Developer Sam Park wants to buy the Fuller School property and expand the site where he's preparing to construct Gloucester Crossing.

As word of Park's expressed interest in the Fuller property rippled through the ranks of outgoing and incoming elected officials, it appeared likely to delay until next year any decision on the future of Fuller and O'Maley Middle School.

The School Committee will probably ask the City Council to delay a scheduled Dec. 11 hearing on borrowing necessary to complete the school reorganization plan.

Both the Fuller and O'Maley facilities are central to the completion of the school consolidation and reorganization plan now frozen in mid-implementation, with O'Maley slated to close at the end of the current school year and Fuller targeted to be the new middle school starting in September, 2008.

Fuller, on 13 acres, is assessed at $15.5 million on the city's books. O'Maley, on 17.5 acres, is assessed at $18.1 million.

But those figures are largely theoretical, especially with Park ready to convert the 33 acres he acquired for $3.2 million a year ago into a $60 million shopping center with an assisted-living facility and a hotel.

Built as St. Peter's High School in 1965 by the Archdiocese of Boston, Fuller was sold to the city four years later and used as an elementary school.

Park advised outgoing and incoming School Committee members last week of his interest in acquiring the Fuller property and merging it with the site he acquired last December off the Route 128 extension for retail and commercial development.

"It's a great gateway kind of position," Park's attorney, Michele Harrison, told the Times. "Of all city property, Fuller has the most commercial value."

Harrison said Park is thinking about converting the school into office and retail space while preserving the auditorium - home of the Cape Ann Symphony - as a "city center."

School Committee Vice Chairman Greg Verga said that Park said if he were able to acquire Fuller School, he "would tear down everything but the auditorium," and relocate the hotel, now integrated into the shopping center, on the site of the school.

Harrison said she doubted whether Park would even be the high bidder for Fuller School, though Mayor John Bell said he was unaware of any additional active potential buyer.

"Clearly," said Bell, "Fuller becomes valuable as a commercial property once Sam Park goes forward."

Bell said the thought of selling Fuller and using the proceeds to help finance a possible new school and other capital needs was intriguing. "Now's the time for thoughtful decision-making," he said.

The consensus of outgoing and incoming School Committee members is to ask the City Council to delay a hearing set for Dec. 11 on borrowing $1.9 million to convert the Fuller into a middle school.

Verga said the committee wants no delay in borrowing $3.4 million for modular classrooms to create room at the elementary schools for the reassignment of the city's fifth-graders - they were brought into Fuller this fall to replace the elementary schoolchildren who were reassigned throughout the city.

The deadline is tight for ordering the modular units to create space.

To ensure their arrival by next September, they need to be purchased by mid-February. Mayor-elect Carolyn Kirk has said she would decide by then if the city can afford the teachers to staff the modular classrooms.

All the changes were crisis-driven by the city's chronic penury, along with the School Committee's desire to create a system allowing progress toward the aims of the Plan for an Effective Learning Community.

Kirk and Verga helped create that plan, which calls for schools to share special education resources and students from a mixture of economic backgrounds.

Kirk said her short-term priority was "stability" for students, staff and parents.

Kirk said she would meet with outgoing Mayor Bell today to weigh the pluses and minuses of maintaining O'Maley as the middle school compared to closing it and investing in Fuller as the future middle school - or selling Fuller for capital to help rebuild the system.

Verga said he understood why some people questioned the decision to close O'Maley and invest in converting Fuller into a middle school.

"I prefer Fuller as a school, but I can live with O'Maley," said Verga, the likely next chairman of the School Committee. He told the Times he has obtained the commitments to be elected unanimously and said he has been holding informal meetings with incoming committee members.

But with the modulars, Verga said, Fuller could be emptied next fall, allowing a reasoned consideration of the futures of both facilities.

"It gives us a year to dig deep into this," Verga said.