It needs improvements. But Americas Hometown Thanksgiving Celebration will still move floats to county property – Wicked Local Plymouth

Permitting issues have delayed Americans Hometown Thanksgiving Celebration from moving its parade floats to new storage facilities on county land.

PLYMOUTH Permitting issues have delayed Americans Hometown Thanksgiving Celebration from moving its parade floats to new storage facilities on county land.

But officials and parade organizers appear to be in agreement on a plan that should get the rolling collection of Americana under wraps by the end of the year.

Parade organizer Olly deMacedo said his group will have to do more work than anticipated before it can start moving floats into the vacant building behind the Plymouth County Correctional Facility. But the project is less than some originally feared and should easily be completed within the new deadline for moving the floats from the former Sears building in Kingston.

DeMacedo met with Plymouth Fire Chief Ed Bradley and Building Inspector Paul McAuliffe Monday to iron out details of the move.

The parade group stored most of its floats at Sears for the last few years, but the building is slated for demotion to make way for residential development. The county came to the rescue just before this years parade, offering to let deMacedo use a building that has sat vacant behind the county jail since 2009.

The building was originally designed to house an indoor firing range for the county law enforcement community, but the plan fell by the wayside after the state took over the jail a decade ago.

The county commissioners agreed to let deMacedo use the building to store floats for the next two years, but the plan didn't go before either Plymouth County Sheriff Joseph McDonald or town officials.

McDonald has said he is pleased to help the parade but feared that the building would not meet with town building approval because it was no longer being used for official county business and thus was held to more rigid permitting standards.

The building has a dirt floor and no heat, water or electricity. Further, any building over 7,500 square feet needs a sprinkler system.

Bradley said the building is less than 7,500 square feet, so it will not need the sprinklers or water. But it will require electricity as well as a system to protect the soil from contamination.

DeMacedo said has always been planning to install new doors on the building and will now install electricity as well. He will also begin pouring a concrete floor and will bring in industrial-sized trays to catch fluids that could leak from the floats.

He said the parade organizers are still actively looking for a permanent home for the floats, but are pleased to have temporary storage.

Its good to see the town working together, and were hoping in next few weeks to be getting in place over there, deMacedo said, acknowledging that the situation could have been a lot worse if he had to install sprinklers or drainage. Well do whatever they need us to do to comply and leave a nicer building for the county when were done.

McDonald said he is glad to see the parade will have a place to store the floats in the short run, but noted that the building is not a long-termsolution.

"It'sjust a shell of a building," he said, "sothe quicker they can get those floats intoclimate control thebetter it will be. At the end of the day, I'm glad we can help. I wish we'd been consulted, but I'mglad we could help."

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It needs improvements. But Americas Hometown Thanksgiving Celebration will still move floats to county property - Wicked Local Plymouth