You don’t have to look hard to see that the last five years have brought change to Bangor.

For starters, the city has seen a flurry of commercial and residential building, some of which has led to increased traffic.

That’s especially true along the Stillwater Avenue corridor, which in recent years has been the scene of conflict between commercial development and existing residential neighborhoods.

Bangor just became home of the state’s first racino, a temporary gaming facility that eventually will be replaced by a larger permanent facility in the next few years.

On top of that, private investment is beginning at the Bangor Waterfront, where an upscale condominium complex, a commercial building and hotel are in the works.

These are some of the issues that members of the city’s planning board are grappling with while updating the 2000 comprehensive plan. It’s a document that sets forth current trends and conditions and looks at what the future might hold.

The plan is meant to serve as a snapshot of Bangor as it is – and as a blueprint for growth.

“Planning makes all the difference. It allows everyone in the community to participate and say, ‘This is the kind of community that we want to have,'” Kenduskeag Avenue resident Lucy Quimby, president of the Bangor Land Trust, said last week.

Quimby was one of a handful of residents who have closely followed the update process, which included dozens of Tuesday night workshops, many of which she attended.

“Every aspect of our community life is commented on in the plan,” she said. “I think that how a community chooses to organize its use of land is incredibly important.”

Since 2000 alone, 234 single-family housing lots have been created, 326 new multiunit structures have been approved, and more than 1.4 million square feet of new commercial development has been approved, Planning Officer David Gould reports in the comprehensive plan’s introduction.

The spike in activity has brought more traffic and more development pressure to the city, which serves as the region’s service center for government, medical and professional services, education, shopping and entertainment, to name a few.

Concerns over open space, pedestrian safety and increasing traffic volumes prompted the city’s planning department and planning board to take a step back and see whether the most recent comprehensive plan, adopted in 2000, still reflects Bangor’s present and future.

The so-called “midstep” review is somewhat unusual in that the plan usually is updated every 10 years, planning board Chairman Robert Guerette said in an interview late last week.

During a public meeting at 7 p.m. Tuesday, residents will have an opportunity to learn more about the new plan.

He said Tuesday’s meeting is aimed at giving residents a chance to comment on the updated plan before the formal public hearing process begins. The planning board will have a workshop to review residents’ feedback and possibly tweak the plan before it moves to the next steps in the approval process, which culminates with adoption by the City Council.

“We could have gone directly to the public hearing, but we didn’t want to give the impression that the [updated comprehensive plan] was set in stone,” Guerette said.

The process began last year with a series of neighborhood meetings, one in each of four quadrants of the city.

The meetings drew nearly 250 residents, who sounded off about traffic, a desire to make the city more friendly for pedestrians and bicyclists, the need for more affordable housing, and to urge the city to take steps to protect the ecologically sensitive Penjajawoc stream and marsh, to name a few.

The work continued with more than a year’s worth of bimonthly meetings during which planning board members reviewed existing and potential policy as well as several maps.

Among other things, the plan looks at current conditions and projected trends in the areas of housing, economic development, public facilities, transportation, physical development, fiscal implications, natural resources, historical and cultural resources and regional considerations.

Broad planning issues the board tackled included how to approach areas in which land uses are changing, or conflict with neighborhoods, and the future of Bass Park and Bangor Waterfront, two areas in which transformations are taking place.

“I think it was very engaging and obviously quite lengthy,” Guerette said of the overhaul process. “I think everyone who participated takes a great deal of pride in what we’ve accomplished.”

In addition, Guerette said, the planning board visited – and debated how to approach – 28 “transition” areas around the city to see how to avoid conflicts in places where differing land uses, such as residential and commercial, butt up against one another.

Of particular interest to Quimby was the city’s plans for open space, a factor that research all over the country shows has a direct bearing on quality of life and home values.

Access to open space, such as parks and recreational trails, is becoming an important consideration for people choosing a place to live, she said.

She said Bangor is fortunate in that it has space set aside in places such as the Bangor Waterfront, the City Forest and the Kenduskeag Stream trails, among others.

“We need to work on planning for those now or the land will just get eaten up,” she said.

Quimby’s husband, City Councilor Geoffrey Gratwick, also has been following the overhaul.

“The council, our government, really depends upon citizen input, and this is where it comes,” he said.

“How do we as councilors vote on things [when] we have our particular perspectives, but we really can be swayed and influenced by what the public says, and I think these are very important things.

“And secondly, the council depends upon boards to give us this kind of feedback so boards are functioning better,” he said.

“To my way of thinking, the city has done a lot more to include citizens recently, and this is part of that outreach, so we can all be participating in topics that I think are of great importance,” he said.

As Guerette sees it, the comprehensive plan is a useful tool for those who want a preview of what might happen in their neighborhood, at least for the foreseeable future. The plan also helps determine how the city should handle individual development projects and rezoning requests.

“The standard the applicant always has to meet is whether [a proposed construction project or rezoning request] is consistent with the comprehensive plan,” he said.

The updated plan has been posted in its entirety on the city’s Web site, www.bangorme.gov. It can be found on the planning department’s home page. People may pick up a copy of the plan at the planning office at City Hall. Written comments may be submitted through March 24.