SunapeeNews.com

“Just want to thank the Sunapee Board of Selectmen for taking the time at their last meeting to listen to the idea of the Town of Sunapee acquiring a 5 acre piece of property,” said Rem Mastin, Sunapee. This occurred after Mastin, in a letter published in the InterTown Record, suggested the town look at the Sunapee Center on Sargent Road for a new complex to eventually centralize town services in one location. He listed different civic projects in the planning stages that might be suitable for the site. (See SunapeeNews.com article: It’s a Unique Opportunity Says Mastin.)

Although not on the agenda, the selectmen took up Mastin’s idea July 27 and agreed to invite the Sunapee school board and library trustees to the August 10 meeting to discuss the possibilities.

Steve White, chairman of the board of selectmen, would like it to be a board-to board discussion, closed to public comment, at least to start, and “let the 3 entities have a ‘go’ at things,” he told Sunapee News last weekend.

In the meantime, Town Manager Donna Nashawaty and Selectman Fred Gallup will meet with Claremont Saving Bank, the property owner, to find out some of the purchase options, according to the selectmen meeting minutes.

“The concept is exceptional,” White told Sunapee News. “The only fly in the ointment is that this is a bad year to raise taxes and we are also pushing the sewer line project up to Perkins Pond. May be too much of a bit to take… But where could we find a better and more central location for the Town?”

“It would make a line of Town products,” running from the Sherburne Gym up to the Town Garage, “especially if we eventually moved the town offices into that very location [the Sunapee Center] and sold off the current Town Hall, the Abbott Library building and the Blodgett property on Lower Main Street.”

Although Mastin has gotten limited feedback, it’s been largely positive, he said last week. He hopes to hear from more people (email: remmastin@gmail.com) and have residents communicate with the selectmen and others in town about his ideas that touched on current and future needs related to town office space, the school, library and recreation.

In January, the library board of trustees received a fundraising feasibility report that showed strong support for building a new library at Sunapee Harbor, on a property adjacent to the old town hall. In March 2009, the trustees voted to continue a to hold the harbor property via a lease agreement with the Sunapee Harbor Riverway Corporation, however, agreed that if new opportunities arose, to explore them.

In 2007, when the library trustees identified locations for a new library, the Sunapee Center was under construction, said Barbara Chalmers, a member of the library building committee.

“We didn’t consider the [Sunapee Center] property as it was a business and residential development. After the foreclosure, on the face of it, this site for the library didn’t make much sense, because of the cost to purchase the property and cost to rebuild the existing building to suit a library,” she explained.

The NH Department of Education has minimum useable land size requirements for new school construction, a first consideration for a new elementary school on this site, said Chalmers, an architect experienced in many NH public school projects. One of Mastin’s suggestions was to consider the site for a new central-elementary school.

According to the NH DOE website, to receive school building aid for new construction for an elementary school, the minimum lot size is “5 acres of contiguous buildable land, plus one additional acre for each 100 students or fraction thereof for the design capacity of the school building.”

Superintendent Brendan Minnihan of the Sunapee school district, SAU 85, said yesterday, “given the current enrollment for the SCES, the minimum lot size would need to be 7 – 8 acres.” The town tax map shows the Sunapee Center with 5.3 acres, and that includes wetlands, more or less than .5 acre.

The school district, Minnihan said, “has two main long-range plans. One is choosing and developing a space to house the School Administration Unit #85 staff and the second is to address the long-range elementary school needs either through renovation of the existing structure or new construction.”

As for SAU interest in the Sunapee Center, the school board has not discussed this property as a group, Minnihan said. Members of the school board are expected to attend the selectmen’s upcoming meeting on Monday.

Selectmen meetings are open to the public. Visit the town website for a meeting agenda; for a Monday meeting, it is usually posted on Friday.

Contact info for the Sunapee selectmen is available on the town website.