WESTBROOK — The time has come for the old fire station building at 41 Cumberland St. to be given back to Sappi, City Administrator Jerre Bryant says, and even Mayor Mike Sanphy, the driver of a plan for its reuse just a year ago, agrees.

The council is expected to take up the topic next month, as early as its Sept. 10 meeting, Bryant said.

The building on land owned by Sappi was built in the 1940s to be used as Westbrook’s central firehouse, with the agreement it would revert back to the paper mill if it was not used for municipal purposes. When the new Public Safety Building was constructed in 2004 at Main Street and Captain Bill Hartley Drive, that station and the Mechanic Street station became obsolete.

In the past few years, the building has not been used aside from storage, and now, Sappi wants it back. Bryant said it may be time to do that.

“It was built for a certain purpose at a certain time and has served the city well,” he said.

Representatives from Sappi could not be reached for comment about their intentions, but Sanphy said the mill is interested in using the sapce.

The city most recently looked into using the building to house non-emergency vehicles or as a headquarters for the fire department’s call company and fire/police volunteers. Bryant said Fire Chief Andy Turcotte identified non-emergency medical transportation – providing transportation between hospitals and treatment facility, nursing homes or other hospitals – as a revenue stream that could help fund the fire department. Sanphy supported the idea of using the facility for call company and police/fire volunteers.

“At a time when space and facilities are at a premium for many of our departments, and the Westbrook taxpayers are spending millions of dollars to replace buildings that have previously been discarded, retention and preservation of existing public facilities is a sound strategy,” Sanphy wrote to councilors last July, prior to a workshop on reusing the Cumberland Street building.

The council took no action on that plan and because of that and the fact that many of fire/police volunteers and call company members have since quit, Sanphy now doesn’t see a need for the building.

“We have no use for it now, and I can’t see pouring the taxpayers’ money into it unless we have a use that will serve a purpose,” Sanphy said this week.

Bryant said both the non-emergency medical transportation and call company and fire/police headquarters options would have required hundreds of thousands of dollars in improvements.

“We’ve identified no use that would justify the investment needed to make that building safe and code compliant,” Bryant said.

Michael Kelley can be reached at 781-3661 x 125 or [email protected] or on Twitter @mkelleynews.

The release the deed of the former Westbrook Fire Station on Cumberland Street back to Sappi could come up for City Council discussion next month.