LINCOLN — Town Manager Glenn Aho will begin negotiations soon with an unidentified property owner interested in selling or donating land for the town’s first recreation and community center, officials said Tuesday.

The Town Council came out of executive session late Monday and voted 7-0 to grant Aho permission to negotiate. The closed-door session was not on the meeting agenda. It was called after Recreation Department Director Bill McCarthy learned that the parcel might be available.

“We’re not talking about the school system’s land,” Councilor Samuel Clay said Tuesday. “It’s something that the recreation director found out about just before the meeting, and I am glad that he did.

“We will have to see how it goes,” Clay said of the negotiations.

Clay, McCarthy and Town Code Enforcement Supervisor Ruth Birtz declined to comment, citing confidentiality of land-purchase negotiations. Aho was out of the office Tuesday afternoon and could not be reached for comment.

Fearing the results of school administration reform bills being debated in the state Legislature, SAD 67 officials tabled their offer of school land on which the town could build a recreation center late last month.

School officials are still interested in helping the town build a center on Mattanawcook Academy’s Lincoln campus, but need to see how the Legislature’s efforts to consolidate state public schools will turn out before proceeding, Superintendent Michael Marcinkus has said.

For more than two years, recreation commission members pursued a recreation center, hoping to use only contributions and state grants. They surveyed residents and held meetings before engineer Ted Ocana of Lincoln presented the council with tentative plans.

Envisioned are a competition-size swimming pool, a three-lane indoor track, spacious locker rooms, 260-seat gym, several multipurpose rooms, a 54-booth eating area and offices for recreation staff situated on 4.5 acres.

But the price tag is $6.7 million, and the council has said it would have to approve a pared-down version before construction would start. No timelines have been set.

Center fundraising efforts accumulated about $395,000.

Proponents hope to have a deal made on land for the recreation center by early fall, McCarthy has said.