MATTAWAMKEAG, Maine — Town leaders plan to talk next week to two potential buyers of the former Dr. Carl Troutt School, officials said Tuesday.
If all goes well, a small manufacturing business, which would employ no more than a dozen people, will make a tentative offer to the Board of Selectmen when the board meets at 6:30 p.m. Monday. The other potential investor could make a conference call with the board, Chairman John Whitehouse said.
“We have been working with an individual tailoring an offer to repurpose it in some way. He came up with one idea and decided that wouldn’t work, but he is still interested in the property,” Whitehouse said Tuesday.
The manufacturer has asked that his name be kept confidential until he is ready to make an offer, said Whitehouse, who doesn’t know what type of business the second investor would offer.
The building will not house a marijuana grower, Woodhouse said.
Residents voted 52-22 at a special town meeting Jan. 12 to reject a tentative proposal from a Lebanon-based company to buy the former school for $69,000 and turn it into a medical marijuana dispensary. Besides worrying a marijuana grower would draw crime to the area, residents objected to losing the playing fields on school grounds.
The manufacturer would allow the town to keep the ballfields, Whitehouse said. He hopes to hold an informational forum with the buyer before scheduling a new town meeting. Voters must approve the sale before it can occur.
Selectmen have had four informal offers to buy the building since Regional School Unit 67 closed the school in 2009. Whitehouse is worried the building at 41 Graham Lane soon would be too decrepit for resale because no one is heating it.
Mattawamkeag paid more than $40,000 annually to heat and maintain the building since becoming its owner in 2009. Town officials discontinued that practice, and the cost dropped to $7,731 in annual maintenance, since the new fiscal year began July 1.
Returning the building to town tax rolls would generate $9,000 in real estate taxes annually, Whitehouse said.