Millinocket developer puts property up for sale

MILLINOCKET – The developer of what would have been the town’s first large-scale housing project since the 1980s has put his property up for sale.

Because the Town Council voted 4-1-1 last month against a variance that would have allowed the proposed $2 million to $3 million Mountain View Townhouses condominium complex to proceed, developer Robert Benjamin is looking to build outside town lines or in East Millinocket, Medway, Chester or Lincoln, said Dan Corcoran, real estate agent for Benjamin’s Katahdin Homes LLC.

The developer took the action despite earlier promises that the project would proceed even if the variance was denied.

“We could build, I guess. We’re just not interested,” Corcoran said Wednesday.

“We thought it was a very good project. It was an investor willing to invest in Millinocket,” Corcoran added. “It was our understanding that the town was looking for new upscale housing. We are disappointed that in the end the town turned it down. We respect that, and if the town changes its mind in the future, we would be happy to look at other opportunities.”

“For Sale” signs went up last Friday on the property, which is off Forest and Hillcrest avenues and Route 157. Benjamin bought the land last spring.

Town Manager Eugene Conlogue and Councilor Wallace Paul reacted mildly to the news.

“It is a nice piece of property and I hope whoever buys it seeks to build new housing on it. It would make a nice subdivision in there,” Conlogue said.

“I haven’t talked to them, but I am guessing that their philosophy is that they want to grow a program,” Paul said of Benjamin and Corcoran. “This was a piece of land that had reasonable access to infrastructure. … I think they were looking to put in some units, get some cash flow and start to build elsewhere.

“I would be open, personally, to discussing that further,” Paul added. “It was a difficult vote for me, but in the end the people in this neighborhood asked me to vote this way, so I did.”

Benjamin called the four-building, 16-unit development a boon to the neighborhood that would address Millinocket’s lack of upscale, new housing while providing about $75,000 in new tax revenue to the town.

But councilors heeded residents’ complaints that the condo plan failed to fit the neighborhood’s character and would elevate their taxes and block their views of Mount Katahdin.

Councilors also expressed concern that unexplained errors in zoning that date back several years allowed duplexes in that neighborhood’s zone and zoned one house there neighborhood-commercial. The council must approve zone changes.

Zoning board members said they will address the errors this month.

Benjamin hoped that young professionals and elderly retirees, people who typically do not want to fuss with yard work or maintenance, would spend at least $200,000 per two- to three-bedroom unit to buy into the complex, which would have included underground parking and other amenities.

Katahdin Homes still does business in the area. Corcoran said it has a housing project, a single family camp on South Twin Lake, which is in unincorporated land near Millinocket.