FAYETTE — A longtime supporter of Starling Hall has donated $50,000 to assist with ongoing renovations, according to Michael Carlson, vice chair of the Fayette Select Board and a member of Friends of Starling Hall.

“The donor is a previous contributor that supports Starling Hall and the efforts of the Friends of Starling Hall and the town are putting forth to renovate the building,” Carlson said. “He made an offer to donate the $50,000. I still need to work out some of the terms of that donation because I am not exactly clear what it is to be used for. The last conversation I had was that it be used toward the renovation.”

The donation, Carlson said, was made by an individual and is not designated for a specific project. Instead, it will go toward general renovations. The primary focus of the renovation efforts includes the building’s roof and exterior clapboards.

“We have talked with the engineering company that we hired to produce this final study so that we can go to make a congressional spending request like we have done in the past,” Carlson said. “Those right now are the two primary focuses of our attention.”

In addition to the recent donation, Starling Hall has received a $30,000 grant from the Kennebec County Emergency Management Agency, awarded through the Federal Emergency Management Agency [FEMA]. That grant will fund the installation of a generator to allow the hall to serve as a warming shelter during power outages.

“There are two pieces to the roof,” he said. “We applied for a $20,000 grant from Morton-Kelly Charitable Trust, but they awarded $15,000. We are very appreciative of that. And a resident expressed interest in donating $15,000.” Originally organizers considered replacing the current metal roof with shingles, but concerns about structural integrity shifted the approach.

“We thought we would do a shingled roof simply because of the danger of snow sliding off a metal roof and potentially injuring somebody,” Carlson said. “However, if we replace the metal roof with a shingled roof, then we have to ensure that the substructure of the roof is strong enough to support all that potential snow that would be sitting on top of it. That we don’t know.”

Carlson said consultations with Maine Preservation, the Maine Historic Preservation Commission and Artifex, the town’s engineering consultant, are ongoing to determine the best course of action while maintaining the historical integrity of the building.

“I’m learning rather quickly that there are a lot of little details,” Carlson said. “Because it is on the National Register of Historic Places, there are a lot of things that under normal circumstances you would probably just overlook or say, ‘Yeah, whatever.’ But in this instance, we can’t. Every little detail is going to get scrutinized.”

In other matters, the Fayette Select Board recently held a meeting at Starling Hall due to ongoing technical difficulties at its previous location, Fayette Central School.

“We moved to the hall to see if that would impact the technical difficulties,” Carlson said, adding that Starling Hall was recently connected to Fidium fiber-optic internet. “Initially that was one of the reasons we weren’t having meetings at Starling Hall; because the internet was so bad we couldn’t stream the meeting live to enable the public to attend via Zoom. Now that we have fiber-optic high-speed internet, our technical difficulties seem to be resolved.”

While the board has not made a permanent decision regarding the meeting location, Carlson said the transition has been smooth.

“My understanding is that it is not a permanent move, but we had a very good experience there,” he said.