NEWRY – At Wednesday night’s meeting, Newry planners determined that an application was complete for a proposed 58-home residential development on 440 acres of the southwestern face of Mount Will.
That cleared the way, after several meetings, for a public hearing on the Maine Mountain Properties LLC project. Planners scheduled the hearing for 6:30 p.m. Thursday, April 7, in the town office. The board also agreed to conduct its bimonthly meeting at 7 p.m. April 7 rather than Wednesday, April 6.
At first the board, through Chairman Joseph Aloisio, expressed reluctance to finding the application complete.
But Maine Mountain Properties’ representative, Tom DuBois, who is also an engineer with Main-Land Development Consultants Inc. of Livermore Falls, agreed not to push the board’s timeline for project approval.
DuBois said the Maine Department of Environmental Protection was also reviewing the application, and had found the document to be complete March 10.
Among the handful of issues discussed was a letter from Suzi Harrington of Bethel about the fragility of the Sunday River and her views of how the project’s 150-foot clear-span steel-and-concrete bridge would affect the river.
She and planners expressed concerns about the bridge’s possibly acting as a dam when the river level is high.
She said she was also worried that the water could back up and wash out the Artist’s Bridge, a covered bridge that is a popular tourist draw to the area.
In other business, planners continued work on a proposed five-lot subdivision off Sunday River Road near the Matterhorn restaurant and received documents from DuBois for a proposed 10-unit condominium project for Powder Ridge.
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