Swampscott will use an open scoring rubric, not up-front limits, to choose the long-term use of the town-owned Hawthorne parcel at 153 Humphrey Street.
The Select Board’s choice keeps major options in play. The town did not rule out housing, demolition, a sale, a lease, parking, open space, or other uses before bids arrive. Instead, proposals will be judged against nine questions the board chose on June 17, according to Patch and the Item. The board has not yet set the weights for those questions.
At the same time, the town is negotiating in private over nearby land. The board’s June 24 agenda lists an executive session on real property: “multiple parcels – 187 Humphrey St.,” the church-owned St. John’s lot next to the Hawthorne building. The same item appeared on the board’s May 27 agenda.
The board debated the RFP structure on June 3 and settled on the nine scoring categories on June 17. The June 3 account comes from the meeting record. The June 17 outcome rests on press coverage, because no transcript or minutes from that meeting had been released by the time this account was written.
The Hawthorne work follows a December 2025 Town Meeting vote that authorized a dual track for the long-vacant former Hawthorne-by-the-Sea restaurant: put in a short-term tenant to protect the empty building, and run a separate long-term RFP to decide its permanent use. As this paper reported on May 30, the board signed the short-term lease on April 27, 2026: about $10,000 a month for roughly 26 months, to June 2028, approved 5-0. Vice Chair Danielle Leonard objected to a repair-termination clause but voted for the lease.
The tenant is the Swampscott Center for the Performing Arts, operator John Nicastro, known as Johnny Ray. The venue cleared the last of its licenses, an entertainment license approved on its third try over neighbor noise concerns, on June 17, according to the Item. The short-term tenant is now inside. The RFP will decide what comes next.
Nine RFP Questions
The nine categories, as reported, are:
- Purchase or lease — whether the town sells the land or keeps it and rents it out.
- Housing — whether the project includes any housing.
- Parking — how much of the site goes to cars.
- Open space — how much stays public and green.
- Demolish or preserve the building — whether the existing structure comes down or stays.
- Walkability — how well the result connects on foot to the beach and the street.
- Streetscape relationship — how the project meets Humphrey Street at the sidewalk.
- Environmental sustainability — how the project performs on energy and climate.
- Synergy with the commercial district — whether it strengthens or undercuts the redevelopment taking shape on the Humphrey Street corridor, including a hotel project in the works.
The board chose the questions, not the answers. No weights were attached to the categories on June 17, and the press reported no decision on any future use. The weighting will show how much the board values each goal.
Rubric Instead of Guardrails
Town Administrator Nicholas Connors framed the decision on June 3. About 70 percent of the RFP, including the community profile and site facts, was already drafted, he said. The remaining policy work, including guardrails and scoring, belonged to the board and had to come before any marketing consultant. “Rather than the consultant directing us,” he said.
Member Ted Dooley argued for the open rubric. “I think the rubric approach is phenomenal,” he said. He pointed to a prior RFP, the Hadley/Pine Street process, where one bidder met everything the document required and then offered something “totally outside of the box.”
“I would hate for us to shut the door on something that we could not even have imagined or dreamt of,” Dooley said.
Dooley also said a rubric would help the board defend its choice later. If members agree on the rubric first, he said, then “no matter what the decision is, whether it’s park, parking, combination, mixed use,” everyone “can all walk out heads held high” because “we all agreed on the rubric.” He called it the board’s “North Star” and its “Bible.”
The chair warned that a rubric can look more objective than it is. “You can make data say whatever you want,” the chair said, and “it’s somewhat subjective how you fill in the rubric.” The example was residential development: if the town preferred no more than 20,000 square feet of residential space and ten units, how much should it penalize a proposal above that limit? One point, or a hundred? If the scoring is loose, the rubric could “delay the conversation rather than having it in advance.”
Member Wayne Spritz raised the opposite concern: the rubric should not punish a strong idea the town had not expected. It must not “hurt anybody who’s coming in with a whole different mindset on what could be done there,” he said.
The board also said an open rubric would still have force. As the landowner, the town can decline or score down uses that zoning would otherwise allow by right, because it is selling its own property, not granting a permit.
Each member was told to bring “top three pillars” to the June 17 meeting. The rubric won.
Parkland Request Not Adopted
The open rubric does not adopt the parkland outcome sought by five town bodies and the Swampscott Conservancy.
As this paper reported on May 27, the coalition asked the board to write the RFP around Hawthorne as “primarily open park land without any sizable structures,” with no residential use. The rubric leaves open space as one of nine weighted questions, not a requirement. The coalition wanted the answer set before the RFP went out. The board chose to leave the answer open.
Dooley, the board’s liaison to the Conservation Commission, one of the letter’s signatories, argued hardest to keep the RFP open.
Mary Ellen Fletcher was the first member to break from the open approach on substance. On June 17, she went on record against residential use at Hawthorne and emphasized alignment with the nearby commercial corridor, according to the Item. It is her clearest forward-looking land-use position since her April censure, which was for conduct toward staff and does not bear on her judgment here. It also fits her longer record: she has backed mixed-use at the site and pushed the town to buy the adjacent church parking lot.
Adjacent Land Talks
While the town builds the rubric in public, it is discussing nearby land in executive session.
The June 24 agenda item names “multiple parcels – 187 Humphrey St.” That is the church-owned St. John’s lot next to the Hawthorne building. The parkland coalition asked the town to acquire it, and the town’s open-space plan names it as a target.
Connors raised the lot’s adjacency at the June 3 RFP kickoff. He said the town could ask bidders for two answers: the Hawthorne lot as it is, and the Hawthorne lot plus the adjacent parcel.
The closed-session item is not new. The same “multiple parcels – 187 Humphrey St.” language appeared on the board’s May 27 agenda. The June 24 agenda carries it forward. It does not show that the talks have expanded. An executive session is a negotiation, not an outcome, and settles nothing on the public record. The same agenda lists an unrelated closed item on litigation strategy in Seligman v. Town, a Fire Department employment suit with no Hawthorne connection.
The town has not chosen Hawthorne’s future. It has chosen an open RFP method while keeping the adjacent-land talks private.
Sources: June 3, 2026 Select Board meeting (Z9gMTi_2KN8): RFP framing debate, Connors’s “70 percent” framing and “rather than the consultant directing us” [≈1:55–2:30]; Dooley quotes [2:13:22–2:15:04]; the objectivity/subjectivity counter and the 20,000-sq-ft hypothetical, spoken by the chair [2:15:06–2:16:04]; Spritz’s “whole different mindset” caution [2:14:12–2:14:25]; landowner-can-decline-by-right discussion [≈2:10]. June 17, 2026 nine-category outcome and Fletcher’s anti-residential position: press only: Patch and Itemlive, June 18; no June 17 transcript or minutes released as of writing. Agendas: data/committees/select-board/agenda-2026-06-17.md (Hawthorne RFP item; Dooley as Conservation Commission liaison), agenda-2026-06-24.md and agenda-2026-05-27.md (identical “multiple parcels – 187 Humphrey St.” executive-session item; Seligman v. Town). Lease terms and 5-0 April 27 vote: 2026-05-30_hawthorne-property.md (btO9I3hWOh4). Parkland letter and 187 Humphrey identification: 2026-05-27_five-committee-parkland-letter.md. Names, roles, and history from data/people/ and committee rosters in data/committees/.