LEWISTON – City planners say they need more information before they’ll get behind a city effort to purchase the vacant St. Dom’s building and property.
City officials have signed an option to buy the former St. Dominic Regional High School building for $200,000. Lewiston’s Planning Board reviewed that option agreement Monday and voted against buying the 83-year-old brick building.
“I think the first question asked by me and the rest of the board was Why?'” said Board Chairman Jeff Gosselin. The Planning Board couldn’t make a valid decision without knowing what the city intends to do with the building, he said.
“Obviously, there is a plan there. But we don’t know what it is, and I would say the city is not ready to provide that information to us,” Gosselin said. “We just don’t feel it’s appropriate to recommend the city acquire a property without a plan.”
City councilors will review the purchase agreement at their regular meeting Tuesday. City Administrator Jim Bennett said councilors won’t have much more information to go on.
“Do we have things we are thinking about for that building? Of course we do,” Bennett said Wednesday. “But we don’t have anything specific that we have permission to talk about.”
The city has been trying to re-use the downtown building since the school moved to Auburn in 2001. City officials hoped to convert the building into affordable housing for the elderly, but those plans fell through last fall.
“A lot of that has to do with the condition of the building,” Bennett said. “It’s an old school with a lot of big hallways that waste a lot of space, so finding uses for it is difficult. And, it hasn’t been heated for three years, so there is damage.”
Bennett said the city believes it could sell the four acres for $250,000 to $750,000.
“So, even if it costs us a few thousand dollars to tear the building down, we still come out ahead,” Bennett said.
Comments are no longer available on this story