BREWER (AP) – Two parties are interesting in redeveloping the defunct Eastern Fine paper mill, officials say.

Both developers want local residents to weigh in with ideas for the site, said Drew Sachs, the city’s economic development director.

“These are development companies,” Sachs said. “These are not the end users of the mill site. These are people who want to take on the mill and work on redeveloping it.”

The city took over ownership of the 43-acre plant last May as part of the sales agreement of Eastern Fine’s parent company.

South Brewer Redeveloping LLC was formed to assume responsibility of owning and redeveloping the site, and the limited liability corporation has been working with potential developers for months.

“We’ve taken loads of developers through the mill in the last month or so,” D’arcy Main-Boyington, deputy director of economic development, said Wednesday.

Neither Sachs nor Main-Boyington would give specifics about the two potential developers but did say the site probably would be a combined-use redevelopment project.

The return of manufacturing jobs would play only a minor role, if any, in the redevelopment plans, they said.

The amount of interest in the site is more than city officials expected, especially since Eastern Fine closed its doors only in January and SBR has owned the property for only five months, Sachs said.

SBR is hosting several public tours of the mill site at the end of the month and hopes that now that there is serious interest in redeveloping the site, more people will get involved.

“This is an exercise designed to provide concrete information to the developers,” Sachs said. “They are saying “Tell us what you want.”‘

AP-ES-10-14-04 1111EDT