AUBURN — Planners need another two weeks to think about slaughterhouses before they can recommend whether councilors should allow them in the city’s agriculture zone citywide.

Developer Craig Linke plans to open Mainestock, a standalone slaughterhouse, at the intersection of Trapp Road and Royal River Road. Linke said the operation would have a limited kitchen operation, preparing sausages and meat pies.

The lot is in Auburn’s Agriculture and Resource Protection zone, which allows slaughterhouses as an accessory use to an existing farm. To build a standalone slaughterhouse, Linke needs to get the city to change the agriculture zoning rules.

The Planning Board said it didn’t have enough information to recommend that change Tuesday night.

“The question before us is too open-ended to endorse,” member Robert Bowyer said. “We may be able to make a positive recommendation if the question is more refined and includes limitations that make it more acceptable for the agriculture zone citywide.”

The rest of the Planning Board agreed, voting to schedule a special workshop on Dec. 28. Acting Chairman Richard Whiting suggested members investigate rules in other cities, including some outside of Maine. Member Dan Moreno said he wanted to visit at least one Maine slaughterhouse before the Dec. 28 meeting.

No matter what the Planning Board says, if councilors ultimately agree to the change, Linke would be able to apply to the city for special exception to build his slaughterhouse.

The farm, on 21.5 acres at 512 Trapp Road and 22 acres at 526 Trapp Road immediately south, was home to a chicken farm and processing operation in 1998 that was never successful. Linke said his family-owned operation, Linke Farm LLC of Perkasie, Pa., took over the operation in 2002 and tried to run a chicken-processing operation.

“We bought it with the understanding that it was all new equipment, and it wasn’t,” he said. The company closed the operation within a year.

Now Linke plans to purchase the property from his family’s company to process red meat — beef, pork, lamb and goat.

Neighbors argued that the neighborhood is wrong for a standalone slaughterhouse, saying it would draw traffic to a road not designed to carry industrial traffic. Slaughterhouses are allowed in the city’s industrial zone, and that’s where they belong, they said.

But others argued that small farms could use the service.

“Slaughtering animals is necessary,” Joe Gray of Stevens Mill Road said. “We are not being mean. That’s why we want a local place. It’s easier on the animals and keeps them from getting frustrated and upset.”

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