Friends of Midcoast wants smart growth

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CAMDEN – There’s plenty of evidence that the midcoast is under pressure from commercial and residential growth.

There’s a new “big box” store in Rockland and rumors of more coming to the area; lawsuits fly when housing subdivisions are proposed for former farm fields in Rockport; and a standoff between residents and the state over a road widening in Warren results in a dozen arrests.

Those who lament the changes and feel they can do little beyond hand-wringing have friends who are ready to take action.

Friends of Midcoast Maine is gearing up for a busy 2004, promising a new, more active role in the region’s continuing debate on development.

But the nonprofit group doesn’t see that role as providing bodies to lie in front of bulldozers.

Instead, say Jane Lafleur, executive director, and Mary Kate Reny, chairwoman of the Friends board of directors, the 4-year-old organization will work as resource, helping local coalitions and providing those on the front lines – such as planning boards and comprehensive plan committee members and others – with information they can use in the debate on how the region should grow.

In a letter to supporters last month seeking donations, Lafleur said the midcoast region, Brunswick to Bucksport, can either “do nothing and wait until sprawl has taken over the countryside, eliminated our village centers and scattered ‘Big Box’ stores across the region,” or it can take action.

“The Friends of Midcoast Maine choose to take action,” the letter declares.

“We don’t work directly with town governments,” Lafleur said last week in an interview at the Friends office on Elm Street. Nor does Friends want to become a lobbying group.

Rather, Friends wants to help educate residents of what is at stake, and what alternatives, often only slight modifications to development proposals, are available to leave the area’s way of life intact.

The Friends hosted a series of forums last year that produced lively discussions on the issue of development. As an expansion of those efforts, Friends wants to offer to host smaller versions of the forums in towns where a particular proposal is dividing residents.

The forums, Lafleur and Reny hope, would allow the presentation of several sides of the often emotional issue.

The group is not opposed to growth, Lafleur and Reny stressed, but rather support a national concept called “smart growth.”

Such smart development is characterized by being pedestrian-friendly, easy on traffic, close to or in a downtown, accessible to existing utilities, built on a “human” scale, and making efficient use of land consumption.

As a way of encouraging such development, Friends soon will offer its stamp of approval to projects in Lincoln County which reflect these characteristics. Seeking input from Friends will be voluntary, Lafleur and Reny say. The endorsement can be structured so it notes which elements of the project earned smart-growth kudos, they said.

“This is a big step for us to be an advocate,” Lafleur said, but it is a response to the board of directors’ charge to become more relevant.

The endorsement, if marketed correctly, will be seen by developers as a free consulting service, Reny said.

A Lincoln County committee including a builder, architect, real estate agent and banker will review the projects seeking the endorsement.

“They’ve only reviewed a mock project so far,” Lafleur said, but a real application is not far off, she predicted.

A woman living in Cushing, where a large housing development has been proposed, called Friends last week seeking alternatives to traditional subdivision layout.

Friends hopes it can approach developers with building options that do not necessarily cost more, but result in a better, smarter project.

“We do have developers on our board,” Reny said, as well as two state legislators, a Conservation Law Foundation attorney, land-trust staffers and business owners.

Lafleur and Reny are more than earnest grass-roots activists.

Lafleur holds a master’s degree in city and regional planning from Harvard University and has worked as a planner in Vermont and New Hampshire.

Reny, who works for her husband’s business, the Renys department store chain, has a master’s degree from the Muskie School of Public Service in community planning.

She also worked for a time at the Department of Environmental Protection.

Friends might soon take a position on a development proposal, possibly on the options the state Department of Transportation is proposing for the Wiscasset bypass, Lafleur and Reny said.

The region is at a critical juncture, they believe.

“I think people are getting it more and more,” Reny said, that poor land-use planning has poor consequences. “It’s impacting them more and more.”

“We have a lot of allies,” Lafleur said, in residents in the area. “People are here for a reason,” she said, and that has a lot to do with small, viable towns, rather than commercial sprawl.

Reny said Friends of Midcoast Maine is actively seeking more members, and especially more business owners.

Membership comes with a $25 donation, though the group happily accepts donations from $10 on up.

For information, see www.friendsmidcoast.org.