BANGOR – Can a group that consists of a wide variety of clashing interests reach accord on development near the Penjajawoc watershed and the Bangor Mall?

Only time will tell, but tension was absent during Friday morning’s inaugural meeting of the Penjajawoc-Mall Area Stakeholders Task Force.

The task force consists of three representatives from five groups with an interest in the area: environmentalists, landowners and neighbors, local land trusts, commercial developers in the Bangor Mall area, and city staffers.

The city has taken a leadership role in the process. It has appointed the task force, freed up staff to work on the issue and is picking up the $10,000 tab for hiring a professional facilitator, Jonathan Reitman, whose company, Gosline & Reitman Dispute Resolution Services, was among five to submit a proposal for the work.

A Brunswick lawyer, Reitman has provided mediation and facilitation services for groups in Maine, several national organizations and in such conflicted areas as Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Middle East. He also has taught dispute resolution courses at law schools since 1996.

“My role, as I see it, is to be a neutral guide,” Reitman told participants during their first session. “I don’t have any views on how this should come out,” he said, adding that a key part of his job is to “make sure all voices are heard.”

Reitman could have his work cut out for him.

Few issues have generated more heartburn in Bangor than the Penjajawoc, which was little known outside of the city until a New York developer proposed building a Wal-Mart Supercenter nearby.

Bangor Area Citizens for Responsible Development, or BACORD, a local environmental group, and its ally, Maine Audubon, fought the project, which was rejected in March 2003 by the state Board of Environmental Protection.

Local landowners, who also banded together, saw the environmentalists’ efforts as infringements on their property rights.

To that end, the mission of the group is to develop a plan that would provide both for commercial development and protection of the ecologically sensitive Penjajawoc marsh and stream.

The point is to come up with an approach that the entire community can support, an assignment the group hopes to complete this spring.

As Reitman sees it, the road to consensus will require that participants set aside past confrontations and disappointments and stop “demonizing” the other sides.

“That’s not helpful,” he said. “I want to say that up front.”

Quoting someone he said was “far wiser” than he, Reitman said, “If you always do what you’ve always done, you will always get what you’ve always gotten.”

In a related measure, the city is partnering with the state Department of Environmental Protection to undertake a study of the Penjajawoc watershed to better understand it and determine how water quality can be improved without halting development in the nearby Bangor Mall area, an important economic engine for the region.

The information gathered during the study will form the basis of a management plan that could serve as a statewide role model for communities facing similar challenges, according to city officials.

The state will cover most of the cost of the work. The city’s $6,000 share of the roughly $30,000 study likely will be contributed in the form of in-kind staff services.