Oak Bluffs is in pursuit of a concrete plan for the Island Theatre.

The select board announced at Tuesday’s meeting that it is seeking members for a new committee to think up possible uses for the property, which residents voted to purchase or take by eminent domain earlier this year. 

Voters gave the town their blessing to borrow up to $5 million for the historic building that has sat vacant at the top of Circuit avenue since 2012. It was previously declared a safety hazard and is showing signs of disrepair.

Legally, a town can only take a property by eminent domain if it can prove there is a public use for that property. Finding a public use for the Island Theatre has been a topic of public select board discussion since February, when the board first floated the possibility of taking the building by eminent domain.

Identifying public uses for the theatre would be a key aspect of the committee’s work, according to the board. Select board chair Dion Alley suggested that voters may be able to weigh in on the ideas the committee generates at fall town meeting.

“We can do a non-binding vote, get what people are interested in,” Mr. Alley said. “It starts to point us and narrow it down … then we can pursue from there.”

Select board member Mark Leonard, who chairs the town’s new economic development council, said that outside consulting on what to do with the historic theatre could be rolled into the council’s forthcoming five-year development plan.

“Maybe part of that contract could be to look at that space and do a market market analysis to see what the downtown area needs,” he said.

Island Theatre owners Ben Hall Jr. and Brian Hall have pushed back on the town’s desire to seize the property, maintaining that the building is structurally sound and that they’ve had trouble selling it due to municipal wastewater constraints. They urged the select board to strike the item from the town meeting warrant at meetings earlier this year, and they appeared at town meeting to ask voters to reject the proposition.

While Ben Hall Jr. previously suggested he would be willing to sell the property to the town outright, he later said he would prefer to sell it to a private buyer. The asking price for the property was $2.8 million as of this spring.