BANGOR – A five-story hotel and a retail shopping center featuring a mystery big-box store were among the projects the city’s planning board approved Tuesday night.

Both projects are slated for the Bangor Mall area, with the hotel proposed for the Hogan Road side and the store on the Stillwater Avenue side.

Plans call for a 135-room Hilton Garden Inn on a 5-acre parcel located along an extension of Haskell Road, according to representatives of the developer, Dublin 5 LLC.

The hotel will include a state-of-the-art conference center, restaurant, tennis court, swimming pool, fitness room and Jacuzzi, said Ed Dennis of Dublin 5. A final project price tag hasn’t been determined, he said. Dublin 5 is a partnership among Bangor developers Tony Valley and Mark Eremita, and Dennis, their Irish partner who has two decades of experience in the hotel industry.

Valley and Eremita have deep roots in the local commercial development scene with several projects near the Bangor Mall, on Union Street and elsewhere to their credit.

The hotel will “help put Bangor on the map,” Dennis said. “Hilton Gardens is the fastest-growing chain within the Hilton hotel family. It’s a leader in its market,” for business and upscale leisure travelers.

“We believe in keeping business at home,” he said. “We believe in bringing sound businesses, nationally significant businesses to the Bangor area” as a way to keep young adults from leaving in droves for greener financial pastures.

Bangor development watchers may recall that Dublin 5 was one of two developers that approached the city about building a hotel at Bangor Waterfront, across Main Street from Shaw’s Supermarket.

City councilors, however, have put the waterfront hotel project on a back burner until they can get a better handle on how they want the site developed. Dennis said Dublin 5 remains interested in building a waterfront hotel.

“We’re working very closely with the city to do what’s right. You only get one chance to develop a high-profile waterfront project,” he said.

The other major project that received site plan approval and conditional use approval Tuesday night is planned for a 26.6-acre site off Stillwater Avenue.

Landowner and developer Widewaters Stillwater Co. LLC has been trying for more than six years to develop the 26-acre site at 638 Stillwater Ave., near the intersection of Gilman Road, the Bangor Mall and the ecologically sensitive Penjajawoc Marsh.

Widewaters originally wanted to put a 224,000-square-foot Wal-Mart Supercenter on the site, but a backlash from environmentalists proved to be that project’s downfall.

After spending two years regrouping and working with the city, state transportation and environmental officials, and local groups, Widewaters returned in 2005 with a downsized plan for a 142,810-square-foot strip mall and won site plan approval. That plan called for a retail center consisting of seven attached buildings and four satellite buildings.

Since then, however, Widewaters has entered negotiations with a retailer that wants to build an anchor store there.

Though the anchor is widely believed to be a Lowe’s home improvement store, Widewaters representatives were still unable to divulge the anchor’s identity because a signed lease is still pending.

The revised site development plan calls for three buildings totaling 126,200 square feet, namely the 114,700-square-foot anchor and two smaller outbuildings of 6,000 and 3,128 square feet. The shopping center will be served by a 613-space parking lot.

The main entrance will be from Stillwater Avenue by way of a drive between Circuit City and Chili’s restaurant.