Hancock County officials are looking to buy property just outside of Ellsworth that they want to redevelop as office and storage space.
The county would use roughly $3.5 million in federal funds to buy and redevelop the parcel at 17 Wyman Road in the town of Hancock, which already has a log cabin-style office building on it as well as metal storage buildings. The property, formerly owned by Robbins Lumber, is between Wyman’s blueberry plant and the Downeast Scenic Railroad yard off Washington Junction Road.
The county’s Emergency Management Agency, which now operates out of the basement of the Hancock County Courthouse on State Street in Ellsworth, would move to the site. It also would house a new emergency operations center that public safety officials could use to coordinate responses to disasters or other large-scale emergencies.
The county courthouse on State Street in Ellsworth, where all county departments except for the airport are located, was originally built in the 1930s and is cramped, with little room for expansion. The state considers the courthouse to be so outdated that it plans to move out and build a new, modern judicial center somewhere else in Ellsworth.
Andrew Sankey, the county’s EMA director, said the funding for the emergency response facility would come from a federal $1.5 million grant and a $500,000 match from the county’s community benefits account, which is funded by windpower developers who have turbine projects in the county.
Separate from the emergency operations facility, the county plans to redevelop part of the property for other purposes, including its Unorganized Territory offices, backup servers for its emergency regional communication center, and a centralized storage site for large pieces of equipment such a tractor, trailers, or vehicles impounded by the sheriff’s department.
“I’m very excited because it’s giving us space we’ve never had before,” Commissioner Bill Clark said.
The county plans to put its remaining $1.5 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds toward the purchase of the property and making upgrades to it. The county’s share of the project, which does not include building the emergency operations center, would “at most” be $1.85 million, Clark said.
The commissioner said the county is under a tight deadline to finalize details of the land purchase and the improvements because, under ARPA rules, the funds the county received as part of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic have to be committed by the end of this calendar year or be returned to the federal government.
County officials met Tuesday with officials from Bucksport architecture firm Lewis and Malm and Ellsworth contracting firm E.L. Shea to discuss the timeline and how quickly they can formalize plans and commit the funds to the project.
Hancock County received $10.6 million overall in ARPA funds that it has used to fund broadband expansion projects, to provide COVID-related hazard pay to first responders, and to offer grants for local community organizations, county officials said.
Clark said the plans to expand to the Wyman Road site, just across the Ellsworth line, only gained traction this spring, when county officials learned it was available as a possible site for the new emergency operations center. Since then, officials have decided the site could house other county offices, which would allow for more flexibility in renovating and reallocating space in the courthouse when the state courts move out.
