MILLINOCKET – A fledgling town business group’s last-minute bid for a stay of execution will not save the former J.J. Newberry department store from the wrecking ball.
With Councilor Bruce McLean opposing, the Town Council voted 6-1 on Thursday to pay Gerald Pelletier Inc. of Millinocket $34,300 to demolish the Penobscot Avenue building, ending more than a year of contentious debate.
A demolition schedule was not available on Friday. Council Chairman Wallace Paul said Friday that the razing should occur by July 4.
North Woods Real Estate agency owner Dan Corcoran pushed for the building’s reprieve. He said that he represented a new business advocacy group that found that 25 of 27 town businesses it polled strongly supported saving the building.
At almost 20,000-square-feet – one of the largest commercial spaces on one of downtown’s main arteries – the building could be “a tremendous asset” to revitalizing downtown and helping keep their businesses afloat, Corcoran said.
“The feeling is that this is a very solid structure and something you can build with,” Corcoran said Thursday. “We need to take some actions to enhance the business environment in this town.
“We probably should have done something like this a year ago,” he added, saying that “Some of the businesses we have lost over last year might have been saved.”
But Corcoran, who is married to McLean’s mother, said the group did not have a buyer for the building or a plan for the building’s revitalization.
Brian Wiley, president of the Katahdin Area Chamber of Commerce, disavowed support of the group’s effort. Wiley said the chamber should remain neutral in the debate and that he wasn’t aware of the business group’s apparently recent formation until Thursday.
Paul and Councilors Jimmy Busque, David Cyr, Scott Gonya and Matthew Polstein said that the council has waited long enough for the building’s revitalization.
For more than 10 years, the building has been a vacant eyesore. The building would have been home to the Katahdin Cultural Center, but that effort ended when a limited liability company formed to renovate the building failed to make payments and foreclosure proceedings began on March 16, 2007.
The Town Council voted 4-3 on Jan. 10 to buy the building for about $42,000. Town Manager Eugene Conlogue outbid downtown restaurant owner Tom St. John and developer Robert Benjamin that day to secure the building from Bangor Savings Bank.
Conlogue has been seeking a potential owner for that space ever since with no one coming forward with a plan for it. The council voted in March to begin the demolition process.
With vacant buildings bracketing Town Hall, new businesses have plenty of space to choose from, Gonya said. Eliminating the eyesore will also end a potential insurance and ownership liability, Cyr said, while Polstein lamented that no buyer had come forward with a plan.
“Putting more money into that building is not money well-spent,” Busque said. “The town has many tools to help expand the town’s economic base.”
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