LINCOLN, Maine — It will cost the town $30,000 to cross a tiny parcel of land, but the easement town officials opted to pursue Monday is the biggest break since 2002 in their efforts to create light manufacturing jobs by developing 60 acres off the Interstate 95 access road.
With Michael Ireland the sole dissenter, Town Council members emerged from an executive session and voted 6-1 to allow Town Manager Lisa Goodwin to secure the easement through land near Flyaway Drive by closing negotiations with the Edwards brothers of Lincoln. The talks should wrap up in a month.
The goal: eventually to create a mile-long underground utility hookup from River Road to Route 6.
“We want to create jobs with livable wages,” Goodwin said Monday.
The lack of easy sewer, water and three-phase electrical access has been the biggest impediment to developing the town-owned Industrial Park West proposed in 2002, the adjoining Lincoln Municipal Airport and private lands on the road’s north side near Route 6, which is known locally as West Broadway and is the Lincoln Lakes region’s largest retail zone.
“The lack of access to that area has been a substantial detriment to development there for years,” Ruth Birtz, the town’s economic development director, said after the meeting. “Putting in underground sewer lines is a huge expense.”
Plans to build a utility line along River Road straight off Route 6 foundered with the anticipated expense — about $100 per linear foot. The Edwards purchase will allow the proposed line to run diagonally from West Broadway to the seaplane base at the end of Flyaway Drive, substantially decreasing the required footage, Birtz said.
All of the targeted land is in an area zoned for light industrial development, Goodwin said.
“It would be a great place for manufacturing,” council chairman Steve Clay said. “It is close to the airport and I-95, and there is a lot of land there that could be used.”
George, John and Timothy Edwards own a substantial portion of the privately owned land along the road, which is also home to a Veterans Affairs clinic. The brothers likely would benefit from the utility line, but Clay and Goodwin said the project would more than pay for itself in tax revenue and jobs.
“This is a very big first step for the town, and I am very pleased that everybody recognized that it was something that all parties involved knew needed to happen,” Birtz said.
The $30,000 will come from a town account created in 2004 with funds generated by a tax agreement with Lincoln Paper and Tissue LLC when the company opened. The account has $89,000, Goodwin said.
Funding from the utility line would come from the same account, plus whatever state and federal grants the town could find, Goodwin said, but she and Birtz warned residents to expect the project to take years to develop, as the sewer line’s cost likely would be more than $1 million.
Birtz said she would begin looking for appropriate grants to apply for.
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