The University of Maine will move forward with plans to demolish its oldest building, despite a campaign by students, alumni, community members and some lawmakers to preserve it.

The UMaine System board of trustees voted Monday afternoon to approve demolition plans for Crossland Hall as part of the university’s larger north campus infrastructure improvement project.

Crossland Hall was built in 1833 before the Orono university was founded, and is currently home to the school’s Franco-American Centre and Center for Undergraduate Research. University officials say the building has racked up significant deferred maintenance, and with construction already planned for a new multipurpose sports facility nearby, the decision to replace the building with new parking spaces makes economic and logistical sense.

Under the proposal, the Franco-American Centre will be relocated to a renovated space in the environmental sciences laboratory building, while that space’s current occupant, the Spruce Budworm Lab, will be moved to a renovated space elsewhere on campus.

Students have been pushing back against the plan since the fall. A petition against the demolition garnered more than 1,500 signatures, and the university’s student government passed a resolution in December seeking to delay and reconsider the demolition.

Several students, alumni, lawmakers and community members spoke Monday against the plan during the board’s public comment period, which was moved online because of the major snowstorm that affected much of the state.

Speakers invoked the building’s long history, its position as a community gathering space, their disappointment about replacing it with parking spaces for an athletic center, and Maine’s history of Franco-American discrimination. Nobody spoke in support of the demolition.

“While the people are the heart of the Franco-American Centre, I can tell you that the group itself will never quite be the same outside the history and home that is Crossland Hall,” said Allen Grover, a third-year student at the university and a Franco-American. “Erasing the past to make way for the future is a shame at best, and travesty at worst.”

Critics spanned the political spectrum, from Democratic gubernatorial candidate and former state Senate President Troy Jackson to Republican former governor and current 2nd District candidate Paul LePage.

“The proposal to demolish this historic building, or to relocate its cultural significance to a less accessible space for all, sends a troubling message,” LePage wrote, in a statement read to trustees by former UMaine professor Tony Brinkley. “Culture should not be displaced to the margins.”

Trustees, however, said the building had outlived its useful life and opposed delaying the project. Trustee Roger Katz said the university needed to address its aging infrastructure, and consulted with an outside firm to evaluate its buildings. He said Crossland Hall received a value of zero from that firm, and has been identified as a candidate for demolition since 2020.

“Further investment in that property makes very little if any sense,” said Katz, who argued moving the Franco-American Centre will lead to a “brighter future” for that program.

Some trustees argued that advocates were conflating the demolition of the building with an attack on the Franco-American Centre and the broader community.

Trustee Donna Loring unsuccessfully proposed delaying the demolition to hear out further community feedback, and allow the community to propose raising funds to save it. She was the only trustee who voted against the project.

Also at its Monday meeting, the trustees gave their stamp of approval to the first collective bargaining agreement with the University of Maine Graduate Workers Union last month. The union represents more than 900 student workers across the university system and had been bargaining with officials for more than two years.

The trustees also authorized two universities, the University of Maine at Augusta and University of Maine at Fort Kent, to apply to join the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division III. Those universities currently compete in the United States Collegiate Athletic Association, and their presidents said there are many advantages to joining the NCAA, including being more attractive to potential students, belonging to the same athletic association as other system schools, and shorter travel distances for games.