By Scott Taylor,Staff Writer

LEWISTON – The nation’s largest independent Goodyear tire wholesaler is bringing 30 to 35 jobs to Lewiston, city officials announced Tuesday.

New York-based Max Finkelstein Inc. will move into space in the Gendron Business Park in about a year. Gendron and Gendron will build a 101,000-square-foot tire distribution warehouse for the operation.

Until then, the company is operating out of a 17,000-square-foot warehouse on South Avenue.

“I could go on and on about how perfect Lewiston will be for our company,” said Branch Manager John Clark. “North, south, east or west, we can really reach out and touch our customers from here.”

The warehouse will serve tire dealers from Millinocket to Massachusetts and west to Berlin, N.H.

The company has had Maine customers for the past 25 years, served out of the company’s Connecticut warehouse. Clark said the company began plans to expand into Maine in December.

“We’ve operated out of Portland, but we couldn’t find the right place,” Clark said. “It’s very congested in southern Maine, and we could not find a suitable lot. But I’d read about all that’s going on in Lewiston, and so we came up here.”

The company and Gendron and Gendron will take the site plan for the project to the city’s Planning Board on Monday. Work is expected to begin soon afterward.

The warehouse will cost about $5.2 million to build and will employ 30 to 35 people when it’s complete.

It also leaves room for an additional 50,000-square-foot building, if the company decides to expand.

The warehouse is the first announced tenant for the new business park, across Plourde Parkway from the new Wal-Mart distribution warehouse, which is now under construction.

The Gendron Business Park was part of a swap the city arranged four years ago when it was negotiating a deal for the Wal-Mart distribution center. The Gendrons agreed to sell land to the city to help seal the Wal-Mart deal. In exchange, the city promised to bring roads, water, drainage and power into the business park.

So far, the Gendrons have nearly finished a 33,000-square-foot building and are ready to begin work on a 30,000-square-foot structure, John Gendron said. The company expects to announce another tenant for the park in the next 10 days.