LEWISTON – A new Bates Mill agreement would trim the city’s investment by $31.7 million and be completed in seven years, according to city officials.

The proposed exit strategy gives developer Tom Platz and his partners, known as Bates Mill LLC, control over all but two of the mill buildings.

The agreement, if approved by the City Council, would ease the city’s parking obligations, limit the money it would spend on renovations and limit its environmental cleanup expenses.

“This is what we’ve been doing these past nine months,” City Administrator Jim Bennett said Tuesday.

According to the plan, the city would maintain control of the massive Building No. 5 and the steam plant in Building No. 9. The city hopes to develop Building No. 5, a 385,000-square-foot space, as a convention center. The steam plant provides heat for the complex.

“Because of the sheer size of No. 5, we thought it made sense to control the steam generation capabilities of the steam plant,” Bennett said. “You can’t really develop No. 5 if you can’t control the heating costs.”

The plan also cuts the city’s operating expenses. Currently, the city pays between $450,000 and $1 million per year – an average of $750,000 – for operations at the complex.

Under the new agreement, the city would pay Platz about $3.5 million over the next seven years for operating losses. Annual payments would be based on a new schedule, with larger payments at first and declining amounts each year.

Platz and his partners would pay the city nothing for the mill buildings but would be obligated to invest in redevelopment.

Parking

The city is currently on the hook to provide about 2,450 parking spaces adjacent to the mill complex, at a cost of between $20 million and $25 million, Bennett said.

The exit plan would allow the city to provide 1,850 new parking spaces over the next seven years and no more than 450 spaces per year. That should save the city about $14 million.

The city would also be obligated to create 80 percent of those spaces next to the mill. The remaining 20 percent could be built elsewhere around the downtown.

Pat Maiorino, one of Platz’s partners in the Bates Mill LLC, said that was one of the last issues to be decided.

“We were not fond of having any parking provided that far from our complex,” Maiorino said. “But that’s part of the give and take of negotiations.”

Bennett said he made a final agreement with Platz and his partners Tuesday morning. That allowed him to release the documents publicly at a Lewiston Mill Redevelopment Corp. meeting Tuesday afternoon.

Bennett will present the plan at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at Lewiston City Hall. The meeting will also be broadcast live on Great Falls TV, Lewiston-Auburn’s local cable access channel.

Councilors are tentatively scheduled to give the plan a public hearing on Nov. 25.

“And then we’ll see what the council wants to do,” Bennett said.

The city took over ownership of the property in 1992 and has since renovated mill buildings and sold them to Platz and his business partners based on a multimillion-dollar agreement.

Platz and his partners already own mill buildings 3, 6 and 7.

staylor@sunjournal.com

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