hi i'm steve rose alice welcome to the last show of one nine hundred ninety eight here on talk of the town stay tuned with us in a minute we'll be talking with tom fox from the belmont lions club talk about that very interesting and graceful building down by the tracks and some of the difficulties the have in maintaining it we're also going to start a new feature here on talk of the town with coaches corner basketball season is just started here down here at the high school will be chatting with each of the coaches of the boss the teams giving us their previews and some of their thoughts on the upcoming season so stay organizer and chairman for the roof restoration project coming under way down at the belmont lions club but since we're now just past the christmas holiday tom you guys i don't know how many trees you sold but i understand you ordered twenty eight hundred trees three thousand still three so i stand corrected and i can't tell you how many breeds dozens and dozens and grosses and grosses i'm telling the people of beaumont come down and you know share in a project a fund raising have a couple of minutes down here now aside from the treat yourself to three thousand trees i don't know how many thousands are read this we put that money to good use we do ninety five percent of the funds we raise donated to charity charities of one kind or another our biggest is probably massachusetts lions i research we donated twelve thousand dollars to that organization last year we have two scholarships here at the high school twenty five hundred dollars for a boy and twenty five hundred dollars for a girl we support many of the sports teams here at the high school and also a lot of the academic clubs as well we we also when we're made aware of a young child who may need some eyeglasses an exam anything of that so  arrange for that to happen at no cost to the the family i know many of the members of the final organization and people put a lot of hard work in assets you know and have a guy's prominent spot which is sort of the reason why you're here being in that prominent spot next to the stone bridge the lions club how long it would how is that the lions club got to own that building well it's it's a long story but the building was actually built one year after the stone the bridge the underpass or overpass whatever you want to call it sure it was it was built in one thousand nine hundred eight it was a station serving belmont center from boston main railroad and hit they real road was very very important to the development of dominant belmont was an agricultural area when it  was you know before the railroads were introduced here but the railroads made the town accessible to wealthy bus stony ins and they started to come out and build their homes here so the wealthy belmonte and yes that's right at the state so the railroad was important and we think the railroad station is important as well but how the lions go over the building in the mid fifty's the railroad ridership had declined and they were thinking of doing away with the service so they offered they were building a lot of buildings around boston and this  one to the belmont lions for one hundred dollars you bought that deliver one hundred ali but the building for one hundred dollars the next day the lions that were in the club then i wasn't there but they sold a pot bellied stove for two five every year we've had fund raising activities and and every year we've given money to charity and every year we also try to maintain the building as well now that building is maintained by what just through the membership of the lines the membership of the lions we will use five percent of the friends we raise for building maintenance also if we rent the hall to anyone for a function they they may be holding that money generally goes toward the building maintenance one of our members was an engineer one of the boston hospitals and they were changing a heating system and he managed to get the old system which was perfectly fine and had a lot of life in it and put it into the clubhouse it lasted for fifteen years we just replaced it a couple of years ago the last were no that's right but the building is basically sound but looks like it has some pretty interesting twists and turns there are ramps there are doors that apparently don't well what are some of the more interesting aka textural or other features that the building well you're right it looks like the winchester  sion out in california that has stairways going nowhere and things like that the the the main meeting hall was the waiting room originally and where we now have a kitchen we've installed a kitchen the baggage room the the back of the building facing the tracks we filled in and we use it now for storage people donate furniture for our annual flea market of all we start there and then bring it out on the given day one of the interesting things though the the the attic area has no ventilation and when they sold the pot bellied stove they smoke pipe was cut off just under the the roof and over the is that was the only ventilation we had and that saved a lot of damage  the interior structural members of the building interestingly enough go go so now you allow the back down to be your old that's where they they can do a mural on the building and we would generally agree well it's sort of a community project certainly it's an open campus certainly has a very lodge a wall i know but i was talking to the young lady who did the  recently within the last year or so been put into the historical district here in belmont is the lions club a historical structure or is it part of a district that all well it's it's not in the local historical district but it is in the national register of historic places and there's a reason for that in the real world is the reason is probably why i'm here tonight to tell as many people as i can about a problem we're having with the roof the roof the beautiful clay tile roof that's such a pleasant thing to look at as you're driving down common street heading toward the center is ninety years old and it's it needs replacing badly as i said a couple of minutes ago the building is sound but if the roof isn't replaced it won't be so much longer so we were faced with a couple of alternatives one is to replace it with the clay tile that's that's there now and the other was to use asphalt shingles we don't have an awful lot of money and asphalt shingles were considered by some of the members but it would be criminal i think to replace that beautiful clay tile roof with a small shingle small should have driven by that next time i hope people take a look and notice what they have up there when you drive by you know use you could drive by anything you know million times never really the historical district situation we consulted with a local woman candace jenkins who's a historical preservationist she does consulting and she did some work for us what you lawyers would call pro bono absolutely but the good that was that was not looking good it was very nice but anyway she advised us to apply to the massachusetts historical commission  there they have a project historical projects preservation preservation projects fund it's always goes and she said that it had to be in the national register and it was a lot faster to go directly there than through the local historical district so this is what we've done and the building is eligible and i believe it may already have been approved so he's trying to raise how much money to fix the roof well a total working figure we have for the project is one hundred fifty six thousand dollars that's a nice round number but  roof the state has actually granted us fifty six thousand dollars we originally applied for seventy and they gave us pretty six which is playing we we still love them it's about what i asked of the bearing bonds in denominations of five hundred dollars a thousand some people two thousand and we're just doing that for the club there'll be a payback on that probably ten years out but as i said no to a fifty thousand dollars five year commercial loan oh so nice i think we're going to we're going to do that but at the same time we're going to try to to run some fund raising activities specifically for the the roof capital fund raising yeah yeah that's right and try to get the loan and the and the bonds to pay it off a little more quickly than just letting using some of the kids at the high school here boosters club for example to do mail drops for the around town asking for donations plain and simple we think that there are people in town who really love that building the way we do and might be willing to make a contribution we're thinking of some of the more traditional things too like a raffle a hundred dollars a ticket no more than three hundred tickets sold ten thousand dollars first price and seeing if we can raise some funds that way a golf tournament perhaps in the spring i'm not a golfer i don't know anything about it so i play but i don't think he would call me much of a one common street of course you can always write as you can always call a lions club i wish i had the phone number on the label it'll be it'll be flashed on the screen we'll be able to take a look at all right you know put the address on the screen and if nobody's at the clubhouse at the time there is an answering machine you can leave a message to reflect that's terrific well i wish you much luck with this project i'll take the opportunity to give you one more plug i do know mass college of optometry and once a year they go down to central america south america carrying all of the classes we've donated and you know get them to people down there who need them you guys do yeoman work keep up the good work i thank you for a few minutes you had a chance to chat with his head today and thank you very much luck on the project i hope you come back and give us an update a progress report so we can all see a beautiful new rules i'd love to well you just heard from tom flock to hear the lion's club hi welcome back to talk of the town so i told you when we first opened we're starting a new feature here on talk of the town coaches corner with us today is basketball the head coach of the vastly boys basketball team paul lyons along with the two my initial guest here and coach is going to hopefully it won't be too difficult let me say at the time we're taping the show you guys are two and zero with winds over wakefield in winchester right that's so i many games all season we play twenty games eighteen league games chatting before the show for the last two years and then coaching is my forty first year over all right and how many years here at the high school twenty two or twenty three i went to a twenty three a ago that's all right that's right well the new version the ninety eight ninety nine well we've got these two guys here are two of the best players in the league so my quality it's been a three year starter with us and there's nobody better in the league in terms of handling the ball and getting the ball of course for us and matt is just a terrific forward it's a good nucleus to start with they were both all league last year and olding around then we have joe toomey who was hurt an awful lot last year but joe was been terrific the first couple weeks of the season joe was our biggest player i think one of our deficiencies this year the size we're not a very big team but joe's inside we have two other players that are also starting for us actually they're both god so we have ross phillips who is a god in mike's hodgin who's a god so where we're playing with the three got off into this really a bunch i think this year to little different i think there's a very good balance from top to bottom in the league of the years there's been two or three teams that have been really really strong but i think there's a lot of good teams this year i think we're going to be among the best winchester in wakefield that we've already beaten a good how is that you get to the tournaments just well you have to win how you again after games get into the gym you get a seeded and then you get seeded according to your record and then you go from there so it has a very strong teams of the last five or six years as we have now when the state terrific kids and some terrific basketball players and i think this team is this competitive has anyone had over the last few years to we don't have a lot of depth right now we're going operating with six six players that are really playing a lot for us so we're hoping to look to be a young  down here and way to play what time to play and well we pretty much on tuesday and thursday nights and often the boys play at seven and once in a while we do play at five thirty but the girls have a good team too so for somebody to come down and five o'clock and spend the evening here i think they'll have a see some exciting sports and see the sport the way it probably should be played huffing and puffing there's always a lot of emotion bodies flying around but you get a pretty good brand of basketball here at belmont high school so i do want to give the   as the season rolls along ok so very good good thank you very much good luck have a good season guys look forward to  club coach paul lyons a vast a basketball coach along with the two co captains seniors my crotty and matt mcavoy i wish them luck and their upcoming basketball season i do want to take an opportunity to wish all of you all the viewers out in belmont and all your families a happy and healthy new year prosperity and success to all and all your loved ones and we'll be back in the new year if anybody has any comments or any ideas for shows or any ideas the guests they were glad to take them you can contact myself or corey corey morris here at four eight four to forty four three or even fax us your comments or your suggestions