NEWRY – A New Hampshire real estate developer has proposed to create a 61-lot housing project on about 500 acres off Route 26 in the Great Brook Watershed.
According to its application at the Newry town office, MaineVest LLC of Goffstown bought 1,622 acres of former paper company land from Les Bois Carthage Inc., a Canadian corporation in Jackman, but wants to develop 470 acres.
Newry planners, who began work on the $300,000 to $400,000 project recently, are to continue discussions on the application at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 18, at the town office. The board has yet to rule the document complete.
MaineVest is also negotiating with abutter Mahoosuc Land Trust to conserve 600 acres surrounding the proposed Great Brook Preserve project, trust Executive Director Jim Mitchell said Wednesday afternoon in Bethel.
Mitchell said MaineVest’s exclusive marketer, Northern Acres, “is pushing to get it done quickly.”
“If they give us the land, it will exempt them from some Maine Department of Environmental Protection review. The law says that if you want to develop an average of 5 acres – Northern Acres’s average is 15 acres – and half of the land or more is put under conservation easement, you don’t have to go through the DEP site location review,” Mitchell said.
The Great Brook Preserve land is located between Puzzle and Plumbago mountains, but closer to Puzzle.
“It’s been cut over heavily, but there is some timber left, and our Lands Committee is meeting today to talk about this,” Mitchell said.
The committee is to then meet with trust directors today to decide on accepting the land gift, which has conditions attached.
According to the MaineVest application, Les Bois retained an easement until Sept. 1, 2008, to harvest timber from the property.
“The advantage where it’s almost all been cut is very little, but you have to take the real long view – 30 to 40 years – to see the advantage of owning it,” Mitchell said.
If the trust, which has a 1-mile boundary on Puzzle Mountain with Great Brook Preserve, acquires the land, Mitchell said they would develop trails through the picturesque, but rugged terrain.
MaineVest is also working on possible snowmobile and hiking trail relocations that may impact some lots.
The application states that the project would start on Hancock Road, a mile above the town office, and be built out in phases, keeping Great Brook as the right-side boundary until the project crosses it, project engineer and MaineVest agent Thomas DuBois of Main-Land Development Consultants Inc. of Livermore Falls said Wednesday afternoon.
The brook is to be part of the conservation land.
Road improvements and electricity build-out are driving the Preserve’s construction cost, the application stated.
There are 36 abutters, some of whom live across the country.
MaineVest intends to create sites in Great Brook Preserve on which, single-family homes are to be built and easements granted to buyers of the sites to use and enjoy land surrounding the homes, the application states.
No manufactured housing or double-wide trailers are to be allowed, and no site numbered 1 to 60 can be further subdivided.
DuBois said MaineVest’s other project in the area, a proposed 9-lot subdivision on 5,398 acres in Andover on the other side of the Newry land, has been placed on hold.
That project came to a halt when Andover planners held their ground, then quickly developed and had voters approve the first site plan review ordinance and beefed-up subdivision ordinance to better control future growth.
Comments are no longer available on this story