LEWISTON — Due to ongoing negotiations with the Knights of Columbus, it will be at least another month before city officials decide whether the Multi-Purpose Center building should become only a school and move senior citizen programs to a new home.

The Lewiston City Council was expected to take up Lewiston School Superintendent Bill Webster’s request to have the Multi-Purpose Center become a school to help relieve overcrowding.

All Lewiston schools are full, and enrollment is projected to continue growing at a hefty rate of 100 students a year.

Webster has asked to use all of the Multi-Purpose Center to relieve crowding at the Longley Elementary School, which now takes up half of the building, and to create a prekindergarten center for the city, freeing space at other schools.

To do that, the city would have to find a new home for senior activities now held at the non-school half of the building.

The city is considering buying or leasing the Knights of Columbus hall at 150 East Ave. and relocating programs there.

The Lewiston City Council was expected to discuss the issue when it met Dec. 20. That didn’t happen, because the city is still negotiating with the Knights, said City Administrator Edward Barrett.

“The council felt rather than rush things they would hold off,” Barrett said, and let the new council and mayor, who will be inaugurated Jan. 3, decide what direction to take.

Barrett said officials have narrowed possible solutions to three:

* Move senior programs to the East Avenue Knights hall,

* Move senior programs to the city-owned Central Avenue armory or

* Add more portable classrooms to the Longley school.

Outside the Longley school already looks like a trailer park with its seven portable classrooms that hold half of the school’s students. Longley was built for 200 students and now has 344.

Barrett expects there will be a City Council workshop on the Multi-Purpose Center “pretty quick” in January.

Meanwhile the School Department needs to find more space soon for September, Webster said. It also is starting planning for a new downtown elementary school hoped to be built in about five years. That school would combine the smaller Longley and Martel elementary schools, which are both full.

If the city ends up giving the Multi-Purpose Center to the School Department, Webster envisions that as the eventual site of the new elementary school.

“If they tell me no, that tells me we need to be looking at another space for the new school,” he said.

Not getting the building “greatly decreases the likelihood the new school would be located downtown. I’m not aware of another site downtown.”

Using part of the Multi-Purpose Center for a new school would reduce building costs, since the gym could be used, as could nearby fields.

[email protected]