A rehabbed and spiffed-up Gorham school is set to continue serving townspeople as an activity center beginning in February.

The old Little Falls School on Acorn Street, six decades old, underwent a $500,000 overhaul and has been transformed into the Activities Center at Little Falls. Major repairs included a new roof, windows, interior sprinkler system for fire safety and natural gas heating system.

The old building wasn’t efficient.

“Energy was pouring out of it,” Cindy Hazelton, director of the Gorham Recreation Department, which will manage the facility, said. “Now it’s the cat’s meow.”

The brick Little Falls School, which replaced the old Robie School, opened in the mid 1950s as an elementary school. In recent years, the single-story building served the town’s Recreation Department and the Lakes Region Senior Center, which met there until the building closed for repairs in September 2013.

Residents approved borrowing up to $500,000 for building repairs in 2012.

The building’s interior has been repainted, carpets professionally shampooed, and cleaned up top to bottom.

“It’s a very pleasant place,” Hazelton said on a tour of the building on Friday.

When the building likely reopens for activities beginning next week, the Recreation Department’s before- and after-school programs will move back. Also, the space in the building where the Lakes Region Senior Center met remains, and Hazelton said the group would be welcome to return to its previous room. But, it’s unclear now whether the dedicated space the seniors’ group has requested would be granted by the Town Council.

Phil Gagnon, a former town councilor and chairman, endorsed reuse of the building for a community center, and hopes the seniors’ request will be accommodated.

“They had dedicated space before,” Gagnon said.

The building features eight classrooms, three offices, two storage closets, a kitchen and a gym. Numerous groups are likely to take advantage of the upgraded school for meetings.

“We have no idea who will come out of the woodwork for meeting space,” Hazelton said.

Hazelton said dog-training classes will likely return to the new center.

Julio Santiago, the Recreation Department’s director for before- and after-school activities, is the liaison for the building, which will open at 7 a.m. for kindergarten through fifth-grade programs.

For sure, there will be more kids in the building than before it was shuttered for repairs. Santiago said the numbers increased this year because of Gorham’s implementation of all-day kindergarten.

Gail Platts, recreation department administrative assistant, said Wednesday the number of children in the before and after programs has jumped from 50 students before all-day K to 75 now.

Three refurbished classrooms will handle up to 25 kids in each room. One is a toy room with play trucks, along with an arts and crafts table for the kindergarten through Grade 2 group.

“This is going to be a lot of trouble to clean up,” Santiago said.

For older elementary-age children, a game room has tables with two for hockey, one for soccer and another for foosball. The Gorham Recreation Department would welcome a donation of a ping-pong table. “We’d love a nice one,” Hazelton said.

A third classroom will be for doing homework and playing board games, while another will provide space for conferences like for coaches. The building now has Wifi.

The gym already has a portable hoop for basketball, and Hazelton said the floor would be striped for pickle ball. Hazelton sees the future possibility of adding a batting cage and net.

“That’s in our vision,” Hazelton said.

When spring comes, pickle ball courts will be added outside.

On Friday, Behn Brooks of the recreation department staff was one of several department and Public Works Department workers completing odds and ends of jobs inside the building. Brooks said a prison crew from the Maine Correctional Center in Windham lent a hand with cleaning and painting.

The prison crew, which had a supervisor, brought staging and even thoroughly scrubbed the rafters in the gym. Hazelton praised the prisoners’ work as “fabulous.”

Building features include five bathrooms.

“We gave them a power wash,” Hazelton said.

Temperature inside the building will be controlled remotely, Hazelton said, by Norm Justice, Gorham School Department facilities director. Clogged fresh air vents on the outside of the building have been cleared.

The old school initially had a coal-fired heating system that was replaced years ago with an oil burner. It now is heated by natural gas. A coal bin in the mechanical area remains as a relic from the past.

The size of the old furnace necessitated that it be cut up in pieces for removal.

“It was a dinosaur,” Hazelton said.

The possibilities at the old school enthuses Hazelton.

“It gives us so many options,” she said.

Scott Anastasoff from Gorham’s Public Works Department replaces fluorescent light tubes in the hallway at the Activities Center at Little Falls. The former school has undergone a $500,000 upgrade.Photo by Rich Obrey