AUBURN – A controversial hotel and garage plan for Great Falls Plaza will have another airing Tuesday, as Planning Board members peruse additional information about the proposal.

The request capped a four-hour public hearing last month that pitted local hotel developer Lee Griswold against Great Falls Development LLC, which intends to site a Hampton Inn within 405 feet of Griswold’s Hilton Garden Inn. The key issue is the location of a municipal garage intended to service guests at both hotels, as well as the general public.

“I think we’re giving them everything they asked for and more,” said Steve Myers, development director for Platz Associates, which is the architect on the project and who presented the plans at the Planning Board’s March 11 meeting.

In a plan submitted to the city in 2005, Great Falls Development sited a garage in the center of its five-acre Great Falls Plaza plan, 285 feet from the Hilton. At the time, the company also expected to build a 48,000-square-foot office building near Turner Street. The plan was approved by the city.

Since then, the office building has been shelved in favor of a $12 million hotel, under development by Mullaney Hospitality Group.

In the interim, city planning staff took a look at the 2005 plan and identified several flaws, including dead-end streets and access problems from Turner Street. Great Falls Development revised the plan, including realigning the garage alongside the existing railroad tracks – about 500 feet from the Hilton. The plan has been submitted to Planning Board for a limited, special exception review.

“Looking only at the future of the city of Auburn and attracting new investors, the plan in front of you is far superior,” Roland Miller, economic development director, said to the board about the revised 2008 plan. City planning staff also endorsed the revised plan.

But Griswold disagreed. He said putting the garage at the edge of the parcel next to a railroad embankment raises public safety concerns, and makes it more difficult to reach for people who have business in other parts of the plaza, such as the post office or medical offices.

He also took issue with the lack of details about the hotel and garage developments, presenting – for dramatic effect – stacks of documents he submitted when the Hilton was under review.

“… all at the request of the Planning Board,” he said, pointing out submissions such as shade studies and the Hilton’s impact on the view of the falls from Goff Hill.

More than 40 people turned out for the March hearing, many of them backing Griswold who, they said, should be supported for having the vision and gumption to bring the Hilton to downtown Auburn in 2003.

Griswold told Planning Board members that he regretted agreeing that the municipal garage could be located within 660 feet of his hotel, an 11th-hour decision he made at the deal’s closing.

“It was a bad business decision on my part,” he told the board. “I agree there are some advantages in the new plan … (but ) the people using Great Falls should be served first and the future (users) later.”

The new plan also shows one curb cut from Turner Street, creating right-in, right-out access to the plaza intended to cut down traffic problems. City planners also prefer the new plan because it preserves the view of the river and the falls from the main traffic corridor. The 2005 plan had roads that ended in dead-ends, requiring traffic to turn around; the revised plan shows a continuous traffic loop.

Members asked Myers at the March meeting to supply more details about the proposed hotel’s and garage’s designs, as well as more information about a new bus station located near the Esplanade elderly housing complex. The meeting Tuesday begins at 6 p.m.