Now that The Andover Community Hub is officially a non-profit organization, and into its fourth year of existence as a community center, its board of directors is mounting its first community-wide campaign aimed at bringing new ideas, new energy, and new financial resources into its organizational structure.
As an advertisement elsewhere in the Beacon explains, the current eight-person board is looking to expand: especially to find new members to help shape the Hub’s future. The board particularly hopes to find individuals with experience in (and enthusiasm for) addressing building needs, in identifying outreach opportunities for a variety of community segments, and in managing finances.
Board members are also searching for volunteers to serve on committees with responsibilities for identifying, developing, and maintaining new programs, for developing policies that will guide those activities, and for help in finding new sources of revenue to support them.
And, it will be looking for “subject matter experts”: individuals who will agree to offer advice and counsel, and hands-on help, on a project-by-project basis, such as structural and architectural issues, programming and event opportunities, social-media outreach, and material and financial donations.
Current Hub board members will be reaching out personally to potential Hub supporters in the next few months. Area residents who would like to learn more about these opportunities may send an e-mail to TheAndoverHub@nullgmail.com. A board member will respond promptly, beginning with a big “Thank you.”
Current Hub board members are Deb Brower, Larry Chase, Susan Chase, Paul Currier, Pat Cutter, Gisela Darling, Steve Darling, and Grace Schust.
History of the Old Town Hall
The building now known as The Andover Hub was built in 1879 to serve as Andover’s Town Hall. In that capacity it was used for generations of selectmen’s meetings, town meetings, elections, graduations, dances, and basketball games. When a gym was added to the Andover School in 1963, the town decided the old town hall was no longer needed, and the building was sold to a private owner.
Over the next 50 years, several owners used it as a chair factory, professional offices and, most recently, a medical billing company, dividing up the first floor into a series of small offices in the process.
In 2016 the building was purchased at a foreclosure auction by a small group of local residents who renamed the building The Andover Hub, and formed a board to maintain and manage it. Those owners then joined forces with the Andover Community Association in early 2019 to form the non-profit Andover Community Hub, which now owns the building.