By Dawn De Busk

Staff Writer

NAPLES— Constructing a new community center and town hall is preferable to renovating the existing structure. An engineer’s report has revealed there are too many issues with the building which houses the Naples Town Hall, the town gymnasium and is rented to the U.S. Post Office. 

That is according to Bob Caron II, who reported the consensus of the Naples Community Center Exploratory Committee, when he spoke during the Naples Board of Selectmen meeting that was held via Zoom on Monday.

The next step is hiring a firm to do the conceptual design of a building that has enough square feet to support a growing population.

The actual ground-breaking is probably a few years away. Therefore, by that time, the town would most likely have retired the debt from a couple bonds — allowing the municipal budget to remain the same if townspeople approved floating a bond for a future community center.

According to Caron, the committee met in November. The committee received an engineer’s report that more or less sealed the fate of the existing building.  

“Not a lot of pros regarding our current structure. The biggest issues were the structural issues for the building, lack of fire protection for the building, the electrical issues in the building. . . It would be nice to have a gymnasium that is actually functional even when there’s 10 inches of snow on the roof. These were all the things we talked about as a committee,” Caron said. “This finalized that we need to look at the next step: A conceptual design.”

The required space is at least 19,000 square feet, Caron said. The public building must be ADA-complaint and also capable of expansion. Also, the building should meet the requirements to be an American Red Cross emergency shelter. 

While not being able to salvage the old building might be disappointing to some people, it is certainly uplifting to all taxpayers that money is already allocated for the conceptual design.

There is $7,000 left in the Community Center Exploratory fund, Caron said. Plus, a $10,000 grant was awarded to pay for a conceptual design, he said. The grant must be used by June 2021, he said.

Apparently, a Referral for Proposals (RFP) has already been written up in order to get a firm to do the conceptual design.

“This way we can get numbers, a strong figure back to the select board. [We need] the community center cost for the Town of Naples if the town decided to go down this path,” Caron said. 

The selectmen spent a few minutes discussing how a new community center makes sense based on the growing population and citizens’ desires for quality of life, and also talking about which bonds will be retired in the near future. Naples Town Manager John Hawley was sitting in his office during the Zoom meeting and able to quickly access the payment schedules. 

Chairman Jim Grattelo agreed with the committee’s take on constructing something for the blossoming population. 

“This community definitely needs a community center. Why would we spend any more money on this building? Get an artist’s rendering of the space, and make sure we get all the space we need because the community is growing,” Grattelo said. “Let’s not get a building that is going to be outgrown before it is built.” 

Caron echoed his sentiment. 

“We don’t want to build a building that short-sights the town for the growth that we are having,” he said. 

Caron estimated the cost would be between $2 million and $3 million. 

Most likely, if approved by the voter, the town go through the Maine Municipal Bond Bank for the loan, Hawley said.  

Hawley did a quick summary of debts. The town just made the last payment on the ladder truck, which was $18,000 a year. There is one more payment of $89,000 on the fire suppression system, which was part of the Causeway renovations. The recent project of the intersection improvement at Route 302 and Route 35 won’t retire until 2034. The payments for the purchase of Kent’s Landing are $50,000 and will retire in November 2029.

Selectman Ted Shane favored saving now to pay of the future bond. 

“If we look at the community building and we have some of the money upfront, it would help for the next 5 years until we retire a debt,” Shane said.

He commented that the proposed project is a couple years out, and Caron agreed. 

“My thought process is that once we have fine tunedan architect. I don’t think we will be able to bring anything to the voters until the fall 2022. One of the things that the committee has to stress: Our goals are not to create a ton of debt and to meet the needs to the community,” Caron said.