AUBURN — Classes will soon resume in North Auburn’s Charles P. Wight School.
The former Auburn Land Lab has been sold to a special education school — the Androscoggin Learning & Transition Center — for an undisclosed sum. Renovations are to begin soon for a spring opening.
“We’re kind of gutting it and starting new in there,” Branner McGraw, the school’s program coordinator, said. The building is at 31 Holbrook Road.
Plans call for the 63-year-old school building include a science lab, a building trades area, offices, classrooms and quiet rooms. Outside, there will be a greenhouse and a play area.
“We’re hopefully going to put in some flower beds and herb gardens,” McGraw said.
The school has been vacant for nearly four years, following worry about its roof and internal systems.
The Wight School was built in 1951 and operated as an elementary school until the late 1980s. Hebron Academy used it for several years. In the late 1990s, Auburn leaders decided to capitalize on the school’s countryside location near Lake Auburn’s western shore and teach science there.
It served as the Land Lab for a decade, but it was becoming costly to maintain.
The roof leaked. The heating system was old. Cracked and peeling paint wrapped the outside.
The building was purchased in 2010 by George Wu, an Auburn native whose family owned the Hunan House restaurant and now owns the Panda Garden on Center Street.
Wu told the Sun Journal in 2011 that he spent about $100,000 on the roof, a new heating system and other changes. He considered turned the building into a home. He also considered relocating his business, North Conway, N.H.-based Virtual Commerce, there. Instead, he placed the building and surrounding 2 1/4 acres on the market for an asking price of $300,000.
The sale was finalized Thursday, McGraw said.
The change should improve conditions for the small, special education school. The Wight building will be more accessible and customized to the needs of the school, McGraw said.
“Our current home is too small,” he said.
The Androscoggin Learning & Transition Center teaches students from grades seven to 12, many of whom have clinical and behavioral problems. It has about 25 students. For every five students, the school has one teacher and two behavioral health professionals.
When it moves to the C.P. Wight School, it plans to take up to 30 students, beginning at kindergarten.
dhartill@sunjournal.com
Send questions/comments to the editors.
