Belfast group frustrated that UMaine is selling local campus to church

The group of Belfast-area residents that hoped to purchase the local campus of the University of Maine System and maintain it as a community center expressed frustration on Thursday that an evangelical church was instead selected to buy the facility.

Calvary Chapel Belfast was one of the groups that made bids to purchase the Hutchinson Center, and the UMaine System confirmed late Wednesday it was selected as the buyer.

Two other groups that made bids for the facility were the Committee for the Future of the Hutchinson Center and Waldo County Community Action Partners.

The details of each of the bidders’ proposals will not be made publicly available until a five-day appeal period ends next week, according to Samantha Warren, director of external affairs for the UMaine System. Each proposal was scored based on several factors, including the purchase price offered and how well each bidder would work with the system to keep maintaining an internet access hub that’s long been located there.

Now, the members of the Committee for the Future of the Hutchinson Center are concerned that the facility will lose its role as a public asset.

“It slams the door on all the good and the potential good that the University of Maine Hutchinson Center has done,” said Mike Hurley, a former Belfast mayor and city councilor who is involved with the group. “I’m fine with churches. I just disagree with the ownership model for the Hutchinson Center. That’s my disagreement. I would feel the same if they were giving it to an insurance company.”

The Hutchinson Center was built by the credit card company MBNA in 2000 and, after it was acquired by Bank of America, gifted the center to the UMaine System seven years later. A $885,000 expansion was made in 2009. Hurley noted that area residents have helped raise funds for the center.

Hurley didn’t immediately know if the Committee for the Future of the Hutchinson Center would file an appeal to the UMaine System’s decision.

The pastor of Calvary Chapel Belfast, Greg Huston, declined to answer specific questions on Thursday and instead sent a packet describing the church’s general plans for the Hutchinson Center, which include expanding the educational programs it now offers using a home-school model.

“We’re going to use that facility that was intended for education to continue to educate people, but particularly in the things of the Lord,” Huston said in a video posted to Facebook on Wednesday night.

This isn’t the church’s first experience with the Hutchinson Center. The church previously rented space there for its services, until the center was closed to those types of events during the pandemic. For more than a year, Huston has rented space from Faith Temple Church, which is also in Belfast, according to the pastor there, Art Fairbrother.

“They’ve never had a permanent home [in Belfast], to my knowledge. They’ve been kind of nomads since 2020, bouncing around to different places,” Fairbrother said.

Calvary Chapel Belfast also says that it offers recovery services for people with various types of addictions.