Former Kittery recreation center to be demolished as Emery Field park area is expanded

KITTERY, Maine — The former town recreation center building will be demolished to create more open space for Emery Field users.

The town is seeking to hire a contractor to raze and dispose of the vacated 45 Woodlawn Ave. building. A request for proposals for the project was posted Feb. 7 and is set to expire this week.

Kittery moved all of its relevant recreation programming from the building to the Kittery Community Center, the former Frank C. Frisbee Elementary School, on Rogers Road in 2012, and the Woodlawn Avenue structure has been minimally used ever since.

Once the building is demolished and removed, the parcel will be kept open for the Emery Field park area, according to Town Manager Kendra Amaral. No new building is being erected in its place.

“There is no future use for that building, so it’s being demolished because it’s not safe to have a building that is unoccupied but still in existence,” Town Manager Kendra Amaral said.

“The building has had a Phase 1 and Phase 2 Brownfields assessment and does contain typical hazardous materials associated with buildings of this age and type,” the bid states. “Demolition will need to be conducted in accordance with federal and state regulations regarding containment and care of hazardous materials, transport of hazardous materials, and disposal of hazardous materials. The area where the building occupied must be filled and compacted in accordance with the Town’s requirements.”

Kittery Community Center director Jeremy Paul began working for the town recreation department full-time in 1999. At the time, the Woodlawn Avenue recreation center had a small gymnasium, a few offices and a kitchen for its small staff and community partners, including Meals on Wheels and a local dog obedience club.

Fowl play? Kittery proposes rules on keeping of chickens, roosters, ducks, geese

But as the recreation department’s offerings expanded, so did the need for an updated and larger building.

“As programs picked up and we grew… we did as much as we could in the building but we used the schools for after school programs, we used off site buildings as much as we could and it just became time to look for a new building,” Paul said.

“It became a home for raccoons and squirrels,” he joked.

Prior to being used as the town recreation center, the building housed a Veterans of Foreign Wars chapter, Paul said. Town records note the building’s former owner was the Wallingford-Harris Post #89.

Constructed in 1955, the old recreation center was last assessed by the town at $630,600, as noted in Kittery’s property records.

The request for proposals to demolish the building will formally end on Thursday at 3:30 p.m.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Former Kittery Maine recreation center building to be demolished