass — with the historic door handle itself merely cleaned and kept in place. The long-missing porthole windows will be recreated from historic photographs, some of which staff sourced from the school district's own archives.

The liveliest stretch was archival detective work over the doors' Tudor-esque strap hardware — the “barn hardware.” Commissioners squinted at photos from the 1920s and '30s, where it seems absent, and 1953, where it appears, and concluded it was likely a mid-century addition bolted on to hold aging doors together. It stays anyway: it may not be original, but as one member put it, it's “definitely familiar to the neighborhood.” The motion approved the application as submitted, with work to follow the Secretary of the Interior's standards; the project is funded through federal community-development grant dollars and goes next to the state historic preservation office for review. One drafting note from the discussion: the plans will be revised to state explicitly that the interior door plate comes off temporarily and goes back on. The vote was unanimous, and the commission closed with a rare grace note for local government: “Thanks to the town for going after money to fix this door on this local landmark.”

Kate Clark took her seat Tuesday, welcomed roughly a day after the Town Board confirmed her appointment — “you don't waste any time,” the chair observed. She inherits the standard onboarding: four hours of mentored training and the commission's working rhythms. The commission's long-running review of the HPC code chapter remains where it has been — in ongoing conversations with town staff and the town attorney's office — and the state's Certified Local Government grant round is now formally open with its September 15 deadline, which is what prompted the grant-writing exchange above. Minutes from May 12 and June 9 were approved, the May set with a procedural wrinkle smoothed over: the May meeting had lacked a quorum of attendees for its own minutes, so members absent that night supplied the approving votes.

Six members voted through the evening; motions carried unanimously as recorded. New member Kate Clark was seated at this meeting.