The playground at the former Lake Clear Elementary School, seen Friday, is still used by some local children, and the town of Harrietstown plans to let that continue by buying the playground and green space from the property’s new owner, Ampersand Biosciences. (Enterprise photo — Jesse Adcock)

LAKE CLEAR — The town of Harrietstown is making the necessary moves to purchase the playground and green space around the former Lake Clear Elementary School from a local bioscience firm and turn it into a public park or recreation area.

Ampersand Biosciences, currently renting space in the former Saranac Lake village offices, bought the school from the Saranac Lake Central School District in July. However, Ampersand President Laurie Stephen quickly found that while the school itself is no longer in use, other parts of the property are.

“I’ve noticed that a lot of kids use the playground,” Stephen said. “We’re certainly not in the park business. But if we get rid of it, that wouldn’t be fun for the people in the area.”

With this in mind, Stephen approached the Harrietstown government to find a solution that would benefit both Ampersand and the local community.

“It’s a large tract of land with a large grass area,” Harrietstown code enforcement officer Edwin Randig said. “A lot of the Lake Clear community take their kids there.”

For this reason, they worked together to bring a proposal to the Harrietstown council to split the Lake Clear property into a space that both private and public entities could make use of. At Thursday night’s town council meeting, the beginning stages of the proposal were approved.

According to Randig, the first step is to get an appraisal of the land in order to offer a fair price on its subdivision. Moving forward, the town will buy the apportioned lot from Ampersand and work to get the new green space zoned as parkland or a recreation area.

The playground is likely to be moved, Stephen said, and reassembled further afield into the plain away from the school. In addition, a separate parking lot is likely to be constructed.

“There will be green space there for people to enjoy,” Stephen said. “The town can take that on. They know how to handle it.”

The school district closed Lake Clear Elementary in 2009.