ORONO – A new competitive request for proposals (RFP) to buy the University of Maine (UMaine) Hutchinson Center in Belfast has been issued. 

Respondents will be required to lease the space currently housing Networkmaine infrastructure back to the University of Maine System (UMS) for at least five years so it can maintain internet connectivity for public schools, libraries and other institutions in the Midcoast. 

UMaine issued a news release Oct. 4 announcing the new RFP.

The objective evaluation criteria and scoring formula is detailed in the RFP and based on the proposed purchase price in relation to the property’s appraised value of $2.52 million (85 of 100 total points available), various contingencies typical with real estate transactions (10 points) and the cost of the Networkmaine-related lease (5 points).

The new RFP and related documents including the appraisal of the property, which includes a 30,515-square-foot main building, 1,963-square-foot barn and 11.6 acres, is available here and will be open through 5 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 1.

All interested parties – including the three Waldo County organizations that responded to a prior RFP – have the same equal opportunity to submit offers responsive to the new solicitation by that deadline. 

As part of a continued commitment to transparency, UMS/UMaine will hold a bidders’ conference this month and also provide interested parties the opportunity to submit written questions, which will be answered two weeks before proposals are due with the responses publicly available online, the release said.

UMaine hopes to announce the top-scoring respondent in November, at which point it would begin negotiations to finalize the sale. 

As is standard with System solicitations, at any point during the process, the university has the right to terminate the RFP or negotiations if they are proceeding in a manner that is not in the best interest of the public institution.  

This latest circulation for proposals follows a series of appeals after UMaine awarded its preference for entering real estate negotiations with Calvary Chapel Belfast in August.

In September, the university rescinded its August decision after determining during a formal appeal process that there had been a deficiency in the original RFP’s evaluation criteria. 

The decision to sell the Hutchinson Center followed two decades of UMaine delivering education there and then two years of stakeholder engagement when a decline in student enrollment and escalating operating costs made it clear it would no longer be viable for the public university to sustain the facility. No degree-seeking students have taken classes in-person at the center since 2020.

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. Property transfers generate savings necessary to maintain affordable UMS education and allow the System’s limited financial resources — which come through taxpayer and tuition dollars — to be focused on improving infrastructure essential to the current and future needs of Maine and its students. 

The Bank of America donated the Hutchinson Center to UMaine in 2007 as a gift with no conditions. Since then, the university has invested more than $14 million in capital improvements. That includes funding three-quarters of a large expansion project completed in 2009, for which UMaine still owes $885,000.