Oh, Dunkin’ Donuts. Just when you’ve annoyed us to no end with your unnecessary expansion and dumb ads, you redeem yourself at least a little bit by doing something nice. Today’s Globe has a sweet story about a very old house in Lower Mills. The house is in unusable condition, so when Gregg Donovan purchased the house, he did so with the intention of tearing it down and using the land for apartments and retail. It turned out, however, that the house is so old that the Boston Landmarks Commission filed a demolition delay order. Donovan was then stuck between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, there didn’t seem to be much to do with the dilapidated house itself, but on the other, he couldn’t get rid of it.
Enter everyone’s favorite donut purveyor. Dunkin’ Donuts is now in talks with Donovan to renovate the house and turn the first level into a shop which, in grand Bostonian tradition, would replace the Dunkie’s a few hundred feet away. Now. Obviously, Dunkin’ Donuts’ motivation in this situation is based far more on capitalism than altruism, but it’s still a nice thing to do and one that will help Lower Mills keep some of its awesome historical architecture. We’d be even happier if Dunkie’s was planning to turn the house into a museum or something neat, but we’ll take what we can get.
For Historic House, A Donut Break Seen [Boston Globe]
