Brewer mill site attracts two suitors Developers submit letters of interest

BREWER – They’re not saying who, but city officials are excited about two developers who have submitted letters of interest for redeveloping the defunct Eastern Fine paper mill site.

“These are development companies,” Brewer Economic Development Director Drew Sachs said Wednesday. “These are not the end users of the mill site. These are people who want to take on the mill and work on redeveloping it.

“These people are interested in the enterprise of the mill property,” said Sachs, who also is the managing director of South Brewer Redeveloping LLC. “The developers are extremely interested in what the residents of the city of Brewer want for that site.”

The city in May took over ownership of the 43-acre plant located on South Main Street as part of the sales agreement of Eastern Fine’s parent company.

The city formed SBR to assume the responsibility of owning and redeveloping the site, and the limited liability corporation has been working with potential developers for months.

“We’ve taken loads of developers through the mill in the last month or so,” D’arcy Main-Boyington, deputy director of economic development who also serves with SBR, said Wednesday.

Neither Sachs nor Main-Boyington would give specifics about the two potential developers but did say the site probably would be a combined-use redevelopment project.

The duo added that the return of manufacturing jobs would play only a minor role, if any, in the plans.

“We want to return this property to productive use,” Sachs said.

The amount of interest in the site is surprisingly more than city officials expected, especially since Eastern Fine closed its doors only in January and SBR has owned the property for only five months, Sachs said.

To get public input, SBR is hosting several public tours of the mill site at the end of the month and hopes that now that there is serious interest in redeveloping the site, more people will get involved.

“This is an exercise designed to provide concrete information to the developers,” Sachs said. “They are saying ‘Tell us what you want.'”

After the tours are complete, suggestions for redeveloping the site can be voiced at a public envisioning meeting from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. on Nov. 17 at a place to be announced.

“We’re hoping folks who are interested in participating in those meetings will take the tour,” Main-Boyington said. “It’s important for people to see the site.”

The envisioning meeting is a tool for developers to use to create plans that incorporate the residents’ wants.

“What we intend to do is provide that information [public comments] to the developers immediately after the meeting,” Sachs said. “We will encourage them to incorporate as much of the [ideas] they can in their vision.”

Then in January, SBR will host another public meeting to showcase the developers’ conceptual plans. Residents will be able to make additional recommendations at that point before the final plans are drawn.

SBR must wait until next summer before any plans can go into effect because some equipment in the building still needs to be moved.

To make a reservation for the tours, call administrative assistant Pat Gero at 989-7500. For more information on the mill, call Sachs at 989-7500.