The New Hampshire Land and Community Heritage Investment Program, or LCHIP, announced Tuesday it is awarding more than $3.5 million in matching grants to projects that will conserve land and repair historic buildings across the state.
Project awards include $300,000 to protect wildflower fields in Kingston, $125,000 to preserve forests in Durham, and $130,000 to remove excess water from the cellar in Robert Frost’s former home in Franconia — a problem the poet’s family first complained about back in 1919.
Paula Bellemore, LCHIP’s executive director, said what a community chooses to preserve reflects its character.
“When people think about coming to our state or think about moving to a particular community, they look to see what is being maintained,” she said. “And that speaks to the values of the people who live there.”
LCHIP is an independent state authority, meaning it operates separately from the Legislature or state agencies. Since 2009, it has received its funding through a $25 surcharge on documents filed at county registries of deeds.
Bellmore said LCHIP is committed to selecting projects that preserve land and buildings while also tackling some of the state’s biggest problems, including issues like clean drinking water, affordable housing and local food systems.
One example of a project that aims to protect the state’s past while investing in its future is a $250,000 grant to the Canterbury Shaker Village. The money will fund a full exterior rehabilitation of the village’s East House, built in 1810, that will allow the building to be used for a variety of vital functions in the present day.
“We can use it for residential use by program participants and staff and to enable expanded programing in the village,” said Garrett Bethman, who oversees communications for the museum.
Bellemore said local museums can struggle to have adequate staff — and offering housing can help with that.
“If they can use an historic building to provide staff housing, that can really make the difference to being able to attract and retain people with the historic preservation skills they need,” she said.
Bellmore cited a project in Winchester that will use $24,000 to transform a former bank into a community center as an example of an effort to balance history and modern demand.
“We'll be retaining the historic fabric of this building. So it will still continue to tell the story of how this building evolved over time, but it will have a current use,” she said.
Bellemore said climate change is pushing the two distinct missions of LCHIP — protecting historic buildings and protecting land — closer together, as many projects seek to make aging structures more climate resilient.
This year, with less funding available for preservation projects at the federal level, she said the group saw more proposed land conservation projects that were smaller in scale and thus relied less on federal dollars.
