Belfast settles bold planning agenda at summit

BELFAST – On Saturday morning, 25 people gathered in the lower level of the Belfast Free Library in what was billed as a planning summit.

The group – which included the city manager and city planner, members of the City Council, members of the planning board and members of three temporary planning committees – worked with a sense of urgency, knowing that a 180-day clock had begun ticking earlier in the week.

On Tuesday, a divided council had renewed an initial 180-day moratorium on “big box” stores and fast-food restaurants to give planners time to craft new ordinances that would control such commercial development. Saturday morning, Mayor Mike Hurley told the group that the moratorium would not be renewed again, so the work had to get done soon.

Developers have come knocking on Belfast’s door in a big way. A proposal in the spring from Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to build a 150,000-square-foot Supercenter on Route 3 prompted the first moratorium. Wal-Mart has since dropped its bid to build on Route 3, but other retail and fast-food business have come on its heels. Pizza Hut is the latest to look at the Route 3 strip.

As things stand now with the ordinances, City Planner Wayne Marshall told the group at the outset of Saturday’s session, a Shaw’s supermarket could apply for and be granted permits to built in some districts in the city without so much as Planning Board review.

Five years ago, fears of such development would have been unimaginable in Belfast.

In the early 1990s, the city was still reeling from the demise of the poultry business when the national recession hit. Land use planning and preservation understandably took a back seat to economic development in those years.

But now, Belfast is booming, thanks in large part to credit-card lender MBNA New England’s decision in 1995 to establish offices just outside the downtown.

Presently, MBNA employs 2,400 in Belfast, with plans to add another 2,000 more in the next three years. According to the 1990 census, Belfast had a population of 6,300.

Historic preservation, downtown design standards and a rethinking of the city’s highway corridors are all on the table, and all looked at from the perspective of a community that can pick and choose what kind of development it wants to encourage.

The primary question facing the group Saturday was how to prioritize the work.

Marshall outlined some of the key areas of concern in his opening presentation: the Route 3 area, from the IGA plaza west to the Belmont town line; the Route 137 area, which is bounded by the Poors Mills Road to the north and the Route 1 bypass to the south; the Route 1 south area, which is south of the Northport Avenue/Route 1 intersection; and the Searsport Avenue and Route 141 area, which is east of the Route 1 bridge.

Marshall noted some of the inconsistencies in the standards for the existing zones. For example, he said, the new Auto Zone store just inside the Route 1 bypass did not have to have a pitched roof or meet height limits, while retail businesses a stone’s throw farther away on Route 3 do have to meet those standards.

Marshall and a corridor committee have been working to refine standards for development in the Route 3 area that covers minimum lot size – an acre, with 250-feet of road frontage – parking, and signs.

The uses on Route 3 won’t be radically different, the planner said, but developers will face different standards.

“Route 3 – that’s where they want to be,” Marshall responded to a question about fast-food restaurants. Most fast- food retailers do 80 percent of their business through their take-out windows, he said, which is why they would not want to set up shop in a food court, as someone suggested.

The group discussed refining ordinance changes for the highway zones, with most agreeing that this should be top priority. But members of an historic preservation committee, which has held hearings on its proposals, did not want to see its report gather dust.

The historic preservation proposal – designed to protect the architectural integrity of Belfast’s mid- to late-19th-century commercial and residential downtown – is unique in that developers would be required to submit their plans to a committee, but not mandated to follow any particular standards.

If a building owner wanted to add a dormer or install new siding – the first would require a building permit, the second would not – the owner would have to submit plans to a revolving membership citizen committee. The committee members could suggest alternatives that would maintain historic integrity, but the building owner would not have to comply.

“If the applicant tells you to pound sand,” rather than agreeing to comply, Marshall said, “you say, ‘thank you for participating.’ It’s ‘mandatory process, voluntary compliance.'”

A downtown design standards committee is also finishing its work. That group is developing mandated standards.

Before they adjourned for the day, councilors agreed to focus on adopting the highway ordinance changes, while also attending to the historic and downtown plans on a secondary track.