AUBURN — City staff and the Community Little Theatre group have until May 11 to work out a new lease for the Academy Street building that would give the city more influence in developing it.

Councilors voted 6-1 in favor of the last-minute item. Belinda Gerry voted against, saying she liked the idea but objected to voting on something that was not on the agenda and did not get public notice before the meeting.

Chris L’Hommedieu, president of Community Little Theatre, said Monday’s vote came as a complete surprise to him. He sent councilors an email last week, saying the city needs to be involved in future plans to develop the building, the original home of Edward Little High School. He expected to talk with councilors about it during a workshop meeting.

Instead, councilors went into executive session to talk among themselves. They then voted at the end of Monday’s regular meeting, directing staff to negotiate a new lease with L’Hommedieu and the theater group’s board.

“The city wants to amend it and I think they feel it needs to be amended so they can negotiate a deal with a developer,” he said.

The city of Auburn owns the lot and the building, the site of the old Great Falls School. Councilors signed a 99-year lease with CLT in August 2011, giving the group control of the building. The city demolished the western wing of the old Great Falls School, leaving the unpaved parking lot.

The eastern section of the building is home to the theater and its costume storage space, the gym, and offices.

L’Hommedieu said his board negotiated with a developer last year, only to have questions of parking kill the deal.

According to L’Hommedieu, the developer would have taken over the theater group’s sublease with the city to build single-bedroom or efficiency apartments on the building’s top floors. The theater would continue to occupy the bottom floor, converting the building’s gym into a two-story work space, costume storage and public gallery.

The plan called for building a three-story building in the parking lot with up to 30 units.

“We came within a hairsbreadth of making it happen,” he said. “Unlike this year, last year we did not get a lot of backing from the city on figuring out how to handle the parking situation. When you lose a 90-space parking lot in a residential part of the community, you need to find some place for them to go.”

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