By Scott Taylor,Staff Writer

LEWISTON – City leaders will take a few weeks to digest the results of a Saturday-morning planning meeting at the Lewiston Multi-Purpose Center.

As many as 60 people attended Saturday’s planning session to discuss the future of the area targeted by the Heritage Initiative. The city unveiled that plan last spring as an effort to bring new life to one of the the city’s poorest, most crowded neighborhoods by replacing rundown tenements with townhouses, parks and a boulevard.

“We tried to find the parts of the plan that everyone can agree on,” said Lincoln Jeffers, city assistant development director. “We wanted to find the really broad trends, the long-term direction people want for this neighborhood.”

Community activists also gave the meeting high marks.

“It went quite well, and I think the city heard from quite a few people they hadn’t talked to yet,” said Bonnie Gammon, a member of A Visible Community. That group formed last summer to oppose parts of the Heritage Initiative. Members of that group attended, but Gammon said they tried to stay in the background.

“We didn’t want want to go as activists or organizers to this meeting,” Gammon said. “We wanted to go as members of the community, individuals who are from this area.”

Gammon said the session was quite informative and positive, and made neighbors a part of shaping their neighborhood.

“It seemed like the people from the city really listened, and that was important,” Gammon said. “Nobody had just nice things to say about the area. There are things that need to be fixed. But there is good stuff there, as well, and a lot of that came out.”

Now city staff will use notes from the meeting to help draft a five-year community spending plan. The first draft of the plan is due Feb. 8.

Gammon said neighbors identified other issues Saturday. One was placement of a proposed Community Concepts office building. Community Concepts, a Maine nonprofit that offers education and affordable housing, had planned to build an office near the Public Theatre on Birch Street.

“Neighbors said they’d like to have them downtown, but they think that location could be too far away,” Gammon said. They’d rather have the building more centrally located in the neighborhood, she said, and closer to the people it will end up serving.