WILTON — The town will pursue its effort to acquire the Forster Mill property on Depot Street for back taxes, Town Manager Rhonda Irish told the Board of Selectpersons on Tuesday.

A mediation session in September 2014 between the town and Wilton Recycling LLC owner Adam Mack failed filed to result in an agreement and there is no plan to resume talks, she said.

The town learned Mack was filing for personal bankruptcy but not for his companies, she said. 

The board had avoided foreclosure on the property so the town would not be left with the expense of demolishing the four-story brick building, which Mack bought in 2006.

The town filed a lawsuit in Franklin County Superior Court to have the old mill declared a dangerous building.

In another update, Irish said she has received more than five inquiries about the Wilton Tannery property since the board extended the deadline to May 1.

A Request for Proposals is being sent to those who expressed interest. She is also suggesting they contact Nick Sabatine of Ransom Consulting Inc. of Portland and the Maine Department of Environmental Protection for more information about the property.

“I want them to go into this with their eyes wide open,” she said.

The town accepted the 15-acre property in 2010 for $74,600 in unpaid taxes.

Wilton received a $200,000 federal Environmental Protection Agency grant in 2012 and a total of $187,000 from the Maine DEP and the Maine Department of Economic and Community Development to clean up the site for future economic development.

The cleanup was completed in August.

abryant@sunjournal.com

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