UMaine System trustees will consider interim location for Maine Law

Courtesy / University of Maine School of Law The University of Maine School of Law in Portland may move to an interim location on Fore Street to accommodate long-needed renovations at the nearly-50-year-old building.

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By Staff

Trustees of the University of Maine System will meet next week to begin considering a new, interim location of the UMaine School of Law and a new name for a building on the UMaine campus in Orono.

The Finance, Facilities, and Technology Committee of the UMS Board of Trustees is scheduled to take up both matters at a meeting Wednesday, May 5, at 9 a.m. The committee may then make a recommendation to the board in advance of its meeting on May 24.

The board is considering a lease at 300 Fore St. in Portland as the interim home of the law school and for staff of the University of Maine Graduate and Professional Center. The current law building, at 246 Deering Ave., was constructed nearly 50 years ago and its design is now “functionally obsolete for the educational needs of the 21st century,” according to a UMS news release.

The release said the building has not been substantially renovated since its construction and has reinvestment needs approaching $20 million.

A $240 million gift from the Harold Alfond Foundation for the University of Maine System would direct up to $40 million in new funds to a new building for the Graduate and Professional Center on the University of Southern Maine’s Portland campus. Maine Law could relocate to that new building after its construction, according to the release.

In Orono, University of Maine President Joan Ferrini-Mundy is recommending Beryl Warner Williams Hall as the replacement name for the Clarence Cook Little Hall.

The board decided last September to strip the name of the classroom building, which was erected in 1966 and dedicated to the UMaine president from 1922 to 1925.

Little, who also founded the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, was a biologist, academic administrator and prominent advocate of eugenics — the discredited belief that the human race can be improved by scientifically cultivating certain genetic traits.

Beryl Warner Williams is a Bangor native and a lifelong educator with two degrees from the University of Maine, according to UMS. She is also a public servant affiliated with organizations including the NAACP, the National Council of Negro Women, and the American Red Cross.