By Shavonne Walker

shavonne.walker@salisburypost.com

EAST SPENCER — Late last year the town lost the historic Dunbar Center to a late night fire that left the former school in ruins. The town board will hear a presentation from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Brownfields Program regarding how the town could assess, clean up and reuse the site.

The town does not own the property, but town leaders have expressed interest in rebuilding and coming up with ideas to reuse the site. The property is owned by Shady Grove Baptist Church.

The board will hear the presentation at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday during the regular board meeting, 105 South Long Street. The brownfields program is designed to work with towns and states to assess sites, safely clean them up and come up with redevelopment plans. There are grant funds available for the work that will go into the assessment of the property. The town could receive up to $200,000 in grant funds.

If the town applied for the grant by May, it would take much of the year to go through the application stages. The grant would not be awarded until late 2016, and the project wouldn’t begin implementation until October 2016.

The fire occurred Dec. 30 and fire investigators later determined it was intentionally set but could not determine whether someone started it to keep warm or to deliberately burn the building.