LINCOLN, Maine — The town will buy Flyaway Road and a 100-foot right of way for $27,000 as part of its plans to improve the airport, an industrial park it seeks to build near it and lands designated for light manufacturing off River Road, officials said Friday.
John, Timothy and George “Barry” Edwards of Lincoln will receive $25,000 and resident Donald Enochs will be paid $2,000, respectively, for the land. It will come from a town reserve account created in 2004 with funds generated by a tax agreement with Lincoln Paper and Tissue LLC when the company opened, said Ruth Birtz, the town’s economic development director.
“We are taking small baby steps setting up the infrastructure we will need for the industrial park,” Town Manager Lisa Goodwin said Friday. “This is another step, and it’s an important step, in that direction.”
The lack of easy sewer, water and three-phase electrical access has been the biggest impediment to developing the 60 acres of town-owned Industrial Park West area proposed in 2002, the adjoining Lincoln Municipal Airport and land on River Road’s north side near Route 6, which is the Lincoln Lakes region’s largest single retail zone.
“When businesses don’t locate here [along River Road or in the proposed park], usually it’s because they don’t have access to public water or sewers,” Birtz said.
Town officials envision a cluster of aviation-related businesses or other industries springing up around P.K. Floats, a manufacturer of flotation devices for airplanes located on Flyaway, and other businesses there.
Besides freeing the way for utility installation, the purchase of the road and the right of way will allow town officials to build a road parallel to the runway for direct access to the town’s Penobscot River seaplane base.
The lack of access forced seaplane pilots wanting to haul their aircraft overland to drive trailers onto the runway, which ends at the river. The Federal Aviation Administration “didn’t appreciate that.”
“They thought it was an inappropriate use of the land,” Birtz said dryly.
The town’s next step will be to hire an engineer to design the utilities, but paving or design work is not expected to begin anytime soon. Sewer installation has an estimated cost of $900,000. The Lincoln Paper and Tissue tax increment financing account has $84,000, Birtz said.
She and Goodwin said it would take four or five years for the account to accrue enough funds, though both always are looking for grants.
The town paid the Edwards brothers $30,000 last year for a tiny parcel of land that will allow underground utility lines from Route 6, or West Broadway, to cross to the airport and industrial park area. That was the first land purchase connected with the industrial park since it was conceived in 2002.