WHATELY — The town’s loan on its 4 Sandy Lane municipal office building has been paid off — alleviating pressure on town officials to entice South County EMS into unused space.
At Special Town Meeting earlier this month, voters decided to pay the remaining $804,925.53 balance on an $810,000 USDA Rural Housing Service Loan, used to purchase the building in 2015.
Since then, a stipulation in the federal loan has prohibited the town from renting extra space in the building to a private organization. Town officials purchased the building expecting South County EMS, a public organization, to move in.
According to Town Administrator Brian Domina, the town paid the loan using money from the sale of a permanent easement earlier this year.
In June, Whately sold permanent access rights to a small parcel of land surrounding a cell tower on Christian Lane to American Tower Corp. for roughly $1.2 million. Before that, the Wendell telecom company leased access.
Besides the ambulance service, there haven’t been many other public entities that have shown interest in leasing space. However, now that the town owns the building, Domina said, “it opens up another avenue for potential tenants.”
South County EMS is a regional ambulance service covering and funded by Whately, Sunderland and Deerfield.
“Initially, we bought the building because we were led to believe it’d be the new home for (South County EMS),” Selectboard Chairman Paul Newlin said Tuesday. “That was one of the big motivators. SCEMS was the perfect fit as far as we’re concerned, and as far as SCEMS was concerned.”
Since South County EMS was founded a few years ago, 4 Sandy Lane has topped the list of potential permanent locations — selected as the best choice by the service’s seven-member oversight board twice.
According to Recorder archives, the board’s first unanimous decision to enter negotiations came Nov. 12, 2015.
The second, following a request for location proposals, was June 23. After both decisions, negotiations didn’t move forward and exact logistics, including monthly rent and other expenses, weren’t nailed down.
Recently, Deerfield Academy promised to give Deerfield a free building for South County EMS, potentially taking 4 Sandy Lane out of the discussion.
Deerfield officials said they’d charge the three towns substantially less in rent than it’d cost for the ambulance service to move into Whately.
In a Nov. 21 newspaper article, academy spokesman David Thiel said the prep school intends to fund construction of a building to house South County EMS “and gift it to the town.”
The prep school tentatively agreed to fund a roughly $400,000, 3,600-square-foot, wood-frame building on town-owned land — about 60 feet north of South Deerfield fire station’s parking lot.
In light of the building’s loan payoff, Newlin said the town can focus on finding a tenant elsewhere, and begin looking for private businesses who might be interested in leasing space.
In regards to the hopes of South County EMS moving in, Newlin said if Deerfield’s option “benefits the taxpayers” and is cheaper for everyone, it makes sense — assuming “it’s a building that works for everyone, (Deerfield) charges a reasonable rate, and guarantees a good response time.”
However, if Deerfield’s solution isn’t a better deal, Newlin said, “I’d just as soon have it in Whately if that’s the case. If we can do that, fine. If we can’t, we’ll go from there.”
Regardless of the tenant, he said the town needs to fill the space as soon as possibly to recoup on its investment.
“Meanwhile, we have a large rentable space sitting in our municipal offices that could be generating money, but isn’t,” he said.