Lowe’s files new Belfast store plan

BELFAST – Lowe’s Home Centers has filed an application with the city to build a 180,000-square-foot shopping center on the east side.

The application was delivered to the city’s planning office on Thursday. It marks the second time Lowe’s has announced plans to build a store in the city.

Last year, the City Council rejected the company’s request to change the zoning on a Route 3 parcel to accommodate a store. The council rejected Lowe’s because members were concerned it would harm existing home improvement stores, including Viking Lumber Co.

The council since has changed the zoning on the site Lowe’s had in mind but it allows only for a general merchandise-grocery store such as a Wal-Mart Supercenter.

Lowe’s latest proposal calls for a 175,000-square-foot store on Searsport Avenue, of which approximately 50,000 square feet would be a garden center. There will be parking for 926 cars.

Because the Searsport Avenue site is zoned for a shopping center, which the city’s codes identify as three or more stores, the proposal also calls for two separate 2,500-square-foot buildings on the 80-acre site between Tire Warehouse and Viking Lumber. The tenants for those two stores were not identified.

The east side site was approved for a shopping center in a special referendum in 2004. Promoted by Dana Keene, who later purchased the parcel, the referendum was seen as a way to overturn the 75,000-square-foot maximum store size imposed by the council in reaction to Wal-Mart’s announcement two years earlier that it intended to build a 165,000-square-foot Supercenter on Route 3, a short distance from the site that is now zoned for a Wal-Mart-type store.

City Planner Wayne Marshall said Lowe’s had requested to be placed on the Feb. 13 planning board meeting agenda. He said the project conformed to the requirements of the zone and store-size change adopted by the referendum. The city has since changed its charter to prevent citizen referendums on zoning or planning issues.

“Under today’s ordinance this project is within the bounds of the special commercial district created on Searsport Avenue that was established by citizen referendum,” Marshall said Thursday.

He pointed out that the size of the project would require the installation of a traffic light on Route 1 to control access to and egress from the site. Besides needing planning board approval, the project also will have a number of other hurdles to clear before a building permit can be granted, he said.

“The project does require planning board approval. The planning board will determine if it meets the non-residential performance standards that apply to the Searsport Avenue commercial district,” Marshall said. “And there are a whole host of other items it will need as well.”

Marshall said the project would need a Department of Transportation traffic movement permit; a DOT access management permit to determine if there will be more than 100 trips to the store during peak hours; a Department of Environmental Protection storm water permit; a DEP site plan permit; and because the project calls for filling of more than 2 acres of wetlands, a DEP natural resource protection act permit. It also would fall under the state’s informed growth law which requires an economic impact study.

The project also would have to pass muster with a City Council that already has rejected Lowe’s once and has the power to change the zoning laws to keep them away again.

wgriffin@bangordailynews.net

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