WILTON – The Planning Board voted 5-2 to deny a request made by owners of Comfort Inn & Suites to build a parking lot across routes 2 and 4 from the inn.

The proposed lot would have accommodated large trucks and possibly vehicles with snowmobile trailers.

“The reason for the denial was because of safety concerns,” said Code Enforcement Officer Paul Montague on Monday.

The board was worried about traffic coming and going from the lot onto the busy road, he said. Planners were also concerned about how pedestrians would get across the road without traffic lights or a crosswalk.

An entrance permit from the Maine Department of Transportation has not been obtained, so the board denied it at this time, Montague said. A DOT entrance permit is needed for traffic entering Route 2, he added.

Sean Lafrance, an owner of the inn, was told the board would revisit it if he could address the issues.

Lafrance sought approval to build a 200- by 100-foot gravel parking lot to accommodate trucks that cannot maneuver in the inn’s parking lot.

Use of the parking lot was expected to be an occasional thing, Lafrance said last week.

The lot was also proposed as a short-term measure until it could be used for something else, perhaps a restaurant, Montague said.

While the application met the needs for planning board review, the board’s safety concerns and view of temporary use differs from what they were planning, causing the board to halt approval, Montague added. Temporary, to the board, would be use of the lot for a special occasion over the weekend.