The Harpswell Select Board has rejected a proposal to ask voters whether they would support a privately funded project to renovate a vacant waterfront building at George J. Mitchell Field for use as a nonprofit event space and recreation center.
A group of residents approached the town last year about the proposal, which they estimate would cost $1.4 million. The concept was bolstered by a March 2024 report from the Midcoast Council of Governments that said Harpswell should give supporters a chance to raise private funds to save the town-owned structure before tearing it down.
But at a meeting on Thursday, Feb. 20, Select Board Chair Kevin Johnson and member Jane Covey said they couldn’t support placing the proposal on the warrant for Town Meeting, which is Saturday, March 8. Board member David Chipman supported it, although he said the proposed project differs from what he had envisioned.
“I just don’t think it’s going to work,” Johnson told the project’s backers, who presented a detailed plan at the meeting. “I wish I did — I’m torn on this.”
Covey said she doesn’t think the location is right for the project and is concerned the town would be responsible for the building if the group couldn’t sustain itself financially. “Should it fail, what is the town going to do with it?” she said.
As a result, voters at Town Meeting will be presented with an article asking whether they support tearing down the vacant brick structure, widely known as the administration building. Backers of the recreation center concept will have a chance to convince residents to vote no, which could lead to another opportunity to push their proposal forward.
Represented by residents Bob Gaudreau, Dorothy Rosenberg and Philip Conner, the backers argued the town is already responsible for the building. They said their rehabilitation project would end up costing taxpayers less than demolition.
The group had asked the Select Board to at least postpone the public vote on demolition until 2026, granting them more time to prove they can raise the needed funds. “It won’t cost us anything to wait a little while. … We’ve waited years already,” Conner told the Select Board. “If it fails to work out, tear it down then.”
The building’s estimated removal cost is $200,000, although that amount wouldn’t cover required environmental cleanup. The 70-year-old former naval building is known to contain toxic materials including polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, which were banned in the late 1970s.
But the proposal’s backers and town officials agreed Harpswell would be responsible for remediating the polluted site regardless of whether the structure is demolished or rehabilitated. If it became a rec center, Harpswell also would be at least partly responsible for its proposed well and septic system, they said.
The Mitchell Field Committee’s current and former chairs both spoke out against the proposal. Current Chair Don Miskill Jr. said the committee has spent years debating the building’s future. “After due consideration, the consensus was the admin building is an impediment and needed to be removed,” he said.
Former Chair Spike Haible, who resigned from the committee in late January, said there is no public mandate to save the dilapidated structure. A survey in 2022 found residents were split down the middle on whether to keep or demolish it. Some felt it might conflict with a planned boat launch nearby.
Haible said he has formed a new group with the likely name Mitchell Field Trust that will focus on developing a “holistic concept” for the 120-acre property “which does not include the administration building.”
“Why would you continue to allow a large building structure right on top of what is the most valuable real estate on Mitchell Field?” he said.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story stated that the estimated cost of the project would be up to $2 million. The backers’ cost estimate is $1.4 million.
