PRESQUE ISLE – In Maine, economic development officials will tell you that one of the tricks to attracting businesses is to offer as many incentives as possible.

But with major retailers beating a path to the city’s doorstep without the lure of local enticements, Presque Isle is finding itself in a situation that most cities only dream of.

Representatives for several national retailers have taken a sudden interest in the northern Maine city, and that interest has not waned because of the city’s somewhat remote location – nearly 200 miles north of Bangor – or its population – less than 10,000.

The day before celebrating the grand opening of a Staples store, city officials received news that two more big box retailers, Home Depot and Lowe’s, were making plans to locate stores in town.

First Hartford Realty Corp., based in Manchester, Conn., announced on Friday plans to develop a Home Depot anchored shopping center near the Aroostook Centre Mall. The 140,000-square-foot center, to be located east of the Helen Noreen Apartments on the Fort Fairfield Road, will feature at least two satellite retailers and a sit-down restaurant, John Toic, First Hartford’s director of project development, said Tuesday.

The realty corporation broke ground last month on a 234,000-square-foot shopping center in Bangor. Toic said tenants are not being announced yet for the Presque Isle shopping center, though he expects the project to generate more than 200 new jobs. Cost estimates for the project are not final yet, he said.

Locating the shopping center in Presque Isle was not a tough decision for the corporation, Toic said.

“It’s a market that’s not being served right now by [national] home improvement retailers,” he said. “The center will draw not only from the local area, but from the greater region.”

Home Depot, however, may get some competition from Lowe’s, another national home improvement retailer.

The same day that First Hartford Realty made its announcement, the city received zoning appeals requests and a preliminary site plan for a Lowe’s store on leased Aroostook Centre Mall property from Rizzo Associates out of Framingham, Mass. Both Home Depot and Lowe’s are aware that the competition is looking to locate a store in the area, a city official said.

David Albrecht, project director at Rizzo Associates, was unavailable for comment on this story.

According to the Lowe’s Web site, the chain currently has no stores open in Maine.

The company’s requests appear on the publicly posted agenda for the zoning board of appeals, which will meet Oct. 12 to discuss the appeals.

The site plan calls for a 147,000-square-foot facility to be built on the Maysville Road in the spot where the Hoyts Aroostook Cinema building now stands.

A mall official said Tuesday that she had no comment about whether management would replace the cinema.

Rizzo Associates are seeking a reduction in the mandatory number of parking spaces the facility would need for each 1,000 square feet of gross building area, from 4.5 to 3.5. The company also is seeking a setback reduction to accommodate the pre-engineered building at the site location. Site plans call for the cinema entrance to be removed and for a new entrance to be created about 300 feet to the west.

A Lowe’s spokeswoman, Jennifer Smith, said that the company has not made any announcements about a site in Presque Isle, though as policy, the company does not comment on projects until it has closed a deal on the purchase or lease of property for a site. Smith did say that the company is in the middle of its most aggressive expansion plans ever: Lowe’s opened 130 stores in 2003, is opening 140 stores in 2004, and will open 150 more in 2005.

Smith said two Lowe’s are currently being planned for Maine. Those stores would be located in Auburn and Brunswick.

As Jim Brown, the city’s director of economic and community development, watches all this happen, he says two big box home improvements stores in town is a situation that Presque Isle never has had to worry about before.

“We can’t begin to guess the impact two such similarly-sized facilities will have on the area,” Brown said Tuesday. “As a city, we rely on the retailers to decide whether that is feasible.”

Looking at the bigger picture, Brown said he is not surprised, but intrigued at the national retailers’ interest.

“Despite what we believe here locally about having a higher level of economic strength and vitality than what the numbers put out by the state were showing, there was less basis for [retailer] optimism based on those numbers,” Brown said.

“I think the message that it will send to other retailers is that the central Aroostook area has potential,” he said. “The city’s position for many years has been to provide the opportunity for careful, organized, sequential growth. I think we’re seeing the progressive results of that approach to development.”