The city has entered into an agreement to buy a 65-acre plot of land on Stroudwater Street for the possible site of a new junior high school.
Mayor Bruce Chuluda signed a purchase and sale agreement on Friday with Thomas DeWolfe and Elizabeth Faye, the owners of the property at 471 Stroudwater St.
If the sale were approved by the City Council, the city would pay $989,900 for the land. The council voted unanimously Monday night to give its initial approval to the sale.
The purchase comes after a frenzied two weeks in which the city was notified the land was on the market, the council met in closed session to discuss the purchase, and the administration negotiated with the sellers and signed the purchase agreement.
The sale will not become final until the council holds a second vote at its regularly scheduled April 3 meeting.
The city can’t build on the site without approval from the state. However, Chuluda said he wanted to have the option of using this particular piece of land should the state decide to build on a new site instead of the Bridge Street site. Chuluda said a preliminary look at the site indicated it could be very suitable for a new junior high.
City Councilor John O’Hara agreed, saying the site was a very desirable piece of property that has “enormous potential for Westbrook.”
“To not have taken this action would have been short-sighted by the city,” Chuluda said.
If the city doesn’t build a new school on the land, it “would still have a parcel of land that’s not going to diminish in value,” Chuluda said. The city could also use the land for other uses such as park space or any other use the council decides, he said.
While councilors were all in favor of the purchase Monday night, some did express concern over what the city would do with the land if the state decided to renovate Wescott Junior High or build on the Bridge Street site instead of a new site.
“We would certainly have the option of simply remarketing it in an attempt to recoup all of our costs from a sale,” said City Administrator Jerre Bryant. “Should the council decide that they want to use some portion of (it) for another purpose, they have that option. But the exit strategy, if you will-if you simply want to recover the investment we made in the property-would be to simply remarket the entire parcel.”
School Superintendent Stan Sawyer said that following a meeting with the Maine Department of Education on March 2, the school department ran ads in local papers two weeks in a row and advertised with real estate agents on multiple listing services.
The ads asked anyone in Westbrook who owned a plot of land of at least 10 acres and might consider selling to come forward. O’Hara said a broker contacted him about the Stroudwater Street parcel being sold by DeWolfe and Faye about two weeks ago.
Sawyer said the city doesn’t plan on running any additional ads about potential new sites for the school but would entertain other options if they arose.
Scott Brown of the Maine Department of Education said his intention in asking Westbrook to look at other sites besides the Bridge Street site was to see what else was out there. He said the process for looking at other sites and establishing whether one might work better than the existing site would be a lengthy one, but he wanted to know the options.
“We look at the existing buildings and existing sites until we have proven we cannot achieve the things we want for the project (there),” said Brown, who went on to say that the state tries to stay on existing school sites, but he added he understands there are a lot of concerns about the current site.
Sawyer said he hasn’t given up on the Bridge Street site yet, but said he felt it would be difficult and expensive to build new on. He said the three main concerns are having to “blast and remove ledge” to build, easing traffic in an area usually congested when people are trying to go to work and parents trying to drop their kids off at school, and also having to move the major power line that goes through the site.
Bryant said the action was “just part of looking at other sites we should consider.” He said doing “something other than renovating on the existing site will put a lot (of strain) on (the) site.”
Sawyer said he met with the state again on March 22 and told them the city may have a new site. He said his impression was the state representatives were pleased Westbrook had located a site that was free of ledge and was not in the middle of the city.
The city council will take a final vote on the purchase at its next meeting on Monday April 3 at 7 p.m. in room 114 of Westbrook High School. The meeting is open to the public.
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