Tue, 11/13/2018 - 14:57

Lynda Clancy

CAMDEN — At the Nov. 6 polls, Camden and Rockport citizens voted 2,896 to 2,357 to spend $4.9 million on renovating and repurposing the Mary E. Taylor School on Knowlton Street in Camden, culminating more than a year’s debate over the future of the 1925-built brick school building. Tomorrow evening, Nov. 14, the School Administrative District 28 board will officially record the vote when it convenes for a regularly scheduled meeting (see attached PDF for full agenda and packet), and approve a Camden-Rockport Middle School construction project alternate to exclude MET from the current demolition schedule.

SAD 28 expects to more fully discuss the MET plans at its December board meeting, after SAD 28 Superintendent Maria Libby meets with architects and others who are overseeing the new middle school construction project.

While the details of the MET overhaul have yet to be fully vetted, basic plans have been created, the result of MET Repurposing Committee work conducted last spring and summer.

In 2017, voters approved demolishing the existing middle school complex — a hodgepodge of various buildings and additions from different eras — and constructing a new 84,000-square-foot middle school. The project timeline has set a September 2020 date for new school occupancy. With the MET building now destined for renovations, as opposed to getting torn down, there is a requisite construction planning phase.

“There is a need to construct a timeline of the decisions and actions that will need to be executed to renovate the building in coordination with the end of the construction of the new school campus,” said SAD 28 Chairman Matt Dailey, on Nov. 8. “This timeline will likely be put together by starting with the mid-Summer 2020 vacancy of the MET building by the school and working backward through the milestones necessary to prepare for the work.”

He referenced a presentation by the new school architect, Tyler Barter, who is with the Biddeford-based Oak Point Architects, the company that assisted SAD 28 through its decision-making process of whether to renovate the entire middle school complex or tear it down and build anew.

That presentation (see attached PDF) lays out floor plans for a renovated MET, which is to be home to district offices and the Zenith program, which is the alternative high school program for Camden Hills Regional High School and the Five Town CSD.

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