Marsh-mall panel reviews Wal-Mart plan

BANGOR – A city committee charged with balancing environmental and economic interests near the Bangor Mall and Penjajawoc watershed began their review Wednesday of plans for a Wal-Mart Supercenter.

Because of a scheduling conflict, members of the Penjajawoc Marsh-Bangor Mall management commission barely skimmed the surface of their review. The critique will resume on Sept. 8.

Chairman Shep Harris said that Wednesday’s session, which featured a quick recap of some of the project’s key details, was just “the tip of the iceberg” and that there were many aspects of the project to consider, including traffic.

The city advisory group did not issue any specific recommendations during the meeting and isn’t likely to for at least another month.

In the meantime, Wal-Mart officials are continuing to fine-tune their proposal.

“It’s obviously still in the preliminary stages,” Christopher Buchanan, a Wal-Mart senior manager for public affairs, said after Wednesday’s meeting.

“We’re receiving some pretty good feedback,” he said.

Buchanan was among more than a dozen people connected with the project who attended the meeting. The design team included traffic and wetlands experts, a lawyer, some engineers and some corporate officials.

Proposed is a nearly 218,000-square foot Supercenter, which would be located on a 50.6-acre site on Stillwater Avenue, behind Blue Seal Feeds.

The new store would replace an existing 114,000-square-foot store less than a mile away on Springer Drive.

If all goes to plan, construction will begin next year, with the opening slated for spring 2008.

Before the review continues, committee members said they hoped to meet with representatives from the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, the federal Environmental Protection Agency, the Army Corps of Engineers and any other environmental regulators.

They said they wanted to get a handle on whether recommendations they come up with would be acceptable to those agencies.