Penobscot County spent nearly $2 million to purchase and tear down a downtown Bangor building — and the lot remains empty more than five months after the demolition.
The county purchased the property in 2017 at the corner of Hammond and Court streets — the site that once housed the Bangor YMCA — with plans to turn it into the new Penobscot County Jail. It bought the building for $825,000 the day after it was condemned by the city of Bangor.
But when that plan fell apart, the county found itself stuck with a dilapidated, asbestos-filled building.
Ultimately, county commissioners approved spending just more than $1 million from the American Rescue Plan Act in 2023 to remove asbestos from the building and then demolish it. That makes it one of the most expensive uses of the county’s ARPA-funded projects. The federal funds saved taxpayers from picking up the burden of demolishing the crumbling building, but residents have yet to see more of a benefit as the lot sits empty.
The property purchase began as a way for the county to address the current jail, which is falling apart, Sheriff Troy Morton said previously. The jail was originally built in 1869, and the last substantial renovations were in 1988.
But after plans for the building in 2020 revealed it would be eight stories tall, people protested and the county scrapped the idea. The county considered renovating the old YMCA to hold offices currently in the jail before deciding the cost of renovations was not worth it.
The county wasn’t sure what the final price of the demolition would be, but it wasn’t a cost they wanted to pass on to taxpayers, now-former Penobscot County Commissioner Peter Baldacci said. Using ARPA funds allowed wiggle room on demolition costs in a county budget that was already increasing because of higher wages.
“Otherwise it would be directly on the county residents and taxpayers,” Baldacci said. “It felt like that was the best thing we could do to our county taxpayers, not to just have an unexpected burden on them, and we certainly felt we had sufficient ARPA funds to do a lot of projects throughout the county.”
Roughly $775,000 was spent on the demolition and $230,000 was spent on asbestos abatement, which started in fall 2023. Unexpected asbestos was found in the building, leading to a higher than expected cost, County Administrator Scott Adkins said.
Congress distributed $350 billion in federal funds to local governments nationwide during the pandemic. There was a wide scope of how the money could be used to help governments and economies recover during the global pandemic, said Emily Brock, director of federal policy for the Government Finance Officers Association.
There were very few things ARPA couldn’t be spent on, one of which is paying off debt, Brock said. Bricks started falling off the building in spring 2023 and a hazardous building is an acceptable use of ARPA, she said.
The county’s remaining $29 million in ARPA funds were spent in a variety of ways, including $691,000 in hazard pay for essential employees during the pandemic, $8.4 million to local agencies in need of extra support and $3 million for a new YMCA facility.
Demolition of the building finished in August. There are no plans for the property yet, Penobscot County Commissioner Andre Cushing said. Various companies have expressed interest but no decision has been made on proposals, he said.
“The only decision I can share is it [is] no longer in consideration for use for corrections,” Cushing said.
The county is also no closer to identifying what it wants to do about the jail. There is a conceptual design for the new jail, but details and final plans are dependent on the site.
The YMCA consolidated into one building in 2008 at its current location on Second Street. Multiple businesses then occupied the space, including a church, martial arts studio and a future dental school.
The building decayed further after the dentist who planned to redevelop the space died unexpectedly. The county bought it from the man’s estate.
Developers weren’t interested in buying the property with the derelict building still standing, Baldacci said.
But now that the downtown lot is empty, with water, sewer and natural gas, he hopes a developer will want to bring something new to the site.
