STANDISH – After months trying to unload a building that served as Standish’s original town hall, the Town Council voted 5-1 Tuesday night to award a bid to a dentist who intends to renovate the building and open an office.

The town received two bids on the property, located on Route 25 near the intersection of Route 35. The winning bid of $60,000 came from Bryan LeClerc, owner of Sebago Dental in Raymond. The deal is a coup for the town, according to Councilor Phil Pomerleau.

“It’s a good bid because we know the building needs well over $100,000 worth of work, which the bidders were aware of,” he said.

The roof and foundation sills need replacing as do the windows, Pomerleau said.

Pomerleau is excited to have a professional office, which would be the second dentistry in Standish, opening up shop in downtown.

“The way we look at it is dentists don’t move around a lot. Once they come to a town, they stay. But if it was just retail sales, that comes and goes,” Pomerleau said.

He said the council was happy with LeClerc’s plan to renovate the top floor to create a living space for himself. The prospect of residential and commercial use in the same building also fits form-based code, a style of development that Standish was the first town in Maine to adopt, and which calls for the mingling of residential and commercial uses.

“Apartment up, retail down, parking to the rear. That’s what form-based code calls for,” Pomerleau said.

Another plus is getting the building, which has long been owned by the town and served as a home for community organizations in the past, onto the tax rolls, Pomerleau said.

“It gives us some good tax revenue and brings a good business that will employ five to six people to town. The council is very happy to get good paying jobs, so we’re excited,” Pomerleau said.

The bid was approved 5-1, with Councilor Lou Stack opposed. Stack did not return a phone call seeking comment. Pomerleau said he did not know why Stack voted against the proposal.

Last fall, the town’s historical society had expressed interest in the property but the council rejected its bid of $20,000. Stack, a member of the historical society, was the lone vote against rejecting the society’s bid. At the time, he said the town should investigate the historical significance of the building and whether it should be listed on the National Register of Historic Places before re-bidding the building.

Now that the sale to LeClerc has been approved, the dentist said he can’t wait to get working on rehabbing the old building.

It’s an “amazing location; I’m super-excited, super-thrilled and super-lucky. And I just think it’s going to be a great thing,” LeClerc said Wednesday.

LeClerc went to Deering High School, completed his undergraduate education at Northeastern University in Boston and graduated from the New York University College of Dentistry in Manhattan. He said he has owned Sebago Dental in a rented unit at the corner of Main Street and Route 121 in Raymond for more than three years. With his lease set to expire in May 2014, LeClerc said he has time to determine the future of his business.

“So whether that is a satellite office or the main office, I don’t know. However it grows, it grows,” he said referring to the Standish space.

LeClerc is also cognizant of the history of the building and said he wants to maintain the building’s historical ties.

“I’m going to keep an emphasis on the historic nature of the property,” he said. “I don’t plan on doing anything that would deviate from the history of the building.”

The sale of Standish’s original town hall for a bid of $60,000 was approved by the Standish Town Council Tuesday night.    ?