AUBURN – Local artists will be tapped to help design a new mural to replace the fading paintings along the 770-foot cement wall on Main Street.

“The idea we have now is for more of a gallery-like feel, with trees along the way, and breaking it up,” said Reine Mynahan, Auburn’s community development administrator. The content will be decided by people from the community, she said.

Mynahan is working with L/A Arts to find artists. She’s hoping a few will agree to submit their concepts later this summer. The concepts would go on display and people could vote for their favorites. The winning artist would begin work next spring.

“We have some concepts of what people want to see,” Mynahan said. “They want to preserve the community’s heritage with icons from the area and historic representations. But we still have a long way to go before we decide on anything.”

It would be the third mural to cover the wall, along the east side of Main Street from the northern Newbury Street intersection to the southern Newbury Street intersection. The first mural, painted in the early 1990s, depicted rural Maine scenes, Mynahan said.

It was replaced in 2001 when local artist Natasha Mayers worked with area schoolchildren to design scenes for individual sections of the wall. Some depict balloons from the Great Falls Balloon Festival, while others show shoes being made. Another depicts a scene from the Great Auburn Fire of 1933.

But the paint is fading and peeling and needs to be updated.

“It’s not in great shape now, but there is still a great deal of community support behind it,” City Manager Glenn Aho said. He and Mynahan met with a group of New Auburn neighbors Wednesday to discuss the wall.

Aho said he’d like to see lights installed along the wall to help brighten the murals. “I think we can make that area look magnificent,” he said.