On the front steps of the Warner Community Center, caution tape sections off one side of the entrance, with missing bricks revealing chipped concrete slabs.

Inside on the first floor, a door handle is missing from one bathroom, while windows in another room don’t properly open. Exit signs are here and there – some with fluorescent letters visible in the dark, others printed on cardboard.

In the stairwell, gaps between railings pose a safety hazard for the kids who are homeschooled on the third floor, where there’s no running water. Without an elevator, the majority of the building isn’t compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

When Harry Seidel, the chair of the Warner select board, started to make a list of the “low-hanging fruit” of necessary building repairs, pretty soon his page was full.

The community center, formerly the Old Grade School, is a century-old building down the street from Town Hall on West Main Street in Warner. Allan Brown, the town’s new interim select board member, knows the building well. Back when it was a functioning school, he was a student there.

Now, the building serves as a center for nonprofits in the area. Warner Connects operates a food pantry and thrift store out of the basement and first floor, Gear Up Homeschoolers has classroom space on the top floor, the Boys and Girls Club runs a daycare out of a basement classroom, and the Community Action Program utilizes office space by the main entrance.

For years, each nonprofit has had varying agreements with the town to utilize their space. The Community Action Program, which previously operated a larger area center in the building with Head Start, Meals on Wheels and a food pantry, paid monthly rent to lease the space. For Gear Up, a memorandum of understanding with the town meant they could use the upstairs classrooms for $400 annually. And for Warner Connects, which has taken over the food pantry operation since 2020, no rent or formal lease was ever in place.

After years of deferred maintenance, the town’s select board wanted to address the fire code violations and safety hazards in the old building. With that came the need for formal leases with tenants and monthly rent to help offset the building costs.

“To tell you the truth I wouldn’t even rent to a tenant until it was fixed,” said Brown. “I don’t understand how this was rented in the first place.”

To fix the building means addressing a long list of repairs with bigger ticket items versus small, but necessary repairs. In an energy audit and building evaluation, the town’s Economic Development Advisory Committee outlined the need for ADA compliance – which would mean installing an elevator on the exterior, renovating restrooms and upgrading all door fixtures – as well as energy-efficient improvements like LED lights and Energy Star appliances.

But with $5,000 budgeted for building repairs for 2023, tackling each item will be a matter of prioritization until the next Town Meeting.

“I don’t think we appropriated enough money to do all the maintenance on this place,” said Brown.

With a tape measure held to the stairwell railings, Seidel said clear safety concerns need to be addressed first.

The railings along the staircase not only open holes for a child to fall through but aren’t high enough to provide a barrier of 42 inches for someone to fall over.

“The railings, we should have done the railings months ago,” he said. “The railings I find to be really high safety.”

Clearly marked entrance and exit signs, doorknobs on all handles and maintaining the egress to comply with fire codes are other high-priority safety items.

To finance larger repairs, grants are a great long-term solution, but often take more than a year to secure funding, said Seidel.

“To take a building like this and to try to upgrade it for the 21st century is not something that the town can really afford,” said Seidel. “We have to go after grants. This is what smart towns do.”

In the meantime, the select board will leave maintenance funding up to town residents in the upcoming budget process. The future of the building, and the necessary costs to repair and maintain it, will be one of many conversations at Town Meeting.

“I think that we have to look at the overall picture and what it is going to cost us,” Brown said. “When we start talking about how much money we’re going to put into this place, taxpayers are going to pay this.”

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