HAMPDEN — With the November 2025 move into the new Town Hall at 85 Wilbraham Road, the building formally known as the Thornton W. Burgess School, the Hampden Selectboard began the conversation of what will become of the old Town Hall in its Jan. 5 meeting.
Currently, the Selectboard has reports from Tighe & Bond, an engineering firm, detailing the condition of the building, potential improvements and how much improvements may cost.
Chair John Flynn said that moving forward, the community will need to be involved.
He said the Selectboard is currently interested in having members of the community “step up and serve on a committee to work and provide the right direction for the board and the town.”
“There are a lot of challenges with the building to be used in a municipal use, private use, a home use, a business use,” Flynn said. “Every one of those would involve a different challenge, and there’s no easy solution.”
The building is also still being funded for utilities, which have gone down since the move out but do exist, along with insurance under their umbrella policy. Flynn said he does a wellness check on the building every Sunday and it is still somewhat heated with an active security system.
Flynn was asked by an audience member if there was a current time frame on bringing any plans to the town and he said a report to Town Meeting would be warranted but voting on a plan for the building wouldn’t necessarily have to be involved. He added that all current situations with the building are hypothetical.
“Say the Selectboard decides to sell the building, that will come to the Town Meeting, that would be a disposable town asset,” Flynn said. “Maybe the committee recommends, ‘Look, the land’s worth more than the building, you should tear it down.’”
In a situation where the building is torn down, funds would need to be secured through a town meeting because “it’s not so much the action that needs approval, it’s the funding of the action,” Flynn said.
Flynn added that the building is lacking in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, which would require a huge investment to bring it up to code and remain a municipal building.
“The town was extremely fortunate that, until we made the move here, something didn’t happen at the building because of our lack of ADA coverage,” Flynn said. “I think a municipal application is gonna be difficult to justify knowing that we have all those improvements to make.”
Selectman Donald Davenport said people should understand that everything won’t happen overnight and said he believes all options are still on the table, with ideas like an entrepreneurial center, an art center, a museum, tearing it down or building it up.
The committee for the building isn’t set in stone yet but the Selectboard looked to formalize it at its meeting on Jan. 12.
