A community group based in Blue Hill has bought a scenic blueberry barren in their town from a developer who once wanted to create nine house lots there.
The 38-acre parcel on Route 172 overlooking the Salt Pond had been commercial blueberry land owned by the same family for decades when it went up for sale in 2023. Kennebunk-based developer Geoff Bowley purchased it for $949,000 and soon brought plans before the town to subdivide it into parcels for homes.
Those plans were met with organized grassroots opposition, which formed as Save the Salt Pond Blueberry Barrens and filled town hall hearings about his proposal for more than a year. The town’s planning board eventually rejected the plans in April, citing state subdivision law and local plans that prioritized protecting scenic, cultural and natural resources.
The long debate around the parcel’s future highlighted the tensions between Maine’s need to develop more housing and community desires for conservation, especially on scenic sites that once were available for some public use.
The group has plenty more work to do; it will have to repay a purchase loan within 18 months so it can donate the land to the Blue Hill Heritage Trust. Then, the trust will need time to prepare the site before opening it for public recreation, according to the group.
Members had long aimed to buy the land from Bowley for donation to the land trust and announced those plans in June. But the developer would not confirm it to the BDN at the time and had filed a court appeal of the board’s decision.
An anonymous foundation loaned the group interest-free funds to complete the sale, the group said in a newsletter Monday.
Its fiscal sponsor, the Blue Hill Community Development Corporation, finalized the sale for $1.8 million on July 30, according to the group, roughly double the purchase price.
If the sale doesn’t close or the group can’t pay off the loan, the anonymous lender could keep the donations and take ownership of the property, according to the newsletter. Members wrote they were confident they would raise the funds and may do so within the year.