BERNE — Observing the night sky may be added to a list of uses for a swath of hilltop property on Game Farm Road that the town is purchasing.

“We haven’t done anything,” Supervisor Kevin Crosier said on Monday of developing an observatory. “It was an idea we had worked on previously.”

Berne-Knox-Westerlo school officials and private individuals once looked at a shale bank on the top of the 358-acre property for an observatory, among other locations, he said, but couldn’t negotiate a deal with its owners, who were running a Buddhist center and soon going to sell.

Thinking of his past connection to the efforts of the observatory enthusiasts, Crosier said the idea could be considered when it came up at a public hearing on Albany County Capital Resource Corporation funds used for the purchase. After a local television reporter contacted him about it, Crosier said he then reached out to some of the individuals who once expressed interest.

“At this point, it’s so premature, there may be other organizations that now may pop up,” like a local university or museum, said Crosier. He declined to name who was involved and said he does not know whether or not the supporters live locally.

Sharing the $475,000 cost of the property with the Open Space Institute and the corporation, the town is spending $112,500, plus another $27,500 for easements and closing costs, for buying the land from the Tenzin Gyatso Institute. Crosier expects the deal will close in December.

After the purchase deal was announced, some residents speculated about the use of the property, and a petition to hold public referendums on future large purchases was brought to the town board.

The idea for an observatory shares space on a flexible list of possible uses for the property that includes cross-country skiing, camping, and hosting weddings and conferences at an old stone lodge there.

Crosier said a board of directors, and perhaps a vision developed with residents, will guide planning for the property, with recommendations made to the town board. It is considered an economic development project that would bring revenue into the town budget, employ local residents, and attract people to the Hilltowns, Crosier said.

With easements prohibiting development on most of the acreage and its proximity to state forestland, it is also considered a conservation project.

“It’s a part of the puzzle, but it’s not the whole piece I guess,” Crosier said of an observatory. “And we need to see how it would fit, if it fits, and how it would work. It wouldn’t take up very much space. That I do know.”

He said the town wouldn’t run an observatory. In previous talks, the concept was that the land would be leased to an organization that would manage the site.

The idea of an observatory that takes advantage of the dark skies, southern-facing views, and low horizons in the Hilltowns has been floated for several years.

In 2010, land near the Octagon Barn venue in Knox was speculated for development by the Dudley Observatory, part of the MiSci museum in Schenectady.

“We did not choose to build an observatory out there because our mission is really astronomy education, and we feel we’ve got to be where people are and that’s part of the concern there,” said Elissa Kane, interim executive director of the Dudley Observatory. “You’ll get your committed people…because, we’re talking about really amateur, general-public astronomy. We’re not talking about research astronomy, necessarily, because that’s done with computers.” She said her organization plans to build an urban observatory, installing its historic Pruyn telescope, within the next 18 months, if an economic development grant is approved.

Speaking on Monday, Kane said she had not been consulted about a Berne observatory.

In both cases, with the school’s interest, and for the Octagon Barn, Ron Barnell, an amateur astronomer who once volunteered on the Dudley Observatory’s site-selection committee, was a proponent for a Helderberg observatory. Crosier said Barnell, who could not be reached for comment, was one of the residents who spoke at the public hearing.

Nights spent peering through telescopes at the Octagon Barn, called “star parties,” are hosted by the barn’s owners, Russell and Amy Pokorny. Russell, too, had no connection to the Berne proposition, but echoed Kane’s sentiment that publicity is what is needed to draw people to a dark, but distant location.

 Much of the attraction to the Hilltowns is for its lack of light pollution, as it is not only remote, but elevated by an escarpment, Kane said; the wide-open horizons created by farmland puts more of the night sky in an observer’s vision. That allows more time for observers to orient their telescopes to the events and objects they want to see.

“One of my daughters, who is 18 now, whose first words were ‘moon up,’” said Kane. “It’s that we clearly orient ourselves to the sky and are curious about it, and it’s that curiosity that generates interest in science, and it’s the curiosity that gets us to solve some of the problems in our world.”