A second group has formally challenged the recent decision by the University of Maine System to sell its Belfast campus to a church.
Waldo Community Action Partners, an organization that provides various services to low-income people, announced Tuesday evening that it was appealing the sale of the Hutchinson Center — as the campus is known — to Calvary Chapel Belfast.
A day earlier, a pair of Belfast groups that had partnered on a proposal to buy the center, the Committee for the Future of the Hutchinson Center and Waterfall Arts, filed their own appeal. In it, they said that they had offered to pay $500,000 for the Center, but that their proposal would provide a greater value than the other two bidders, who had each offered $1 million.
The UMaine System and the other two groups have not confirmed those figures. But in a short statement on Tuesday, Waldo CAP argued that its proposal for the facility should have received a higher score under the System’s rankings, in part because of the price it offered to pay.
“Our assessment of the scoring system used to compare applicants supports that we provided the best financial offer, that our intentions for the facility align more directly with the University’s own mission and values, and that we would utilize the center in a way that would serve the diverse greater Belfast community inclusively and in the spirit in which the Hutchinson Center has existed to present,” Waldo CAP said.
No other groups had made proposals to buy the Hutchinson Center.
