News

Council mulling old Post Office use
By Elizabeth Prata

Gray---In June 2002, the then Council and Town Manager Mitchell A. Berkowitz asked voters at Town Meeting to approve buying the Old Post office next to Town Office on Shaker Road. The federal facility had been abandoned the winter before and it lay empty, making an enticing jewel for any developer seeking such a visible parcel in the middle of the crossroads of Maine. The Manager and Council thought that the lot and building were too good to let go, being just feet away from current town office operations, and placed a warrant item on the ballot asking voters to approve its approximately $170,000 purchase. Above, old Post Office. Monument file photo

The reasons why the purchase was a good idea were threefold, Manager and Council said. First, it preserved an option of a valuable piece of property for the Town of Gray, it satisfied a space-needs crunch the Manager said was inhibiting appropriate delivery of town services, and it enabled the Town to become compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act and allow disabled citizens direct access to three Town Departments tow which they are currently denied. The Town Departments of Assessing, Planning, and Code Enforcement are downstairs at the current location and inaccessible to disabled citizens. The Food Pantry is down there too.

The townspeople listened, voted yes, and then nothing was done for three and a half years except wrangling over an even more enticing property that the Council thought would make an even better town office location, Pennell Institute. The only problem was that the Town did not own Pennell, but discussions about town office center complex location went on for several years before petering out. For the last year, the old post office has been used as cold storage for the school department.

The current Council took up the discussion at their Monday night meeting. With budget development getting into high gear, and capital project requests and plans being finalized, the Town Council talked Monday night about what to do with the old post office. Above, Town Office with wooden ramp for handicapped access to main floor. Monument, file photo. If facing the Town Office main door in front, the old PO is to the left.

Councilor Denise Duda said that "As much as I would like to sell off anything we are not using, I remember being told as a citizen that we need space, and that we're not ADA compliant. Also, we shouldn't have to have runners bringing up materials to people from the Departments down there when other people can be looking at the information themselves. I think it's an invasion of privacy. We have an opportunity to make the Post Office functional and to make it work."

Chair Gary Foster agreed, though he reminded Council that the Post Office property was a non-conforming lot that became annexed to the Town Office property upon its purchase by the Town, and now cannot be sold as a separate parcel. This information was not made clear upon initial purchase, "so it looks now like we're stuck with it," he said.

Manager Mitchell A. Berkowitz gave a thumbnail assessment of the building's functionality. "The roof does not leak, the leach field operates. The furnace is operational. It's mothballed now. It's a gross amount of space. If Council wants us to expand there we'll do so immediately. I am address neutral."

He said that the three upstairs Departments, Manager, Comptroller, and Reception, could go over to the newly remodeled facility and the three basement departments could come up to the current first floor. Councilor Skip Crane asked the Manager to give a rough idea of where the heaviest use was by citizens who might be disabled to otherwise have difficulty accessing the first floor of the current location, slightly harder to get into than the ground level old post office.

Vice-Chair Andy Upham asked the Manager to provide him with the space-needs numbers generated when the issue first arose three and a half years ago, and Chair Gary Foster agreed. It was decided that the Manager will provide the requested details, and then the Council will fold the information into their capital planning for the upcoming fiscal year.