The Peninsula Community School District will decide tonight on a recommendation to build its new elementary-middle school on privately owned property near the intersection of Routes 195 and 186 in the Gouldsboro village of Prospect Harbor.

A site selection committee has been working for months narrowing a list of places to construct an elementary school and middle school.

The new school would replace the Peninsula Community School, which draws pupils from the five communities within Gouldsboro, along with the town of Winter Harbor.

Among five site finalists, a 21-acre parcel owned by Ronda Saul that is almost directly behind the Gouldsboro town office building has emerged as the front-runner.

The site selection committee is expected to recommend at tonight’s meeting in Winter Harbor that the school district acquire the property and move forward with designing a new school.

The Peninsula CSD is a subdivision of Union 96, which is composed of six towns: Franklin, Gouldsboro, Sorrento, Sullivan and Winter Harbor in Hancock County and Steuben in Washington County.

Union 96 Superintendent William Webster did not return a call Monday for comment, but Richard Graves of WBRC Architects/Engineers of Bangor, the project’s lead architect, confirmed the recommendation.

“This is a great site. It rated the highest of all the sites we looked at and the location, it doesn’t get much more in the middle of town than that,” Graves said.

The Saul property scored the highest among criteria outlined by the site selection committee, largely for its access to Route 186 and for its proximity to fire and police services.

The only real setback of the site is the lack of public water and sewer access in Prospect Harbor. However, Graves said the cost of building a well and septic system on site would still be less than extending existing services to any of the other possible sites.

Saul has said that she is willing to sell. The property is in the appraisal process in hopes that Saul and school Union 96 can determine an appropriate selling price.

The second-ranked site was a 30-acre parcel near Main Street in Winter Harbor that is owned by environmentalist and philanthropist Roxanne Quimby, founder of Burt’s Bees. That site has attracted concerns about needed road improvements.

If the Peninsula CSD approves the site, it must still be voted on by the towns of Gouldsboro and Winter Harbor. The state Department of Education, which is funding the project, also must approve the building site.

The new school, expected to be open by 2009, will accommodate about 150 pupils on the Schoodic Peninsula.

The Peninsula Community School District board will meet at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 1, at the Peninsula School in Winter Harbor.