NEWRY – Property owner Suzy Harrington said she was dismayed after Thursday night’s Newry Planning Board public hearing on a proposed 58-home residential development on 440 acres of the southwestern face of Mount Will.
She said, “I was disappointed that they didn’t discuss or question my questions,” which had been raised in a March 16 letter.
Developer Maine Mountain Properties LLC intends to market The Peaks subdivision for second-home owners. Lot sizes are to range from two acres to 30 acres.
The property is landlocked, so a 150-foot clear-span bridge is proposed to be built over Sunday River and its floodplain, allowing access to the site off Sunday River Road.
At the board’s March 16 meeting, Frank and Suzy Harrington introduced a letter of concerns, which included the bridge, 11,000 feet of new road construction and safety on the mountain.
They worried that the bridge would not be built high enough and would become a dam. The letter also asked that planners require Maine Mountain to post a bond with the town to guarantee that the developer pays for the bridge and road, not taxpayers.
At Thursday’s hearing, “not a thing was asked on the planned bridge. I was also kind of in shock that the Planning Board didn’t have a few more questions,” Harrington said.
Planning Board Chairman Joseph Aloisio said Friday that questions asked of the developer mirrored questions that planners had already asked and had answered.
Regarding safety, the Harringtons want the developer to install a fence between Maine Mountain’s property and the Harrington property, which abuts the developer’s from the top of Mount Will to the bottom at Sunday River.
The developer, Suzy Harrington said, is putting in a hiking trail, but “our property will still have hunting and trapping allowed on it.”
The Harringtons have also allowed hang gliders to fly off the face of a cliff on Mount Will on their property for about 20 years.
“If the fence doesn’t go up, there’s no way we can have hang gliders up there, and they were there before the developers. But being there first doesn’t count anymore,” Suzy Harrington said.
Aloisio said that issues would continue to be examined, because the project is still under review, both by the Maine Department of Environmental Protection and Newry planners.
Headquartered in Newry, Maine Mountain Properties is the joint business venture of Michael Liberti of Newry, Bruce Lilly of Bethel, Steve Swasey of Andover and Peter Getman of Dover, N.H.
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