AUBURN – If voters here approve a new elementary school on Park Avenue next month, it will be the second most expensive school built in Maine, based on size, in a decade, according to Department of Education records.

With room for art, music and a cafeteria, the $9.7 million project has been estimated at $221 a square foot. The most expensive school construction project in the last decade involved a $13.6 million K-12 school in Vinalhaven at $245 a square foot.

Superintendent Barbara Eretzian says the state didn’t flinch at the price.

What’s more, she said the cost wouldn’t add a penny to the local tax burden.

The new school would retire Lake Street Elementary, an aging kindergarten-through-grade-3 school on a small lot that the city had hoped for years to expand to kindergarten through grade 6. In 2003, word came down from state Education Commissioner Susan Gendron: The site was too small and the city’s expansion plan too expensive.

Buying out neighbors to extend the lot was going to cost more than $1 million, according to Eretzian. The total cost was estimated at $8 million.

Auburn then looked at nine sites, including the back of the middle school, to build anew. Park Avenue was chosen for the lay of the land and walking distance, Business Manager Jude Cyr said.

It has 10 acres, six of which need to be cleared of trees. The larger issue: ledge.

Forty percent of the $1.5 million site development budget has been earmarked for removal and disposal of rock, based on an engineer’s estimate.

Officials also cited the high price of the land – two adjoining parcels for $280,000, which is more than the land is appraised for – as well as the cost of sewer, water and buffering.

“Auburn is going to be very expensive. It’s a very expensive site to buy, it’s a very expensive site to develop,” said Scott Brown, director of School Facilities Services for the Department of Education. However, he added, it’s still “ideal.”

“This is the right place to put a school.”

The total project cost is $9.7 million. Voters will be asked separately to approve more gym space and air conditioning for $635,000.

The Board of Education gave project approval this summer. The state has agreed to pick up 84 percent of the cost because the city’s school system has so much other construction debt. Auburn is on the hook for about $120,000 a year for 15 years, with five more years at a fluctuating cost.

Eretzian said the school will not cause a tax increase because the department is about to pay off another project, and that money could slide right into this place.

The Park Avenue proposal has sloping roof lines and – in different places – one, two or three stories. It would have a gym and cafeteria, which the current Lake Street School doesn’t have.

The new school would be 44,000 square feet, minus the potential extra gym, for 350 students, kindergarten through grade 6.

Currently, Lake Street Elementary is 14,000 square feet for 120 students in kindergarten through grade 3.

“Our costs are scrutinized carefully by the state,” said Eretzian. “They didn’t balk at our budget at all.”

Building for building, the DOE tries to take a uniform approach across the state, Brown said. Currently, in western Maine, that results in a cost of about $115 a square foot.

Everyone gets comparable classroom sizes, security systems and technology.

In that respect, Auburn’s new elementary school and Lewiston’s new Farwell Elementary – still without a price tag – should cost about the same, he said.

“People come in and try to get the most they can for their communities, without a doubt,” he said. “We go through, I don’t like to call it negotiation” but “calibration.”

Budgets are adjusted. Items the school districts want but the state won’t fund – the gym and air conditioning for the Park Avenue school, for instance – get voted on separately with the municipality picking up the tab.

Extensive groundwork and higher labor costs are something the state is willing to pay for, after looking at all the options.

In the case of Vinalhaven, it was hard to get materials out to the island, Brown said, and hard to find labor out there.

He said the costs projected for the new Auburn school shouldn’t be viewed as a negative: “It wouldn’t surprise me if the next one we plan in Dexter or SAD 21 will be even more than this one.”