The University of Maine System has received three second-round bids for a building it is selling in Belfast.

The state’s public university system first took bids for the Hutchinson Center earlier this year, and in August announced it would be awarded to an evangelical church. Then the system rescinded the offer in September, citing a shortcoming in the criteria for assessing bidders. The system reopened the process in October, and new bids were due Friday at 5 p.m.

Samantha Warren, the system’s director of external affairs, said Friday afternoon that they received three bids – the same number as last time – although she said she won’t be able to identify the bidders until the university announces the top-scoring respondent, which should happen later this month.

Jason Stutheit, who has represented Calvary Chapel Belfast through the bidding process, confirmed Thursday that the church was one of the groups to submit a second bid.

Donna Kelley, president of Waldo Community Action Partners, confirmed that her organization also submitted a second bid after being passed over during the first round.

The group increased its bid since the original offer and aims to keep continue allowing community partners and events to use the center, Kelley said in an email Friday night.

“Should we be successful, we would plan on a renovation to prepare the facility to meet our needs going forward,” Kelley said. “We are heading into our 60th year serving our community, and it would be nice to have a home of our own.”

Representatives of the Future of Hutchinson Center Steering Committee, the third group to submit an initial bid, confirmed on Monday that the group placed a bid but declined to comment further on the next steps.

The Hutchinson Center served for decades as a local hub, hosting university classes and community events. But the university system stopped holding classes there in 2020, and private rentals never recovered after the COVID-19 pandemic.

The center was donated to the university system by Bank of America in 2007 as a gift with no conditions. The state university system has sold or plans to sell several buildings around Maine, a response to the high costs of deferred building maintenance, and an increase in online education accelerated by the pandemic that made some infrastructure unnecessary.

“The decision to sell the Hutchinson Center followed two decades of the University of Maine delivering education there and then two years of stakeholder engagement when a decline in student enrollment and escalating operating costs made it clear it would no longer be viable for the public university to sustain the facility,” Warren said. “No degree-seeking students have taken classes in-person at the center since 2020.”

The announcement of Calvary Chapel’s success in the first round of bidding was met with backlash from community members, and the two other bidders filed complaints.

The university system initially stood by its decision to sell to the church, arguing that not doing so could amount to religious discrimination.

“The university cannot discriminate, including on the basis of religion,” the university said in a statement at the time. “Doing so would be against the law and inconsistent with the university’s commitment to inclusion.”

But system officials later said the original selection criteria failed to account for the potentially significant cost savings associated with keeping a network hub currently located in the building in place. Networkmaine is used by the university system, public schools and libraries, and will need to remain even after the building is sold.

The new request requires bidders to lease the Networkmaine infrastructure back to the university system for at least five years.

Warren said the university will use an objective scoring system – which considers the value of the offer, real estate contingencies and the cost of the network equipment space – to evaluate the bids and identify the best one.

“Community benefit is subjective and thus cannot be explicitly considered in the evaluation criteria,” she said.

This story was updated on Nov. 4 to confirm that the Future of Hutchinson Steering Committee was among the three bidders.