LEWISTON – Both retail projects at Lewiston’s Exit 80 are getting closer to breaking ground, but there’s still no word yet on who might one day occupy the stores they build.
The projects – a 38-acre parcel developed by The Hecht Co. and a 40-acre parcel developed by KGI Properties – were announced in September. Since then, site engineers have reviewed the properties, and negotiations with prospective retailers have been ongoing.
And there’s the rub. Neither developer has nailed down the tenants for his prospective retail center.
“It’s a big site, and a challenging site, and we’ve done a tremendous amount of work,” said Ben Devine, a principal with KGI. “But we need a critical mass. We can’t go in with only one user, we need a collection. So it’s a little like a chicken-and-egg scenario.”
Likewise at The Hecht Co., Patrick Cleary, vice president of development, said the site planning process has gone very smoothly. Now it’s a matter of locking down the tenants.
“We have a few options we’re looking at now,” said Cleary. Depending on who signs on, the construction could range between 150,000 to 300,000 square feet of new retail. “It could be one big box, or a series of junior boxes in different configurations. A lot is driven by tenant interest, which is ongoing.”
Both developers declined to reveal who their negotiations are with, but Cleary offered that he expects the stores at the KGI complex and Hecht’s “will complement each other.”
Neither developer is particularly concerned about new regulations adopted in November by the state Department of Environmental Protection. The new rules require streams to be assessed for water quality before development is allowed and, if they don’t meet a certain benchmark, developers have to improve the streams to an acceptable level.
Hart Brook runs from the turnpike to Goddard Road, just northwest of the Hecht parcel. According to the DEP, the brook doesn’t meet the new standard.
Cleary said he’s confident that his site engineers can solve any problem with respect to stormwater runoff and watershed management. Another new DEP regulation affects vernal pools, which appear in the spring, but the implementation measures for that rule haven’t been developed as yet.
The KGI property sits on mostly ledge, so wetlands aren’t expected to be much of an issue in its development, said Devine.
When city officials announced the dual projects last fall, there was some hope that the new shopping centers would be open in time for the 2006 holiday season.
But developments of this size typically take a year to build, and neither project has submitted site plan reviews to city planners – a necessary step before a building permit can be issued.
The Hecht property did submit an application to the state Department of Transportation for a traffic impact study back in October. On the application, it outlined a retail complex for a 204,000-square-foot store that would generate traffic similar to that of a discount supercenter.
City Administrator Jim Bennett said in September that the permitting and zoning process should take between four and six months. City planners rezoned the property from industrial to urban enterprise in late September. The change was necessary to allow retail use on property that had originally been designated for industrial development.
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