Just days after the School Committee decided to close the Fuller School, Mayor Carolyn Kirk said she would try to generate revenue from the site by selling at least two acres of city land abutting the school.

The scenario of city-owned land for sale at the school has sparked the interest of Sam Park, a Boston-based developer, who is planning to break ground this summer on a $60 million, 34-acre shopping plaza, hotel, and assisted living facility, also next to the school. "We'd be interested," said Park. "Obviously with the investment we're making we'd want to make sure that whatever is built adjacent to us is compatible and doesn't distract from the investment."

Kirk proposed selling the land to the highest bidder, and acknowledged that Park would be a likely suitor for the property. "I just want the highest price for it," said Kirk, who added that no final decision on the 190,000-square-foot building would be made for at least a year.

Kirk plans to appoint a committee to study the facility and make a recommendation on its future. She would not rule out relocating most municipal offices to the location. Currently, city offices are in three locations - City Hall, Poplar Street, and a rented office building on Pond Road. During the past year, Kirk has been a proponent of having the city's workforce under one roof.

"We have an opportunity to sort of dream a little bit of how we want it to be set up," said Kirk.

City Council president Bruce Tobey said the council would also have a say in any land sales, and called for the city to reassess the 13-acre school site. "This is going to be based on real values and careful study," said Tobey, who wants the revenue of any sale of school property to go to a dedicated school fund that would pay for building renovation and expansion.

Last week's unanimous decision by the School Committee to close the school reversed last year's decision by the committee to make Fuller a middle school, and close O'Maley Middle School. When the vote was taken last year, the school department was facing a $3 million shortfall. But after four new residents were elected to the committee in November, the group decided to study the matter further.

During the past year, parts of the plan were implemented. Fuller ceased being an elementary school, and housed the city's fifth-graders for just this year. Also, in January, the city decided to borrow $3.5 million to purchase 14 modular classrooms that could handle the extra students from the fifth grade in the elementary schools next year.

School Committee chairman Greg Verga said that the new report on the condition of the schools - prepared by the School Committee, school administrators, and Cochrane Ventilation this fall - favored O'Maley. Verga said educators preferred O'Maley's three-story structure - which allows each grade to have its own floor. Also, Fuller had fewer classrooms than O'Maley, was seven years older (built in 1965), and needed $1.9 million in work to be retrofitted as a middle school.

"There appear to be no programmatic advantages in transferring the middle school program to the Fuller site beyond the superior auditorium and extensive gymnasium," the report concluded.

The report also said that last year's School Committee vote took place when the board was under "enormous pressure" and before it had a chance "to review or consider middle school philosophy, best practice or necessary facilities in any detail."

Kirk, who also serves on the School Committee and was an elected member who voted last year to make Fuller a middle school, acknowledged that the board had little time to study the two buildings. But she said she was influenced by previous reports of air quality problems at O'Maley.

"I had heard about the air quality complaints my entire time on the School Committee, and I had thought that this was an opportunity to resolve that once and for all by walking away from the school," she said. "But the tests came back and said it's really a matter of maintenance and preventative work."

According to the latest report, air quality at O'Maley has been evaluated at least five times during the past seven years. "None of the investigations appear to have linked reported symptomology to a single source or collection of sources," the latest report concludes.

The report recommended that the district develop a preventative maintenance program for the school. On a site visit to the school, Cochrane Ventilation observed dirty ventilator coils, and that the exhaust systems serving janitors' closets were not working. Also, the firm reported that vents were not working in four other rooms.

Verga said the district's administrators and preschool would continue to use the building next year. He said the district would save $200,000 on heating and custodial costs for the building.