ORONO – Engineering students from the University of Maine this spring will apply much of what they’ve learned during their college careers to Brewer’s waterfront redevelopment plan.

The redevelopment plan for Penobscot Landing, as Brewer’s waterfront now is known, was adopted by the City Council in November.

Among the attractions proposed for Penobscot Landing, which runs from just north of the Penobscot River Bridge southward to the Orrington line, are a riverside recreational path, an entertainment and niche retail district, a marina and a boat launch, a children’s garden, a public market and artisan cooperative, museums, a boat-building demonstration site and a small performing arts center, among other things.

While the master plan spells out proposed placements for waterfront attractions and features, as well as a timeline and cost estimates, it is still conceptual in nature, a document that will see fine-tuning as the plan is implemented.

As part of their capstone design course, 28 university seniors have been charged with developing alternative designs for Penobscot Landing, professor Dana Humphrey of the UM department of civil and environmental engineering said this week.

According to Humphrey, the students slated to graduate in May will be divided into five teams, each operating as a real design firm.

“This is really going to stretch them,” Humphrey said Tuesday. “We’re going to take it from the concept phase to the final design. I’m probably giving them two semesters’ worth of work in one.”

Among the details the student teams will consider are traffic and environmental impacts, cost estimates, designs for major structures, riverfront access road and parking needs, water distribution and fire hydrant planning, and which existing elements should be improved or redeveloped and which should be demolished, to name a few.

The semester-long effort will culminate with a presentation before a mock planning board, Humphrey said.

As in a real firm, the five teams will work under tight deadlines and budget constraints and will submit monthly invoices.

“What the city’s going to gain is several different alternative designs that will help the city as it moves forward on implementing its waterfront plan of November 2000,” Humphrey said.

Drew Sachs, the city’s economic development director, agreed. He said that the students’ alternatives would provide detailed, specific information that will prove useful to city staff, property owners, prospective developers and others involved in turning the city’s waterfront master plan into reality.

“The university really deserves credit for volunteering their support for this project,” he said.

Sachs said the students’ work would be shared with city staff and elected officials, as well as waterfront property owners.

The idea, Humphrey said, is to arm the students with some of the work experience they’ll need as they venture into the job market this spring and summer.

“Our goal is to provide engineering firms with new employees who are really ready to go to work,” he said.

According to Humphrey, the capstone project is an annual requirement for civil and environmental engineering majors.

As their project, last year’s graduates developed four options for developing a regional business park on a roughly 300-acre tract in Orono. Members of the Class of ’97 prepared plans for a proposed multipurpose facility that would have been home to the Bangor Blue Ox, a minor league baseball team formerly headquartered in the area.