Ayers Island living lab for UMaine engineering students

ORONO – As an amateur real estate developer, University of Maine senior Aimee Young has an affinity for greenery.

“I wanted a lot of park space -walking trails, bike trails and stuff of that sort,” Young said recently, referring to ideas she and her group have been kicking around for the development of Ayers Island.

Young is enrolled in CIE 411 – the project design and management class for seniors in civil and environmental engineering at the university. The senior project this year is coming up with a development plan for the 62-acre island.

The Town Council will hold a workshop on Ayers Island from 7 to 9:30 tonight in council chambers.

For the project, the 24-student class was divided into four groups of six. Professor Bryan Pearce, the course’s coordinator and also a Town Council member, said it made sense to use a local development as the focus of the class.

“It’s topical,” Pearce said.

Pearce said the proposals for the island could include anything, from storage facilities to residential space to park space and trails, as Young had suggested.

The island’s lessee, UMaine professor George Markowsky, hopes to build a research and development park on Ayers Island, although Pearce said the students were free to propose whatever they feel best fits the island. The students have been asked to maintain a time sheet as would a professional developer, although the exercise has no imaginary spending caps.

“I figure why constrain them,” Pearce said. “They’re already coming up with interesting ideas. They’re younger and smarter than us.”

In addition to deciding what type of development to put on the island, Pearce said the project has four components that must be satisfied.

First, the students will have to determine the impact of their proposed development through a traffic study.

Second, the groups will work from specifications laid out by UMaine’s Advanced Engineering Wood Composites Center to develop a high-tech, light industrial facility to go on the island. Infrastructure accommodations to run sewer, water and possibly electrical power lines onto the island also need to be made.

Last, the groups have to come up with a plan for cleaning up the coal ash, PCBs and other contaminants in the brownfield on the island.

Group proposals will be presented to a team of engineers on March 7 and to a mock planning board on May 7.

With so many components of the project to focus on, Young said, there is an incentive to come up with the most thorough plan.

“There’s almost an unconscious competition between the groups,” Young said. “Basically, it keeps people working hard.”

For Young, the experience illustrates the benefits and obstacles of the engineering profession.

“The project puts us in real engineering situations like we’ll see when we’re out in the field,” Young said. But there’s also a definite need to “make as many people happy as possible,” Young said.

The weather also has figured in as a factor in planning, Young said.

“We have no idea what condition the rest of the island is in because of all the snow,” Young said, referring to the majority of the 62-acre island which hasn’t been plowed.

Although the groups are keeping their development plans under wraps, Young did offer some clues about the direction of her group, Alpha Engineering.

“We’re leaning more towards a service to the public, rather than a service to industry,” Young said, adding that some emphasis was being placed on the age demographic of the town.

“I don’t think we’re using ideas proposed by anyone else so far,” Young added.