The ultimate fate of Westport’s old high school building remains unknown, three months after voters approved $200,000 for a consultant to help the town determine what should be done with the massive property.

Westport re-formed its Long Term Building Committee earlier this month, naming Mark Schmid as chairman, select board member Manny Soares as vice chairman and Christopher Thrasher as clerk. The committee, with various members, has been meeting for more than three years to try to decide what should be done with the building, which covers 155,000 square feet and currently houses Westport Community Schools’ administrative offices. And though several studies, property assessments and other reports have been drafted that cover the pros and cons of selling, re-purposing or rehabbing the building for public or municipal office use, there remains little consensus from board members on what should ultimately happen to the building. They just don’t have enough information right now to make that call, several said.

“We’ve been doing this for years and years,” committee member William Gifford said of discussions on what should become of the building. “It goes over and over and over.”

The most recent action on the building came at the May Town Meeting, when voters approved a $200,000 measure to conduct a feasibility study and hire a project manager to evaluate the use of the school for municipal office use.

But committee members suggested going right after a consultant or manager to create yet another report might not be the most effective next step. Several suggested — and town manager James Hartnett agreed — that officials should reach out first to Westport’s building official and his peers in Fall River, so they could review the building’s zoning and determine whether or not re-using it would be a simple matter of ‘moving in’ or would entail more costly measures tied to necessary code improvements. Members agreed, and Soares and Hartnett are expected to speak to them in the next few weeks.

“We’ve spent a lot of money,” Soares said. “It’s been three years and we’re spinning in a circle. We do need a project manager, but we need to determine what we want to do with (the building) before we hire a project manager. I would like that (May appropriation) to be the final $200,000 spent before we do something with this building, instead of going another three years.”

Possible uses

There are no shortage of studies into what could become of the building, and leading the list currently is a possible plan to move all of Westport’s administrative offices, including those at town hall and the annex, the council on aging, and others, to the mostly vacant space.

Hartnett, who favors selling the building, noted that many townspeople have said loud and clear that they hope to hold on to it. And given the current condition of the town’s municipal offices, at least one report concludes that a move to the old school could be more cost effective long-term than rehabilitating the town’s aging office buildings.

In a report released last year, Uline Architects studied four scenarios — selling the school, converting it for municipal use, turning it into affordable housing and keeping the property while demolishing the school — which had earlier been suggested by constituents and the heads of various town departments.

The study found that on the open market, the school and its acres could bring as much as $11 million, while converting it to municipal use could cost more than $29 million. Converting to affordable housing would run $14.2 million, and keeping the property and demolishing the school would cost $2.3 million. But savings in one area could lead to expenses in others — for instance, demolishing the school would eventually cost the town nearly $16 million in repair and upgrade costs at offices in the town hall, the annex, and other buildings that might have otherwise moved into the old school.

Hartnett cautioned at the meeting that Uline’s report used square footage construction costs that could be 50 percent higher now than they were when the report was written:

“Overall,” he said, “these numbers are going to change substantially.”

Toward the end of the meeting, school superintendent Thomas Aubin said that contrary to some in town, there is no evidence that the district is shrinking or lossing studens. On the contrary, he said, he expects more than 60 new high schoolers this fall. And given what he sees possible in the coming years, he sees a real need for additional classroom space, playing fields and other infrastructure.

“It’s not a surprise that we’re struggling in terms of making decisions” given all the unanswered questions about various costs, Aubin said. But if the town disposes of the building, the school district will have to find new administrative office space in a town where that’s prohibitively expensive.

“We probably will have to build out somewhere (whereas) we have a building we’re using right now, and I think we’re using it successfully.”

Schmid said that if the district has a real need for the building and grounds and can put a solid plan together, “that’s going to change everything in terms of how we proceed from this point.”

Aubin said that he will have more to say on the district’s future needs, and in the meantime, Schmid asked Hartnett and Soares to meet with building inspectors so their findings could be discussed at the next meeting.

The meeting has been tentatively scheduled for Wednesday, Aug. 23, at 6 p.m. in Westport Town Hall.