"This building represents an opportunity for us to move forward," Windham Town Manager Robert Burns told the Town Council on Aug. 19, the night members voted to send a $19.5 million bond question to voters this November. It's a tidy line for a building that used to hold 650 middle schoolers and is about to hold, depending on how you count it, four or five town departments at once.
Here's what the ballot language doesn't quite say: this isn't primarily a recreation project. It's a plan to move nearly every arm of Windham's town government, except Public Works, into one building. Calling it a "community center" isn't wrong, but it's doing a lot of work to make a municipal office consolidation sound like a parks upgrade. One councilor already said so out loud at the same meeting, and the distinction matters for how you read your ballot on Nov. 3.
What Actually Moves Into the Building
The plan, developed over 14 months and 12 meetings by the 20-member Windham Middle School Repurpose Advisory Committee, would relocate the Parks and Recreation Department, the Windham Public Library, general town hall offices, and Social Services, which runs the food pantry along with clothing and medical closets, all into the former middle school once RSU 14 vacates it. Town Manager Burns has described the current locations for these departments as obsolete, and the reasoning is straightforward: the library and Social Services both need more room than their current buildings can give them.
Councilor David Nadeau made a point at the Aug. 19 meeting that's worth sitting with. He cited a town survey showing the library and Parks and Recreation each serve about 25 percent of Windham residents, and argued that branding this as a "community center" makes people assume it's mostly rec programming. In reality, it's closer to a new town hall with a library, a food pantry, and a gym attached. If you vote based on the name alone, you may be voting on a narrower project than the one actually on the table.
Why There's Suddenly So Much Room to Fill
The space math here traces back to a building that outgrew itself a while ago. Windham Middle School opened in 1974 with a design capacity of 483 students. It's currently serving 650, with some sixth graders overflowing into the adjacent Field Allen School, a building that dates to 1949. That overcrowding is also why the school is closing at all: Windham and Raymond voters approved a new regional middle school back in November 2023, a $171.5 million project with the Maine Department of Education covering $131.7 million of it and the two towns splitting the remaining $39.8 million. The new Windham-Raymond Middle School is set to open in August 2027, sized for about 1,000 students with room to grow to 1,200.
There's a condition attached to that state funding that shapes everything downstream. Because Maine already paid for decades of repairs on the existing Windham Middle School building, the 2023 referendum included an agreement that the old school can never be used as a school again. That's the legal reason the town is looking at a repurpose plan instead of, say, leasing the building to another district or selling it for future school use. Once RSU 14 hands the keys back in fall 2027, it's community center or nothing, at least as a matter of what voters already agreed to.
That underused square footage is why the numbers in the current plan look almost aggressive. Parks and Recreation's footprint would grow by 1,139 percent, enough to support up to 48 new programs, including after-school care the department can't currently offer. The design from INVIVID Architecture also adds a playground, an outdoor reading area, a walking path, and a pickleball court, with a pool listed as a possibility depending on final costs. Great Falls Construction, the same firm that helped expand Windham's Public Safety Building in 2022, has been advising the committee on feasibility.
"This is still the best way forward for us." — Windham Town Manager Robert Burns
The Fund Balance Question Underneath the Headline Number
The $19.5 million bond isn't the whole financing story. The council's plan also pulls up to $2 million from the town's unassigned fund balance to reduce how much Windham actually has to borrow. Nadeau opposed that piece specifically, arguing the fund balance should go toward "more practical matters, such as public works or paving," and pointing out that spending it doesn't lower the interest cost of the bond itself. Councilor Katie Cook took the opposite view, arguing that using the fund balance now eases the burden on taxpayers down the line. Councilor Maggie Terry raised a related point during the debate: residents commenting on the town's Facebook post about the project didn't seem to grasp what it would cost Windham to maintain an empty middle school building if the community center vote fails and the school just sits there.
For context on where this bond would land relative to what the town already owes: Windham's current bonded debt sits at roughly $51 million, or about 1.21 percent of the town's state valuation, well under the legal debt ceiling of 15 percent. That's the kind of number a council footnote might have included on the ballot itself, except Town Attorney Benjamin McCall advised against it. He pointed to Section 2528 of Title 30-A, the state law governing secret ballot town meetings, which limits any explanatory language on the warrant to the council's yes or no recommendation, nothing more. He noted the town could still publish the debt context separately as part of a voter information campaign, just not printed alongside the question itself. Council Chair Mark Morrison pushed back a little on that restriction, saying he thought informed voters deserved to see the town's debt picture as part of the question, not as a footnote elsewhere.
A Format Windham Doesn't Usually Use
That legal wrangling points to something else worth knowing before Nov. 3: this vote isn't happening the way Windham normally handles town business. McCall specifically flagged that the special town meeting format calls for a secret ballot, which is unusual, since Windham typically handles town meeting items in person rather than through a private vote. If you're used to Windham's regular open meetings, this one will feel different by design, and that's a state law constraint, not a choice the council made on its own.
What the Neighboring Town Is Watching
Windham isn't the only town facing this exact decision. Raymond, the other half of the RSU 14 district, is hoping to do the same thing with its own Jordan Small Middle School once the regional school opens and that building empties out too. RSU 14 Superintendent Chris Howell has said he's glad to see the old buildings get new life for kid programming and after-school use, while being clear those uses won't be tied to the school district going forward. Whatever Windham decides in November will likely serve as the template Raymond's own committee is watching.
What This Means for Nov. 3
If you're voting on this question, the honest framing is closer to: should Windham spend up to $21.5 million total, between the bond and the fund balance draw, to consolidate town hall, the library, Social Services, and Parks and Recreation into one renovated building, with recreational amenities layered on top. That's a bigger and more permanent decision than "should we build a rec center," and it's worth voting on the actual scope rather than the name on the sign.
Whatever the town decides, it's the kind of civic project that shapes daily life here for a long time, from where you pick up a library book to where the food pantry operates to whether there's a pickleball court within walking distance. If you want to talk through what's happening in Windham beyond the ballot box, from how local projects like this tend to affect town character over time to what's moving in the broader Windham housing picture, Michael Mahoney is always glad to talk. Let's Connect.
