By Kathy McCarty
Staff Writer
PRESQUE ISLE, Maine — Councilors spent part of Monday night’s meeting discussing the future of the indoor pool, focusing on three options presented by City Manager Jim Bennett. “Council adopted the budget, taking advantage of UMPI’s offer to run the city’s swimming programs (at Gentile Hall),” with the city being able to use the facility for Rec Department programs, said Bennett. “This seemed like a reasonable tradeoff given the financial pressure the city is under.”
He presented what he referred to as a “three-pronged approach” as to the future of the city’s pool building located at the fairgrounds.
“The building is on leased land owned by the Northern Maine Fair Association. The first option would be to offer it to the Fair Association with one restriction: they can’t dismantle it — if that happened, we should do it ourselves, given the heating system,” said Bennett. The heating system is valued at about $25,000 and, being relatively new, could be used to upgrade heating in another structure owned by the city.
Bennett offered two more options.
“The second would be to put the building out for proposals, with the same restrictions,” said Bennett. This would effectively sell the property to another party.
“If either of those don’t develop, the third option would be for you to authorize us to seek bids for demolition, salvaging what we can out of the facility. We’d try to have it down before next winter,” said the city manager.
Councilor Dick Engels said he thought the third option would likely be what the city would end up doing.
“I think the Fair Association should be involved and given the first right of refusal,” said Council Vice Chair Randy Smith.
Bennett suggested doing all three simultaneously.
“We’ll shut down operations at the end of this month. We’ll keep it heated at the bare minimum for the month of March, until items are removed. We can contact the NMFA and give them until our March 3 meeting to get in touch with us,” he said.
Bennett said he’d have a better list of what’s “worth the staff’s time and outside resources” to remove, in order to prepare for demolition.
Smith questioned if there was anything in the lease that would “restrict closing the facility.”
“Are we obligated to remove the building?” asked Smith.
Bennett said he’d have that answer by the March 3 council meeting.
Council Chair Emily Smith suggested getting a dollar value on what’s of worth in the building, then if someone wanted to purchase it, the city would have a better idea of what the price should be.
“If someone desires to junk it out, as long as we know what we’ve got — we can’t tell them you can bid on it but can’t have the heater,” she said.
Councilor Pete Hallowell said if the NMFA didn’t express interest within 30 days, it should be put out to bid to be demolished.
“Based on our discussion, I will proceed on all three avenues, with the suggestions Council has provided,” said Bennett.
City staff will now approach the NMFA to determine if fair officials are interested in the building. At the same time, a request for quotes on purchasing the structure will be sought, as well as bids for demolishing the facility. Bennett hopes to have a response from the Fair Association, quotes and bids by Council’s next regularly scheduled meeting, which will be Monday, March 3, at 6 p.m. at City Hall. Once this information is available, councilors will consider how to proceed.
