The Bangor City Council has approved a change to zoning restrictions that will allow a family’s controversial proposal to open an RV park on rural land off Stillwater Avenue to move ahead.
Cindy DeBeck, of Newburgh, has requested the change so that she can develop a seasonal RV park on 70 acres behind the Walmart on Stillwater Avenue that has been in her family for more than a century.
The project plan, which DeBeck is still putting together, will now need additional approval from the Bangor Planning Board. She also plans to bring the project to a special city commission that can review and provide input on developments near the Penjajawoc Marsh, which borders DeBeck’s property.
“If we can’t do this, then my only other options are to either sell the whole thing — which I don’t want to do, I want to keep part of this in the family — or [to develop] cluster housing and I really don’t want to do that,” DeBeck said Monday night, before the council took its vote. “Without this change, just allowing RV parks on Stillwater Avenue, like I said, I’m dead in the water, and I’m tired. It would be so much easier to throw up my hands and say the heck with the whole thing.”
On Monday night, councilors voted 7-1 to accept the rule change that will allow RV parks, campgrounds, golf courses and driving ranges to be developed along certain rural sections of Stillwater Avenue. It will group Stillwater Avenue with two other major Bangor roads, Broadway and Union Street, where those uses are already allowed in areas with rural residential and agricultural zoning.
The council previously rejected a similar rule change that would have applied to all major arterial roads in the city in addition to Broadway and Union Street, but it would have had the same practical effect of allowing those types of projects on Stillwater Avenue.
At the time, councilors expressed concern for the unintended consequences of allowing new types of development near the city’s environmentally protected areas.
Bangor’s planning board also voted 4-3 last fall against recommending the more recent rule change, with some members raising concerns about the additional vehicle traffic that an RV park could bring to the congested sections of Stillwater Avenue.
Since the council last considered the matter, a volunteer, city-appointed commission that monitors developments in the area near Penjajawoc Marsh has also given preliminary support to the change of zoning restrictions.
On Monday night, the lone dissenting vote came from Councilor Lauren Supica, who said she did not want to vote against the planning board. Councilor Sarah Nichols did not attend the meeting.
DeBeck said that she also plans to have the proposal vetted by the city’s Penjajawoc Marsh-Bangor Mall Management Commission to address any environmental or other concerns its members have. That volunteer group was formed more than a decade ago to balance development of the Bangor Mall area with the protection of the nearby Penjajawoc Marsh
“I think you’ve earned the right to let this continue,” said Councilor Ben Sprague. “And I think you should be mindful of the environmental concerns, simply because you’re going to be an underdog applicant at the planning board. You’re going to sink thousands of dollars of your own money in here and I think they will appreciate the efforts to go through the mall-marsh commission and make it as low impact as possible.”
Last fall, councilors initially delayed voting on the new rule change and instead referred it to that commission to see if its members could find some compromise between DeBeck and opponents of her project, including Lucy Quimby, president of the Bangor Land Trust.
On Monday, Bangor Planning Officer Anne Krieg said the commission discussed the proposal over three meetings and ultimately decided that it could only make a recommendation to the council about how it should vote. Its members voted 6-3 to recommend the rule change, with DeBeck — who sits on the commission — recusing herself.
The commission also recommended that the planning board heed the city’s environmental protection rules when considering any projects near the marsh.
During the council meeting, Quimby said that she didn’t think the commission had enough time to vet the proposed change. She also expressed concern that the city’s ordinances may not have enough environmental protections for the planning board to call upon in its review of DeBeck’s eventual proposal.
“The planning board doesn’t have the tool to say, ‘OK, we’re invoking this and this requirement [as a condition of approval],’” Quimby said.