By Scott Taylor,Staff Writer

AUBURN – Developers say they need at least another month to sort through criticism of their plan to build a new Cumberland Farms store on Minot Avenue.

The convenience store has been removed from the Auburn Planning Board’s agenda tonight and rescheduled for Sept. 13. Cumberland Farms hopes to build the store on the northwest corner of the intersection of Minot and Fairview avenues.

“There are a lot of issues we have to go over, and most of them are specific to the site and not to the store,” said Wendy Regan, site development manager for Cumberland Farms. “We needed more time. It just wasn’t sufficient to digest all of the information we heard.”

Developers heard a lot at a July 28 public meeting. A group of neighbors denounced just about every aspect of the project, from its proximity to Fairview School to the traffic it would generate.

“Many of those issues we might not be able to do anything about,” Regan said. “Anybody who attempts to develop that site is going to run into the same problems.”

But Regan said the company might be willing to make the project smaller.

The current design includes a store, six gasoline pump stations with 12 hoses, a car wash and a vacuuming stand. The store would have two exits, both onto Minot Avenue. Traffic engineers said the store would bring in about 2,500 customers a day and about 120 cars an hour during the afternoon peak.

“We might consider a less intense use of the site,” she said. That could include getting rid of the car wash or making it smaller.

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