Marsh-mall panel recommends zone change

BANGOR – Cecelia and Robert Brown had long planned to sell their triangle-shaped property off the Gilman Road to a developer as a way to finance their golden years.

In order to do that, the couple, now retired, needed to get the zoning designation changed from the residential to commercial.

While that is not ordinarily a complicated step, their property is just outside an area that the comprehensive plan identifies as being appropriate for commercial use.

In order to get the zoning designation changed, the Browns first have to try to convince the Penjajawoc Marsh-Mall Management Commission, the planning board and ultimately the City Council to shift the boundary set in the comprehensive plan to include their land.

That boundary was drawn by the task force from which the management group was spun off.

“At the time the line was drawn, the task force was not aware that the [Brown property] originally was part of a larger family parcel,” City Manager Edward Barrett said. “If we had known that, we would have put the line on the other side of their property.”

Without an amendment to the city’s comprehensive plan, the planning board and City Council would be unlikely to look favorably upon a rezoning application.

Because the land is close to the site where a Lowe’s home improvement store is slated to be built and because of its triangular shape, it is an unlikely candidate for residential development.

Right now the property has the Browns’ house and garage, now occupied by one of their daughters.

The Browns took the first step down that road Friday, when they appeared before the marsh-mall group, a city-appointed advisory panel that has been given the mission of balancing development and environmental concerns in the busy but environmentally sensitive area near the Bangor Mall and Stillwater Avenue shopping areas.

“I brought up five kids on the land and I’d very much like to be independent in my old age,” Cecelia Brown said during the panel’s meeting at City Hall.

She said that the 3 acres left to her by an uncle originally were part of a 5-acre tract left to her and two cousins by one of her uncles.

The cousins’ piece, located within the area deemed appropriate for commercial development, recently was sold.

When the couple, now retired, actually got ready to do that, they learned that their triangle-shaped 3-acre property had become part of a district in which commercial development was prohibited.

While the marsh-mall group’s members sympathized with the Browns’ dilemma, they were split over what to do with it.

The commission in the end agreed to recommend the change, but members wanted to make it clear that the Browns case was an exception.

“One thing we did not want to do is create any hardship for the landowners,” said Cindy DeBeck, who represents landowners on the commission.

Other members, Hope Brogunier and George Elliott among them, were worried that agreeing to shift the boundary to include the Browns’ land could set a precedent that would make it difficult to oppose similar requests in the future.