By Carol Coultas,Business Writer

LEWISTON – A Scarborough-based fuel company is the latest tenant heading to Gendron Business Park.

Fielding’s Oil Co. expects to build a storage and distribution facility on 1.5 acres of the city’s newest industrial park.

Plans approved by the Planning Board show a two-phase development. The first is the construction of a 25,000-gallon oil tank with a trucking area. The second phase calls for a second oil tank, plus a 30,000-gallon liquid propane tank and a 4,000-square-foot office building.

“This gives us a logistical advantage,” said Bill Fielding Jr., president of the company. The company has been delivering fuel in the Lewiston-Auburn area for the last five years, but always from its tanks in South Portland.

Fielding said that by having a Lewiston operation, it saves the labor and fuel costs for each three-hour commute from the South Portland storage hub.

And the location near Exit 80 of the Maine Turnpike, off Alfred Plourde Parkway, allows it to target new markets near the Augusta area.

“We’re growing, that’s why we’re doing this,” said Fielding.

According to the plans, the company will decide on the second phase of development when it’s warranted by Fielding’s anticipated share of the local fuel market. The company delivers heating oil, propane, gas, K-1 kerosene and diesel fuel.

“We expect they’ll be in by the end of the year,” said John Gendron, vice president of Gendron & Gendron, the developers who own the business park.

The oil company is the second tenant to submit plans for the year-old business park. The first, Max Finkelstein tire distributors, announced in June that it would build a $5.2 million warehouse and distribution facility there.

A third business, FedEx Ground Packaging System, could be moving there as well. Gendron said he could not confirm that, but records on file at the Androscoggin County Registry of Deeds show a lease agreement between Gendron and FedEx for a lot in the park. The four-year lease was signed in May.

Gendron did say his family has been pleased by the interest shown in the park and the rate at which it is filling. The developers have been developing the lots successively – first constructing a building on spec, finding a tenant, then putting up another building on spec.

There are six lots total in the first phase of the business park. The park was part of a swap the city arranged when it was negotiating the Wal-Mart distribution center. The Gendrons agreed to sell land to the city that it needed to seal the Wal-Mart deal. In exchange, the city promised to bring roads, water, drainage and power into the park.

Once the first phase of the park is complete, the Gendrons and the city plan to develop the second phase.