Town Buys Home to Aid Library

By Nick Sambides Jr., Bangor Daily News, Maine

Apr. 3–LINCOLN — Using a private endowment fund, the town has bought the Corro property for about $85,000 to add the house and land to the adjoining Lincoln Memorial Library, Town Manager Glenn Aho said Sunday.

The Corro house is a 1.5-story Cape that sits on a half-acre lot on West Broadway, said Ruth Birtz, the town’s economic development assistant and a zoning enforcement officer. It is about 1,500 square feet and is in good shape.

The deal was closed late last week, Aho said. The town plans to rent the house and deposit the rental fees back into the library’s private endowment, the MacGregor Fund, to eventually cover the cost of the purchase and future library expansions.

The town plans to hire a property management firm to oversee the rental. Proposals are being requested, though no recommendation will be ready in time for the Town Council’s next meeting, Aho said.

The house is insured, and the utilities have been transferred. The police have been notified and will keep an eye on the property, Aho said.

Mr. and Mrs. Roderick J. MacGregor of Lincoln established the fund in the 1940s to help maintain and expand library operations, library officials have said. The fund paid for the library’s last expansion in 1966.

Using the fund to buy the land, and depositing rent proceeds back into the fund, helps ensure that no taxpayer dollars need be spent on the library expansion, Aho said. It also helps make an eventual library expansion much more likely.

A library expansion could cost as much as $800,000, and the fund has about $220,000, so no expansions are likely anytime soon, library officials have said. The library will use part of the house for storage.

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