HALLOWELL — Page and Pleasant street residents are concerned by a city committee’s decision to ask councilors to reconsider a vote that signaled support for putting 14 acres of undeveloped land next to the neighborhood in the local school district’s control.

It’s an early bone of contention in the Stevens School Advisory Committee’s work of narrowing down Hallowell’s vision for the state-owned, 64-acre complex off Winthrop Street that features some of the last undeveloped land in the heart of the city.

Additional Images

Jeremy Sheaffer stands at the corner of Pleasant and Page streets with his son Ben and dog Maisy on Wednesday at the edge of the Reed Center parcel in Hallowell. Staff photo by Joe Phelan

The last state offices housed there are expected to move by spring, and Gov. Paul LePage’s administration has said it will market much of the property to developers with Hallowell’s input.

The state began trying to sell the property in 2008, first through a request for proposals and then by listing it for $1.1 million.

The 14-building property is mostly vacant. Inmates housed at the Central Maine Pre-Release Center were moved out in 2013.

Regional School Unit 2, which has been headquartered at the Reed Center on the campus for two decades, has long been negotiating a transfer with the state for its building that would also include 22 acres of land, made up of a developed eight-acre portion and 14 acres of undeveloped land bordering Pleasant Street yards.

However, at a meeting of the Stevens School committee in January, the RSU 2 board’s chairwoman, Dawn Gallagher, told committee members that the district had been negotiating for that land because it was included by the state, but that it didn’t need all the land and is willing to limit negotiations to a small portion of the 14-acre plot, freeing much of that land to potentially come onto Hallowell’s property tax rolls.

After that, the committee voted unanimously to ask the city council to reconsider a January vote in which it expressed support for the district getting the entire piece of land.

But that makes some in the abutting neighborhood nervous.

Last March, Jeremy Sheaffer of Page Street sent a letter signed by 20 neighbors to the state and school district in support of the school district taking ownership.

In an interview, Sheaffer said he “would rather sit across the table with the RSU board, two members of which were elected by Hallowell voters, than a nameless, faceless developer to be named later,” adding that commercial development could force a discussion of extending Page Street, which bends atop a hill into Pleasant Street.

“In political terms, it’s a third-rail issue for the neighborhood,” Sheaffer said. “Page and Pleasant streets are a quiet, peaceful neighborhood, and we don’t want to see it turned into an off-ramp for a subdivision or a shortcut to shopping in Augusta.”

Councilor Phillip Lindley, a committee member who is married to Gallagher, said any plan to extend Page Street would have to be “carefully scrutinized” to gain his support. He also said the sloped and rocky topography of the land could make it difficult to develop and that residents’ concerns may be premature.

“Certainly, I understand their nervousness, but there will be plenty of opportunities for input and scrutiny down the road,” he said.

Chris Vallee, a real estate agent on the committee who prompted the discussion with Gallagher at the meeting, said he’s not sure the land could be developed and isn’t calling for that. However, he said he’d rather see the land attached to parcels marketed to developers so the city can tax it.

“The best interest of the city is to get it on the tax rolls. That’s the whole purpose of this committee,” he said. “If you don’t want that, there’s something funny. I don’t know why anybody wouldn’t want that.”

Michael Shepherd — 370-7652

mshepherd@centralmaine.com

Twitter: @mikeshepherdme

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