Medway to discuss selling 276 acres

MEDWAY – Businessman Dick Day hopes to finish negotiations and buy 276 acres of town-owned land for his proposed multimillion-dollar industrial park, upscale housing development, biomass boiler-fired electrical plant and trail and park complex within two months, he said Monday.

Day and the Board of Selectmen were due to meet in executive session Monday night to discuss details of the sale, Day and town administrative assistant Kathy Lee said. No deal was expected to be announced at meeting’s end.

“A project of this size is going to [take] at least two years if you started yesterday,” Day said Monday. “I hope to see construction activity by the end of the year. I want to see something by the end of this summer.

“It won’t be long before you have some serious news,” he said.

Details of the plan, which has been in development for several years, are still sketchy, Lee said, but from early indications, the plan would be beneficial to the Katahdin region, which typically has unemployment double the state average.

“Job creation would be the biggest thing about it,” Lee said, “not just for Medway but for the entire area.”

Day agreed.

“Some people around here,” Day said, “like to make a big thing about town borders, but I don’t care about that. Everything I am doing is to help the community – not just Medway, but Millinocket and East Millinocket and Woodville. What we’re doing here could affect towns all the way to Bangor.”

Day, owner of Day’s Welding of Medway, was poised in September 2005 to buy the 276 acres off Nicatou Road for $40,000 to create the business park and wood mill he plans to run on it, but various delays occurred. Day originally announced his plans for the multi-phase project in October 2004.

In 2005, Day’s plan called for a boiler that would run on burning wood wastes created by on-site lumber operations, would power a 2-megawatt steam turbine that would provide electricity to heat park businesses.

The boiler also would be instrumental to other businesses Day hopes to draw to the park for phase II. Biomass boilers are common in Canada and Europe, but are rare in the U.S.

Attorney Brad Snow, of Tanous & Snow of East Millinocket, came to an executive session two weeks ago to help selectmen negotiate, Lee said.