BANGOR – Some of the details surrounding a nearly 218,000-square-foot Wal-Mart Supercenter were unveiled Wednesday during a meeting held at the project site, a grassy, tree-fringed field off Stillwater Avenue located behind the Blue Seal Feeds store.

Before The Bangor Mall was built, the area was used for agriculture, cow farming and haying.

“My husband’s grandfather owned this field,” said Cindy DeBeck of Newburgh, a landowner serving on the city’s Penjajawoc Marsh-Bangor Mall management commission and who served on the task force that preceded it.

By next year, however, Wal-Mart officials are hoping it will be the site of their new Supercenter, which will replace an existing 114,000-square-foot store less than a mile away on Springer Drive.

In addition to the usual general merchandise Wal-Mart sells, the Supercenter will include a full grocery store with a deli, a bakery, produce and dry goods.

For some, the informal session conducted by Wal-Mart’s land agent, the James W. Sewall Co. of Old Town, was the first chance to get some firsthand information about the project, which has been several years in the making.

Wal-Mart’s current Supercenter proposal is its second for Bangor. The first, announced in 2000, called for a 224,000-square-foot store at Stillwater Avenue and Gilman Road. Despite a staff recommendation that a state development permit be issued, the Board of Environmental Protection in 2003 denied the permit in a 5-3 vote.

Sticking points cited by BEP members at the time included:

. A lack of proof that Wal-Mart was legally responsible for financing project costs above the $7.7 million committed by the original developer, New York-based Widewaters Group, and KeyBank.

. Dissatisfaction with plans for mitigating damage to the environment and wildlife.

. Disagreement over whether the project should be considered on its own merit, or as part of a five-lot commercial subdivision also including, among other things, Circuit City.

This time around, the Supercenter is proposed for a different location farther away from the marsh but still within Bangor’s desirable mall area retail zone. In addition, Wal-Mart is using a different developer, and the city and state both have put more stringent development criteria in place.

According to project details provided by project engineer Jeff Allen of the Sewall Co., the Supercenter, its parking lot and access roads will take up 19.3 acres of the project’s 50.6-acre lot.

Allen said that the project will disturb less than an acre of wetland, but that 21.75 acres of onsite wetland will be preserved and maintained.

In addition, Allen’s associate, Michael Young, said that a large wet meadow on the site will be preserved and that shade trees will be planted along the Penjajawoc Stream to lower water temperatures, a move that will benefit fish, he said. He said a series of stone dams would stabilize a small eroding tributary stream that empties into the Penjajawoc.

If all goes according to plan, construction of the new Supercenter will begin sometime next year, a Wal-Mart spokesman said Wednesday.

“It’s difficult to predict [exactly when work will begin] due to the permits and approval process; however, we would certainly like to open our new Bangor store around the spring of 2008,” Christopher Buchanan, senior manager for public affairs, said in a telephone interview from his office in Plymouth, Mass.

Other details released Wednesday dealt with site access, which will be adjacent to the Crossroads Mall, and the developer’s plans to reduce visual impact through the use of landscape plantings and a winding entrance road.

More information, including the project’s price tag, is expected to be available Friday, when Wal-Mart Real Estate Business Trust submits applications for state environmental permits.

The project also will be the subject of an Aug. 11 meeting of the city’s Penjajawoc Marsh-Bangor Mall management commission, an advisory group the city appointed to give developers early feedback to help ensure their projects meet community and environmental priorities, Shep Harris, the panel’s chairman, said at the information meeting.

“But we probably won’t have a substantive conversation until September,” he said.

Harris said he was gratified to see that plans do, in fact, call for modern storm-water management technology, as opposed to outdated retention ponds.

Sewall Co.’s design team plans to use bioretention cells and underdrained swales to treat parking lot runoff, which Harris noted was a “much more” expensive but more effective management method.

Despite allegations that Wal-Mart circumvented the city’s new protocol for reviewing mall-area development projects, Harris said he had a long conversation with the project engineer last week.

“I’m OK with the process,” he said. “I don’t see this as being an issue.”