The Greylock estate has been deteriorating for at least two decades. On the face of it, responsibility for its current deplorable condition lies with the property's owners. However, responsibility for the maintenance of the Greylock estate also rests with an additional party, the Chestnut Hill Conservancy.

Over two decades ago the Greylock estate was made subject to conservation and preservation easements. These easements do not bear much practical similarity to commonly held easements such as rights of way that allow the owner of an adjacent property to share his neighbor's driveway. Both are contractual, and both confer property rights to a party or parties that do not hold title to the property. But there the similarity ends.

First of all, conservation and preservation easements often confer some tax advantages to the property owner who establishes them. Secondly, the holder of the easement is typically a nonprofit institution that has been established and is legally bound to enforce the terms of the easements. Third, conservation and preservation easements always run with the land; that is, such easements are effectively part of the deed to the property, so that anyone who comes to own the property is bound by the terms of the easements.

The Greylock easements run to more than 60 pages, many of them detailing both building and landscape maintenance.

The moment they assumed title to Greylock, the current owners assumed legal responsibility to uphold all of the terms of the conservation and preservation easements. At the same time, the Chestnut Hill Conservancy, the land trust that owns the Greylock easements, became legally responsible to hold the owners accountable to those terms.

Although their engagement of one of the most prestigious law firms in the region and evident large expenditure on architectural and other planning services would seem to indicate that the current owners of Greylock have ample resources, they have never demonstrated any intention to conduct maintenance other than what is necessary to protect the investment by not allowing the building to collapse. Clearly the maintenance terms of the easements have been blatantly disregarded.

The owner has financial incentives to let the Greylock property become an ever-worsening eyesore. First of all, money is saved in the near term by foregoing maintenance. The owner also has to believe that a worsening eyesore can convince some neighbors to accept the strained logic that ignoring very clear restrictions on new buildings to allow a $30 million development project to take place is the "only way" that the Greylock property can be cleaned up. This argument is absurd on its face.

Legal contests over the current development proposal are likely to take several years, during which the owner has no additional incentive to maintain the property. Construction itself, during which the property will be both an eyesore and a dusty noisy mess, would take several more years. The plain fact is that there is no connection between grandiose development schemes and the duty to maintain the property, as it sits, right now. There is no evident hardship, and no excuse for the lack of maintenance.

There is however a legal obligation for maintenance. And there is an entity that exists explicitly and legally to see that the maintenance of the property is undertaken. That entity is the Chestnut Hill Conservancy.

The Greylock Easement document describes at some length the actions the Chestnut Hill Conservancy can take to uphold its legal responsibility to enforce the maintenance provisions of the easements, up to and including undertaking the work themselves and taking the owner to court.

According to a recent IRS Form 990, the Conservancy currently has close to three-quarters of a million dollars in unrestricted liquid assets.

The Conservancy has both the legal duty and financial capacity to finally enforce the maintenance terms of the easement.

It is unclear to me how the Conservancy can hope to retain its accreditation as a land trust if it continues to fail in this most basic responsibility to care for Greylock, arguably its keystone property. If the Conservancy cannot do its job, the Greylock easement should be placed in the hands of a more responsible trust.

David Dannenberg

Chestnut Hill