MATTAWAMKEAG, Maine — A developer’s plan to turn the former Dr. Carl Troutt School into a small-scale wood pellet manufacturing facility might get a significant boost when the planning board meets to discuss it on Wednesday, officials said.
Code Enforcement Officer Dwight Tilton said Tuesday he didn’t expect the board to encounter any major obstacles in approving developer David Kidwell’s proposal when it meets and holds a public hearing on the plan. The meeting is set for 7 p.m. at the town office, he said.
The school is within a limited industrial zone. Aside from a warning from the Maine Department of Environmental Protection to ensure that Kidwell’s school renovations not upset asbestos within the building, the project has drawn no red flags so far, Tilton said.
Residents overwhelmingly voted to support Kidwell’s plan when they met at a special town meeting on March 14. Kidwell would install two machines that would manufacture softwood pellets for home-heating use at the school, probably starting on July 1. He hopes to have all of his business permits and close on the sale by then, he said recently.
Eventually, as many as 18 people would be employed at the facility. They would run two manufacturing machines that could generate a maximum capacity of 20,000 tons of home-heating pellets for regional sale, said Kidwell and John Whitehouse, chairman of the Board of Selectmen.
Whitehouse placed the cost of the renovations and machinery at close to $650,000.
“We intend to be up and running by the beginning of the heating season of this year,” said Kidwell, who placed the plant’s start date more precisely as mid-October. He said he was “pleasantly surprised” at the warm reception residents gave his plan when he detailed it on March 14.
“The community came out and they had great questions, questions that I would have asked if I was a town resident, and really they were very, very supportive of it. I couldn’t be more happy with the vote,” Kidwell said.
Troutt, which opened in 1973, was one of the oldest, least-populated and most expensive school buildings to maintain in RSU 67 when officials closed it in 2009.
Residents in the town of about 680 people voted 52-22 at a special meeting in January to reject a proposal to turn the building into a medical marijuana dispensary. Residents said they feared that the dispensary would draw more crime to the area.
Kidwell would use the gymnasium to house the pellet machines. The rest of the building would accommodate offices and a machine shop, Whitehouse said.
“I am just pleased that, after 20 years without any employment growth, we are finally getting some jobs here,” Whitehouse said Wednesday. “I’ve got to give my kudos to the guy because he really did his homework. He went to that meeting and he really sold it to people. Everybody who had questions, he answered.”