PLAN FOR DEVELOPMENT

Local planning boards often know more about the number of parking spaces a large new retail store would produce than they do about the net number of jobs it would bring. But learning about the broad economic effects of a development is crucial to any community trying to make good planning decisions.

LD 1810, an Act to Enact the Informed Growth Act, would establish the standard of a comprehensive impact study for large-scale retail development. The Legislature’s State and Local Government Committee has already voted in favor of the measure, 9-3. A floor vote is expected soon.

The bill requires an applicant seeking a permit to build retail developments with 75,000 square feet or more floor space to have an impact study and public hearing before getting approval. This would achieve several goals, most important of which is that it would give a community a chance to understand the likely effects of a project before it is built, allowing for better choices.

Without that information, town officials have a hard time assessing how a development would affect, for instance, jobs – sometimes a new large business can reduce employment nearby, resulting in a net loss. Or how it would affect town coffers – do the expected new tax revenues more than offset the losses from a nearby store closing plus the potential added costs for police and firefighting services, plus road work? Undoubtedly, many of these large developments would rate on the positive side of all these measures, but, just as likely, many would not.

But because they do not know, communities often do not want to risk saying no to a development, or risk pointing out that a developer would need to improve a proposal before submitting a final draft. This bill makes asking those questions a regular part of the process.

Dan Tremble, former Bangor mayor and one of more than 150 small-business owners in favor of LD 1810, testified that the bill’s “real benefit is in giving local planners additional criteria that can be used in approving a project that can have a tremendous impact on a community.” Those criteria, the work of independent analysts, would also include information on how abutting communities were affected and, because all communities in Maine would meet this standard, would prevent developers from playing one community off another.

With so many communities lacking in-depth planning processes, LD 1810 serves as a safeguard to ensure planners don’t unintentionally work against the long-term interests of their towns. The bill won’t stop retail development – the result of a negative impact statement would almost always be modification – but it will shape it by giving members of the public powerful information about the way their communities are being built.