LISBON – Councilors approved a 30-year tax increment finance agreement for a $16.5 million business park on Route 196 near the Lewiston line.

Longchamps Realty is proposing development of six commercial/industrial lots to be known as Longchamps Business Park.

According to Community Development Director Jennifer Stowell Norris, Lisbon is limited in terms of available commercial property, and there is less that is for sale. Owning rather than leasing is the preference for developers and business owners, she said, adding that the Longchamps property is zoned both business and industrial and is in a Pine Tree Zone.

The area to be developed is a 50-plus acre site with a total building area of more than 220,000 square feet. The firm owns 112 acres. Plans call for the developers to bring water and sewer services to each lot line, build roads for heavy truck traffic, install drainage, full curbing, single-phase and three-phase power, as well as other amenities and appropriate utilities all “key to marketing our town to manufacturers and business owners,” she said.

Longchamps also has a 10,000-square-foot warehouse with 30-foot-high ceilings attached to 1,500 square feet of office space that sits on five acres that is available for sale or lease that can be built to suit.

The proposed business park will have a real estate value of $16.5 million over 30 years, at build-out, she added.

Stowell-Norris, a member of the Mid-Coast Redevelopment Authority, noting the upcoming closure of the Brunswick Naval Air Station, said state and local officials are working to fill the void between the closure of the base and loss of jobs by attracting and recruiting large manufacturers and businesses that could build, expand or relocate to Maine. Attracting and recruiting businesses now “so that we can provide jobs for people who lose them – the Longchamps Business Park will not only help Lisbon but could quite conceivably fulfill a need in the entire Midcoast region.”

It wasn’t known when construction will start.


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