State foresees major sprawl by 2050 Zoning plans urged for major service centers

BANGOR – Maine, according to a panel of local and state officials involved in regional planning, will be a very different state by 2050.

Southern Maine, according to Evan Richert, director of the State Planning Office, will become so urbanized that it will essentially become an extension of Boston. Other service center regions of the state, such as Bangor, Lewiston, and Presque Isle, will experience an out migration of population as their surrounding communities become increasingly large.

The findings of the planning office were discussed Thursday at a breakfast program sponsored by Maine Businesses for Social Responsibility – an organization of 325 businesses organized to encourage the adoption of socially acceptable business practices with regard to the environment, employees and communities. Among the speakers Thursday at the Bangor Theological Seminary were Richert, Bangor Mayor John Rohman and Andrew Hamilton, a Bangor environmental and development attorney.

The program addressed Maine’s current outlook with regard to sprawl, its likely spread over the next 50 years, and how best communities can work to mitigate its effects.

The areas surrounding cities like Portland, Lewiston and Bangor have become attractive places to live for people seeking to escape the hustle and bustle of the market centers, Richert said. As those surrounding communities grow, the planner said, businesses follow them – leading to sprawl. In that sense, Richert said communities like Portland, Bangor and Lewiston have seen widespread sprawl and a decrease in population.

But regardless of an apparent population drop, Richert said these service center cities still provide the bulk of Maine’s jobs and retail goods. About 75 percent of Maine’s jobs and 84 percent of taxable sales are generated in the service centers of Maine, he said.

“Growth and sprawl don’t equal each other,” Richert said. “Don’t even think about it. You can have population decline and still have sprawl. Conversely, you can have population growth and no sprawl.”

Sprawl is further fueled, Richert said, when businesses follow population centers out of the cities in the form of malls and strip development. People then move further from that development, leading to a cycle of development, urbanization and population shift, Richert said. As a result the downtown regions of many cities whither from the loss of business.

“It might have been the right thing to do” for a community, Richert said of the development of malls in Bangor and other Maine cities, “but it had its costs. It had its impacts, and one of those impacts was on downtowns.” Downtown regions, he said, continue to serve their communities as the center of identity for a city and the heart of a community’s banking and investment.

Hamilton, though agreeing that sprawl presents a large concern to Maine, said that more could be done to address sprawl issues by tapping into economic opportunities in Canada, by constructing an east-west highway and developing a network of two-year colleges to assist people “transition from a natural resources-based economy.”

In terms of development planning, Hamilton said communities must clearly spell out which parts of their city is zoned for development and which are set aside for residential areas and green spaces. A community, Hamilton said, must “send out clear and consistent signals” about its development policies. Cities may also maximize the amount of business within its retail and industrial areas by cleaning up former business sites and bringing existing infrastructure up to standard.

Rohman, who is also president and CEO of WRBC architects, said he believes the city of Bangor has a comprehensive plan in effect that will help to control growth. Reviving the city’s downtown area, Rohman said, will come through government subsidies to businesses renovating downtown spaces and by helping to ease the codes which may make it nearly impossible to renovate those buildings.

Also fueling sprawl, Rohman said, is Bangor’s high property tax rates in comparison to those of nearby cities and towns. In addition, group homes and other such agencies operate in Bangor, removing property from the tax rolls and shifting additional tax burden onto business owners and homeowners. Yet Rohman said he believes that the downtown regions will “continue to be the heartbeat of our state.”

Some of the more than 60 business owners, legislators and concerned citizens in attendance expressed concern about proposed developments such as the super Wal-Mart stores in various stages of consideration in several Maine towns.

Richert said he agreed that the generic “big box” stores don’t add to a city’s identity, but said consumers have shown time and again that they will choose to shop at those stores – regardless of whether there are similar shopping selections in a city’s downtown area. Citizens wear, in order of importance, the hats of consumer, taxpayer and civic participant. The consumer and taxpayer tend to favor stores like a Wal-Mart Supercenter, Richert said.

The planner dismissed the view that most people would choose otherwise. “History says different,” Richert said. “History says that’s not what people do.