The University of Maine System said Thursday that it will stick with its announced plans to sell its Belfast facility to a local evangelical church, rejecting two appeals filed this week by other organizations that had hoped to buy the facility.
The System will now begin negotiating a final sale agreement with Calvary Chapel Belfast, which has offered to purchase the Hutchinson Center in Belfast for $1 million, it said in a press release.
The other groups that had proposed purchasing the facility were Waldo Community Action Partners, which also offered $1 million in its bid, and a partnership between Waterfall Arts and the Committee for the Future of the Hutchinson Center. The latter pair had offered $500,000 for the purchase.
Both of those bidders filed formal challenges this week to the sale of the Hutchinson Center to Calvary Chapel Belfast, after it was announced last week.
While Calvary and Waldo CAP offered the same purchase prices for the campus, the UMaine System said that the church made a higher-scoring proposal, in part because it waived its right to inspect the property before the sale and offered a $250,000 deposit on the purchase. It also offered to lease back a portion of the center to the system at a cost of $1 per year for a community internet access hub that’s there, which was favorable compared to Waldo CAP’s offer of leasing the space back at $2 per square foot annually.
“The sale is consistent with a commitment in the System’s strategic plan to achieve fiscal and energy efficiencies through the sale or lease of unused or underutilized buildings and land,” the system said in a news release.
Since the announcement of the award last week, 135 Belfast-area residents have sent in written comments about the decision, according to the system. However, only appeals submitted by the entities that had made formal proposals to buy the center were taken into consideration for review of the decision.
The system also noted that it can’t discriminate in its procurement policy based on religion.
That policy “is intentionally designed to protect against bias and ensure the integrity of public entities in their stewardship of public resources and trust,” the system said. “Every organization and individual had the same opportunity to submit a proposal in response to the Hutchinson Center RFP, and all proposals received were scored by the same objective standards, which have been publicly available for eight months.”
Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated the nature of the 135 public comments UMaine received about the sale of the Hutchinson Center to Calvary Chapel Belfast. The system did not say if the comments were for or against the sale.
