LEWISTON — Dealing with the Bates Mill No. 5 is not one of the immediate priorities in the Riverfront Island master plan, officials said Tuesday night.
It’s just the topic they spent the most time discussing at a joint meeting of the City Council and Planning Board.
City Administrator Ed Barrett outlined three short-term goals from the master plan released last April: expanding Simard-Payne Memorial Park across Oxford Street to Lincoln Street, improving the park’s access to the Androscoggin River and creating better signs directing people to the area.
That’s what Barrett recommended the city do with the $720,000 left in the federal grant that paid for the master plan.
“These are things that can be done pretty soon,” Barrett said. “Looking more long term, we need to continue looking for partnerships to work on this project, especially from the private sector. We need to market the area and attract people interested in doing the kind of development that we’d like to see in this area.”
The plan, written by Boston-based consulting firm Goody Clancy, shows how the city can use and re-energize Lewiston’s Riverfront Island, the area between the river and Lewiston’s canals, from Island Point to Cedar Street.
It includes the Bates Mill complex, as well as Simard-Payne park, the Franco-American Heritage Center and Museum L-A.
The plan goes to the Planning Board next.
The master plan calls for a Lewiston Riverwalk mirroring the path in Auburn, from Cedar Street and the Bernard Lown Peace Bridge to Island Point. It also calls for a tree-lined walking path all along Lewiston’s canal system and expanded uses in the area, including more market-rate housing units, more office jobs and restaurants.
It also calls for demolishing the Bates Mill No. 5 once and for all, and that’s where Tuesday’s meeting centered.
Local architect Gabrielle Russell said she is working with a Providence, R.I., designer who is suggesting using the building to house a computer server farm in the basement and an indoor garden on the upper levels.
“This is a really innovative opportunity,” she said. “Since any reuse on that site will cost millions upon millions, I urge the council to leave us enough time to pursue a feasibility study.”
She was joined by state Sen. Margaret Craven, D-Lewiston, and local attorney Philip Isaacson in calling for saving the building.
“If you tear it down, you will never fill that hole with anything that approaches Mill No. 5 in scale or in quality,” Isaacson said. “When that mill was built, it was the finest that could be built in this country. Whatever goes in will not be the finest anything of any kind.”
Former Mayor Larry Gilbert argued against saving it.
“We’ve had plans and we’ve put it out for proposals twice and received no viable proposals,” Gilbert said. “I’ve seen this plan that Gabrielle is talking about, and I think it’s great. But plans are cheap and ideas are a dime a dozen. But making them happen costs millions of dollars. Who is going to invest that and how long do we wait and keep an eyesore?”
Barrett said there’s still time to settle the matter. Lewiston cannot demolish the Bates Mill No. 5 until it owns the building outright. That won’t happen until the city settles a deal to take over the downtown canal system from owners NextEra Energy.
Barrett said the building’s saviors have until November to bring forward a plan that plots out a use for the building and pays for itself.
“The worst of all possible worlds is to have it continue on as it is,” Barrett said. “It’s a psychic burden on the community, so it needs to be resolved, and I’d suggest that needs to happen in a relatively short amount of time. Either a plan with financial backing comes forward or it needs to go away.”
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