LEWISTON – It won’t be easy coming up with a way to bring new economic life to Lewiston’s downtown, city officials said Tuesday.

“There are as many different opinions about what to do in the downtown as there are streets and buildings,” City Administrator Jim Bennett said. And not everyone agrees that the city needs to do anything. Some people would prefer the city spend no money, create no plans and do nothing with the downtown.

“Others want us to bring in newer housing, but in a way that guarantees rents won’t increase at all,” Bennett said.

Councilors on Tuesday talked about creating a committee to look at downtown housing and redevelopment. They’ll take up the issue again Nov. 21.

Councilors agreed to create a committee of seven people. That group in turn would help to create a downtown development master plan and then disband.

“Right now we don’t have any kind of guiding plan that people in the community agree on,” Bennett said. “That’s the only way to get around the suspicion people have. That’s the only way to get people to stop questioning everyone’s motives.”

The city’s first attempt to bring new life downtown was the Heritage Initiative in 2004. It was designed to clean up the poorest section of the downtown, build new housing projects along Blake, Birch and Maple streets, and add new downtown office buildings over the next 10 years.

The most controversial part was a proposed $4.5 million boulevard that would run from Lincoln to Lisbon streets, cut through the Knox and Birch neighborhoods, and end at Bates Street.

“I’ve had people tell me – and I know that some councilors have heard the same thing – that they wish we’d put that boulevard in, and just gone right through the whole area,” Bennett said.

But the boulevard is no longer an option, Bennett said. The city didn’t include enough people from the neighborhood before suggesting it, and the conclusions were unpopular. It wound up making residents and their supporters suspicious of the city and its plans.

The new committee needs to go right down the middle, coming up with something that appeals to both sides, Bennett said. He urged city councilors to include people who have no connection with the downtown as well as residents.

“In the end, we want this to be supported by the city,” Bennett said. Whatever plans the committee comes up with won’t happen without general public support. It might even require a vote, and that won’t pass if people who don’t live downtown think it’s unfair.”

City Councilor Renee Bernier said she wasn’t convinced people who don’t live downtown should be included.