The details of the agreement will be made public at a special meeting
Nov. 19.
LEWISTON – Details of plans to get the city out of Bates Mill operations should go public next week.
City officials have a verbal agreement with developer Tom Platz and his business partners, said City Administrator Jim Bennett.
Bennett said he will brief councilors on the agreement details during a special executive session Thursday then make them available to the public at a special workshop meeting the following Wednesday, Nov. 19.
“I’m not anticipating having everything signed in time for Thursday’s meeting,” Bennett said. “But we’re going public on the 19th with whatever we’ve got, regardless of whether everything is signed or not.”
The city took over ownership of the property in 1992 and has been renovating mill buildings and selling them to Platz and his business partners based on a multi-million-dollar agreement.
City officials have been negotiating an exit strategy with Platz and his partners since this past spring. Last month, Bennett said the city would have to spend $59.2 million over the next seven years under the existing agreement.
“One of the major issues we’ve been discussing has been parking, specifically, the locations around that facility,” Bennett said. “We’ve also had issues concerning obligations to current tenants and how we handle them. Those are really a couple of meaty issues.”
Comments are no longer available on this story