At last year's town meeting, Ipswich voters agreed overwhelmingly to extend our Demolition Review/Delay bylaw from 12 to 18 months. In the same article we changed the look back period from a rolling date of 75 years to a fixed date of 1915, and made minor adjustments to the wording that allowed the Chair of the Historical Commission and our liaison in the Planning Office to make a preliminary determination whether a proposed demolition would fall under any of the standards by which a demolition might be delayed. Our reason for the change was (1) developers outright stated that they expected to wait out the 12 months and demolish a building regardless; and (2) our 75 year look back was now taking up our time reviewing requests to demolish dilapidated platform frame outbuildings constructed as late as 1945. Originally the Chair and vice chair of the Historical Commission (including myself) proposed a 1900 date so that it would be inline with the 1900 date in our Architectural Preservation District Bylaw. There were others on the Commission who felt that we should review any demolition request o matter how old the building is. The Commission settled on the 1915 compromise, and the voters at Town Meeting accepted extending the demolition delay to 18 months, because they agree that buildings built before the 20th Century should be preserved, and fixing the date to 1915 returns the bylaw to its intended purpose when it was first adopted in 1987. https://historicipswich.org/2020/10/10/demolition-review-warrant-article/

I appreciate your clarification regarding the requirement for a building owner to wait six months after applying for a demolition permit, specifically for structures that are over 50 years old. My mother is considering demolishing the existing structure and replacing it with a new one. Based on this information, I will strongly advise her to obtain the necessary demolition permission before initiating the process.