Healy Supports Demolition of Old Town Hall

Select Board member Michael Healy has spoken in favor of demolishing the Old Town Hall on Taunton Avenue. The structure, the former site of the Seekonk Police Department headquarters, has sat unoccupied for several years.

“For twenty years we’ve let that building sit there,” Healy said at the board’s March 26 meeting.

The topic was part of a discussion about various town buildings, including the County St. fire station.

The property, constructed in 1897, had been sold to the Seaconke Wampanoags for $55 in 2014. The tribe had intended to convert the building into a cultural and meeting center. Those plans fell through and now the town owns the building again.

At an October 2022 meeting with the Old Town Hall Building Committee, the Board of Selectmen approved a feasibility study for the building. At the time, Town Administrator Shawn Cadime said the study would present viable options of what could be done with the building and at that point, decide how the Town should move forward with it.

In 2018, Selectmen designated the task of determining the building’s value to members of the town’s Historical commission and the Community Preservation Committee.

The CPC noted when the building opened in 1898, it had served as a way of bringing the community together, since at the time, the Town of Seekonk did not have a Town Center. After the Committee held several meetings and did a walk-through of the building, they proposed preserving the building to utilize it in a multifaceted way.

A total of $100,000 has already been spent from the town’s community preservation fund in order to prepare the building for the historic register.