Wiscasset is currently negotiating the sale of the former Wiscasset Primary School, Town Manager Marian Anderson said at the Wiscasset Board of Selectmen’s Tuesday, Oct. 4 meeting. Negotiations are ongoing, but the entity the town is coming close to entering into a purchase-and-sale agreement with is taxable, Anderson said, which would return the Gardiner Road (Route 27) property to the tax rolls.
If negotiations are successful, the town expects to finalize the sale in December, Anderson said.
The negotiations come after the primary school has spent about 15 months on the market, and been reduced five times, said realtor Sherri Dunbar, of Tim Dunham Realty. The Wiscasset Board of Selectmen voted to drop the listing price for the 55,000-square-foot, two-story building on 5 acres of property to $525,000 in August.
The primary school was originally listed at $895,000, Dunbar said. It was then reduced to $795,000, then $649,000, then $599,000, before its current listing price, Dunbar said.
“It’s important to note how hard selectmen have worked to get top dollar for this building,” Anderson said.
As Wiscasset moves forward with negotiating the sale of the primary school, the town is also gearing up to sell the town-owned Mason Station properties. The Wiscasset Board of Selectmen voted unanimously to abandon Mason Station LLC’s Point East Maritime Village subdivision plan Oct. 4.
By abandoning the 2005 subdivision plan, which split the property on the Birch Point peninsula into 85 individual lots, the town will be able to sell the property as a single parcel, Wiscasset Board of Selectmen Chair Judy Colby said.
The abandonment of the subdivision will go through the planning board for approval before it is registered in the Lincoln County Registry of Deeds, Colby said. Selling the town-owned Mason Station lots as one parcel will be significantly easier than selling the individual lots, she said.
Six Mason Station LLC lots remain on the tax rolls. Wiscasset has purposefully avoided foreclosing on the six properties due to concerns about assuming responsibility for the environmental cleanup. However, selectmen recently voted to begin foreclosure proceedings on the properties, which include the Mason Station plant.
Selectmen instructed town officials to review town records to determine how to proceed.
