HALLOWELL — Developer and builder Matt Morrill told the City Council about his plans for the 54-acre Stevens School campus he purchased last month during a special meeting at City Hall on Monday.

Morrill, of Grand View Log and Timber Frames in Winthrop, said he envisions the property as a mixed-use development including affordable housing, senior housing, market-rate condos, commercial and retail space and a small residential subdivision. He also hopes for permanent access to the Howard Hill preservation area, and he has spoken with the Kennebec Land Trust and the Hallowell Conservation Commission on the subject.

Morrill paid just $215,000 for the property, which had been marketed by the state for more than a decade. He said he has already been approached by people in the affordable housing industry, and Morrill had somebody ask him if he was interested in selling some of the nine buildings he owns on the property while he was doing some lawn maintenance Monday.

“The idea I came up with was to make this property more manageable and attractive to other developers,” Morrill said.

Mayor Mark Walker said the council would have to change some ordinances in connection with any redevelopment, and he expects some complex issues to be brought before the city’s Planning Board. Several of the board’s members attended the council meeting.

Some of the ordinance changes will have to happen quickly, Walker said, in order for Morrill to market existing buildings to potential tenants. The Stevens School campus is in its own zoning district.

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Morrill, who was joined at the meeting by his wife and two children, said he hopes to begin leasing space in some of the buildings by the end of the year. The Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry occupies the administrative building and its associated garage until Jan. 15, 2017, a deal that will pay Morrill $1,872.92 per month for the building and another $257.42 per month for the garage.

Morrill had been interested in the Stevens School campus for some time. The campus, which was built in the late 1870s as a boarding school for girls, has several buildings in varying states of deterioration. It will be costly to repurpose the campus, and Morrill admits he cannot undertake this project on his own.

Morrill is no stranger to Hallowell, having built the Hallowell Overlook development up the street from the Stevens School campus in 2013. He said it took about a year to get that project completed; there are four homes in the neighborhood now and a fifth home is expected to be built sometime soon.

Before the sale was announced last month, Walker said the city needs more mixed-use space including affordable housing, and he hopes Morrill includes a good amount of open space that take advantage of the vistas and conservation areas.

“We really appreciate the charm and characteristics of the campus and want to keep as much of it as possible,” Morrill said. “But there are at least two buildings that would have to come down because they are too far gone.”

The original purpose of the meeting, before Morrill purchased Stevens School, was to hear from Councilor George LaPointe, chair of the finance committee, about the city budget. The current draft of the budget shows a 2.37 percent increase over last year to $5,563,368, including an increase of $197,566 for Regional School Unit 2 and a $10,000 increase in legal expenses in anticipation of a new contract for legal services.

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LaPointe said the mil rate would go from 17.6 to 19.21, an increase of 9.16 percent, but LaPointe cautioned this was a preliminary number. He hopes to have the first reading of the budget during the June 13 council meeting.

In other news, Code Enforcement Officer Maureen AuCoin informed the city that she will be leaving the position she has held for nearly six years. AuCoin has also been the interim city manager since the unexpected death of Stefan Pakulski in March and applied for the permanent position but wasn’t the finalist recommended by the five-person search committee.

The unnamed finalist, who sat and took notes during the meeting, had a second interview during Monday’s meeting, this time with the full council in an executive session.

The meeting began with Planning Board chair Danielle Obery letting the council know that she would be sending a letter on behalf of the board asking the city to help with training and requesting a historical advisor be available to the Planning Board.

After Obery and vice chair Judy Feinstein spoke, Cameron Brown had his application for a transient seller’s license tabled until the June meeting, and as he exited, he said he might attend.

Brown was applying to sell books at Granite City Park out of his customized 1967 Cadillac Fleetwood hearse, which he said has been transformed into a “book mobile.”

Jason Pafundi — 621-5663

jpafundi@centralmaine.com

Twitter: @jasonpafundiKJ


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