THE FORMER MCLELLAN BUILDING, now home to Brunswick’s Town Hall. The town acquired the building in a trade with Bowdoin College for the former Longfellow Elementary School in an agreement reached in 2011.
The town may be spending $150,000 for cost overruns on the McLellan Building at 85 Union St. that houses the new Town Hall.
The Town Council is expected to schedule a public hearing tonight for June 2 on using money from the town’s unassigned fund balance “for the purpose of the designing, renovating, equipping and occupancy of the McLellan Building for municipal use,” according to information provided to the council.
The council was alerted to the need of additional funding for the building in February, Finance Director and Interim Town Manager John Eldridge said on Friday.
According to Eldridge, there will be about $8 million left in the unassigned fund balance after this latest expenditure.
About $1 million has already been appropriated for the McLellan Building from that balance. There was about $10 million in the fund in the beginning of the year, said Eldridge.
“Our hope is this is the final appropriation,” said Benet Pols, council chairman, barring maintenance costs.
Pols said the council wouldn’t make the appropriation “if we thought another shoe was going to drop related to the move-in.”
The town acquired the former McLellan Building in a trade with Bowdoin College for the former Longfellow Elementary School in an agreement reached in 2011.
Town offices moved to McLellan in early April.
Funding the McLellan Building renovations has been a source of tension in the town, and was one of the bones of contention between the council and former Town Manager Gary Brown.
Whether or not acquiring the building was the right move for the town hinges on whether the town closes a deal with Coastal Enterprises Inc. for the sale of 28 and 30 Federal St., which is being conducted through the Brunswick Development Corp., said Pols.
CEI, a private nonprofit community development corporation, is consolidating its Portland and Wiscasett offices in Brunswick by razing the former municipal building and rec center currently on that site to make way for a two-story, 21,780- square-foot office building.
The town’s municipal offices moved to the renovated McLellan Building at 85 Union St., whereas the rec center relocated to Brunswick Landing in November 2013.
The Planning Board will hold a public hearing on CEI’s final site plan application on May 27. It is possible that the board will vote on whether to approve CEI’s plans then, according to Town Planner Jeremy Doxsee.
Having CEI purchase the buildings means the town is no longer responsible for maintaining buildings it no longer uses, said Pols.
“In the absence of CEI coming along, it would be hard to characterize it as a good move,” said Pols.
Pols noted that past, poor purchasing decisions by the town are still fresh in many citizens’ minds, notably the purchase of the former Times Record building on Industry Road.
“The old Times Record building was a property acquisition generally looked at as the biggest, bad real estate deal ever made,” Pols said. “We paid a lot, and it wasn’t suitable at all. We carried maintenance costs on it for many years, and finally tore it down to cut our losses.”
Those kinds of decisions, Pols said, led to tax increases over recent years and the most recent budget crunch.
jswinconeck@timesrecord.com
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