ELLSWORTH – After a couple of years of inactivity, development may finally be coming back to Beckwith Hill.

And though plans to build a bigger local Wal-Mart were scrapped a few years ago, a new 203,000-square-foot Supercenter could end up being in the middle of it.

Several large parcels near the intersection of Myrick Street and Route 3 have been groomed for development, but plans to build in the area have been on hold since early 2002. That’s when state officials told Wal-Mart the company would have to spend roughly $3 million on local road improvements in order to receive state approval for building a 210,000-square-foot Supercenter on Route 3.

Steven Gunty, Ellsworth’s city manager, said Wednesday that after years of discussion, the city, local business owners and Maine Department of Transportation officials are nearing an arrangement by which road improvement costs will be shared by multiple parties.

Wal-Mart indicated this week that it again has plans to build a larger store in Hancock County’s largest municipality. The company’s existing 94,000-square-foot Ellsworth store opened on Route 3 near the Trenton town line in 1993.

Mia Masten, Wal-Mart’s director of community affairs for New England, indicated in a message Thursday evening that a 203,000 square-foot Supercenter is expected to open in a new Ellsworth location in spring 2006. She did not say where the store will be located.

Repeated attempts this week to reach Masten were unsuccessful.

According to Gunty, a traffic study of roads in the Beckwith Hill area has narrowed traffic mitigation options down to a few possible scenarios. All of them involve either widening parts of Routes 1 and 3 and Myrick Street or establishing new traffic flow patterns along the three roads, which intersect to form a triangle.

Gunty said that Route 3 between its intersections with Route 1 and Myrick Street could become a two-lane, one-way street with opposing traffic being rerouted onto Myrick Street and Route 1. Other options include making Myrick Street or Route 1 in the triangle area a one-way road.

Preliminary estimates indicate the improvements could cost between $10 million and $15 million, he said.

City and state officials have scheduled a public meeting on the options for 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 18, at Ellsworth City Hall.

Ellsworth also is working on an impact fee ordinance, which would allow the city to raise “reasonable” road improvement funds from each developer as they apply for and receive building permits from the city, according to Gunty. This would prevent a repeat of the previous Wal-Mart situation, in which the first developer in line would be required to pay the vast majority of road improvement costs up front.

The city manager said, however, that the road improvements being considered cannot and should not be shouldered by Ellsworth and local developers alone. He said development on Mount Desert Island and in Trenton contributes to traffic congestion in Ellsworth.

The state will have to be willing to pay a significant portion of the costs in order for the improvements to be made, he said.

“We’re hoping the state is going to partner up big time,” Gunty said.

The state is expected to choose by next spring which road improvement option to pursue, the city manager said. Until that choice is made, the city cannot implement an impact fee ordinance and developers cannot decide whether to proceed with building plans, he said.

“It’s going to lead to one thing after another,” Gunty said. “It’s going to be very exciting for the city, once we create that critical mass.”

Boston-based company W/S Development built a 116,000-square-foot Home Depot in the Acadia Crossing development on Myrick Street in 2000. It later submitted plans to the city to build an additional 200,000 square feet of retail space in the same development. Those plans were delayed indefinitely when MDOT told the developer it would have to spend roughly $2 million on local road improvements to proceed.

According to state and city officials, there has been discussion between Wal-Mart and W/S Development about building a Supercenter in Acadia Crossing, across Route 3 from where Wal-Mart wanted to build three years ago.

W/S Development has declined to indicate what stores might be included in Acadia Crossing.