The Melrose Messenger

Competing Visions For Memorial Hall Come to a Head in City Council

By Ellen Putnam

The Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Building, better known as Memorial Hall, set off a new round of discussion at this week’s City Council meeting when councilors voted not to reappoint longtime board member Michael Margolis, indicating their frustration with the status quo in Memorial Hall’s management.

Memorial Hall has been owned by the City of Melrose since it was built in 1912. It hosts the Melrose Symphony Orchestra (the country’s oldest continuously performing volunteer orchestra), the Melrose Youth Ballet’s Nutcracker performances, the annual Melrose Arts Festival, the Melrose Rotary Club’s weekly meetings, and a variety of other events, from school concerts to fundraisers to boxing matches.

Last fiscal year, building operations cost the city approximately $215,000 while bringing in approximately $160,000 in revenue, for a net loss of approximately $55,000. (Memorial Hall’s budget made up approximately 0.2% of the city’s $121 million budget.)

Memorial Hall’s budget and operations became the subject of heated discussion during the City Council’s budget deliberations two budget cycles ago. As the city was facing significant budget cuts across the board, two city councilors proposed cutting Memorial Hall’s budget entirely. The City Council ultimately voted to maintain the budget for Memorial Hall, with some cuts and rate increases for rentals. However, at the time, some councilors expressed that they would not approve the budget for Memorial Hall the following year if it continued to represent a net loss for the city.

During this year’s budget cycle in June, the City Council (with four new councilors at the table) voted unanimously to approve Memorial Hall’s budget. But questions around the role that Memorial Hall should play in the community and in the city budget have lingered.

Some of those questions were put on hold while the City Council waited for the publication of an anticipated strategic plan for Memorial Hall. This study was funded by a technical assistance grant from the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC), which Melrose is a member of. The plan was finally published last month, offering suggestions for making operations more financially sustainable while still meeting the needs of the community.

One possibility for Memorial Hall would be to position it as a regional performance space, similar to Medford’s Chevalier Theater (which, at 1900 seats, is over twice the size of Memorial Hall). But based on survey results and interviews with residents and local users, the strategic plan concluded that the community is not looking for significant changes to Memorial Hall’s function and programming.

The strategic plan read: “The community values the venue as a local resource and also wants to see improvements in programming and offerings without an abrupt transition to a highly competitive model. The preferred approach for Memorial Hall’s future operations is a hybrid model that balances an increase in regular arts and cultural programming with preserving existing local cultural programming.”

The strategic plan provided a number of suggestions for increasing and diversifying the programming offered at Memorial Hall, and noted that the venue should have its own, dedicated website and digital marketing efforts.

The study also noted that Memorial Hall could potentially achieve the dual goals of supporting community organizations and bringing in more rental income by raising rental prices to market rates while establishing a tiered pricing structure with discounts for certain local groups. The study also recommended that Memorial Hall management could sign long-term agreements with long-term users like the Melrose Symphony and the Melrose Youth Ballet to formalize those relationships.

“The flat-rate fee structure remains a key barrier to long-term financial sustainability,” the strategic plan noted. “In addition, the outsized role of the board of trustees in venue operations creates additional challenges for the venue to adopt flexible approaches to programming and revenue generation.”

Coinciding with the publication of the strategic plan, Memorial Hall will see several leadership changes. Last week, longtime Executive Director Kathy Pigott-Brodeur retired, and two of the five positions on the Soldiers and Sailors Building Board of Trustees came before the City Council this week for appointment. (According to the city’s charter, two of the five members of the board of trustees must be veterans, of which Margolis was one.)

City Council President Brad Freeman reflected at this week’s meeting: “One thing that this Council has discussed frequently over the past few years is: Do we view it as a community asset or do we view it as a building that brings in revenue for the city? What’s the appropriate balance?”

The City Council voted unanimously to appoint Kim LaFontana to the Soldiers and Sailors Building Board of Trustees to finish out the term of Mary Sexton, who passed away last spring. LaFontana echoed Freeman’s sentiments: “In reading the report, it’s clear the community wants more out of Memorial Hall. It’s going to be hard to figure out the balance between the facility itself, how it’s used, how it’s maintained and restored, and the revenue generation goals. Those are the factors at play here.”

In her letter of interest, LaFontana stated: “It's clear that there is real work to do to chart the course for the next chapter of this important Melrose institution. I am a business leader with extensive experience working on large, complex projects and believe that my experience would be an asset to this board.”

But Margolis’ reappointment hearing did not go as smoothly.

“I think that one of the overriding sentiments in the city is about the quality of the inside of Memorial Hall and a sense of frustration that it hasn’t been improved to the point that it should have been by this time,” said City Councilor Ryan Williams.

Addressing Margolis, he added, “I have to say that you are sort of standing in here for the entire board. You’re the first reappointee on the Soldiers and Sailors Building Board of Trustees that we’ve had before us. If the members of the board want to stay on the board, I think the community’s going to need to see some more rapid improvement in the interior quality of the building, probably before you even get to the idea of raising revenue, because in this state, I don’t know how many people would pay a premium to be in there.”

The City of Melrose spent $3.9 million (in a combination of bonds, free cash, a state earmark, and private donation) on a building envelope project in 2022, which addressed leaks that had been causing water damage inside the building. But the ceiling and walls of the interior have not been repaired since then.

The nonprofit Friends of Memorial Hall raised $80,000 in 2023 for restoring the smaller, upstairs GAR Room. A lack of staff availability at the city’s Department of Public Works (DPW) delayed that project, which is expected to finally begin this winter. (Memorial Hall’s main auditorium will still be available during construction.)

There are also further repairs needed to the main auditorium, which do not currently have a funding source.

But it is not immediately clear who - if anyone - is at fault for the physical condition that Memorial Hall is currently in, and the delays in making repairs. “Is Memorial Hall not well managed by the people that we’ve appointed to manage it?” questioned City Councilor Jason Chen. “Is it not properly resourced by us and the city? Are there structural issues? We heard that Public Works doesn’t want to take any responsibility for Memorial Hall, which seems to leave Memorial Hall leaders a bit in the lurch to try to manage a lot of these complex engineering issues. Or do we maybe not have the right governance structure in some way in the city?”

The structure that governs Memorial Hall is one question that was raised in the strategic plan. City Councilor Christopher Park noted: “The report does not paint a very positive picture of what’s been going on. It calls for meaningful change in how the board of trustees operates.”

Margolis pushed back on the study’s conclusions about the board of trustees. “The board is not involved in the day-to-day operations,” he said. “Kathy Pigott-Brodeur did yeoman’s work in that building. The board met monthly, and Kathy would bring us an agenda. If some kind of decision had to be made, then the board made a decision, and Kathy and her staff would carry out those decisions, not the board.”

“Should the objective be self-sufficiency?” Park questioned, “Or should the city continue to subsidize the revenue or maintenance and operations of Memorial Hall?”

“I would love to see the building make a profit for the city,” Margolis responded. “In the past, we were deficient in not raising the rates a little bit every year. So when we had the last recent rate increase, it hit people hard. But I’ve never thought of running the building as a for-profit entity. It’s a for-public entity. It’s a for-Melrose entity. And I think, moving forward, probably the most important thing is to get the building back in tip-top shape so we get more concerts, more plays, another dance recital or two. I’d love to see the building rented out every night.”

Ultimately, all eight councilors who were present at this week’s meeting voted against Margolis’ reappointment. (This includes Councilors Chen, Finocchiaro, Freeman, Kowal, Park, Romanul, Vandiver, and Williams. Councilors Jamaleddine, Karamcheti, and Obremski were absent.)

Now, with changes on the board of trustees and Pigott-Brodeur’s retirement after 18 years in charge of Memorial Hall, city leadership may look at whether they wish to restructure the management of Memorial Hall.

The strategic plan recommended that the city maintain a full-time director as well as two full-time staff positions. It noted that some responsibilities could be handled by a private entity (as the city already does with the management of the Mount Hood golf course). The study also noted: “Memorial Hall needs a regular maintenance plan and appropriate staffing to coordinate and manage capital improvements. The City of Melrose should explore whether some of these functions could be managed by the Department of Public Works. This would require collective bargaining negotiations and increased staffing at DPW and possible changes to the existing Memorial Hall staffing structure.”

The strategic plan also noted that there should be closer collaboration on capital improvements and fundraising efforts among the Soldiers and Sailors Building Board of Trustees, the Friends of Melrose Memorial Hall, and city staff.

The city created a job posting last month for Memorial Hall Manager with job responsibilities that include day-to-day operations as well as “developing and managing capital improvements plan for building, including procurement and execution of building maintenance plan, vendor and contract management.” The posting continued, “This position has a unique opportunity to implement components of the MAPC Cultural Facility Strategic Plan by strengthening operations, optimizing the use of the facility, positioning Memorial Hall as a cultural and community hub and fostering meaningful engagement with the community.”

The strategic plan was presented at the Soldiers and Sailors Building Board of Trustees meeting last month. No budgetary changes to Memorial Hall are expected this fiscal year as a result of the study, but the City Council is likely to discuss the strategic plan during their budget process next spring. Councilor Chen also suggested that the City Council could discuss the strategic plan prior to next year’s budget hearing through an informational order, once a new Memorial Hall Manager has been hired and the remaining vacancy on the board of trustees has been filled.

Posted October 7th, 2026