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The Sanford Town Council is working to take over an old wooden mill building behind the Sanford Mill.
If the council decides to go ahead, town officials will be one step closer to realizing a long-term plan for opening up access and revitalizing the Goodall Mills complex, where textiles were manufactured from the 1860s until 1955 in six buildings along the Mousam River in downtown Sanford.
"It's a vital step," said Les Stevens, the town's economic development director.
The building was once the home of Aerofab Inc., where amphibious airplanes were made during the company's heyday, in the 1950s through the 1980s. The plant closed about a decade ago and has stood largely empty ever since.
The council is scheduled to vote on taking the building and surrounding land by eminent domain during its 7 p.m. meeting today in the Town Hall Annex. First, it is scheduled to hear from any affected landowners.
Determining who the owners are has been complicated, said Town Manager Mark Green.
The Aerofab site is believed to have two out-of-state owners who at one point were in a legal battle over the property. The site includes a small slice of land and a 44,000-square-foot building. A year's worth of property taxes are owed on one of the parcels. Letters have been sent out to the owners, inviting them to respond.
The building is in poor shape, Green said, and the site is contaminated by decades of manufacturing.
The council could buy the property for as little as $1, depending on a real estate appraisal. The original appraisal of the larger, adjacent Sanford Mill came in at zero, although the council wound up paying the owner of that building $150,000.
The town wants to raze the Aerofab building, at a cost of about $100,000, and convert the land into a public parking lot as part of an environmental cleanup of the Sanford Mill and Aerofab sites.
The town has $560,000 in federal Environmental Protection Agency money and is angling for another $400,000 to complete the cleanup.
The town took over the Sanford Mill last year and spent $50,000 securing it. Once the cleanup is complete, which could be as early as this fall, the building will be sold to Northland Enterprises LLC, a Portland development company led by Rex Bell and Robert C.S. Monks.
They plan to renovate the 60,000-square-foot structure into 36 units of housing on the top two floors and yet-to-be-determined commercial space on the first floor.
The projected cost of the project is $12 million.
Work to rebuild the road that runs through the Goodall complex is due to begin this month, Green said.
The idea is to improve access and visibility to the town's under-used mill space and generate economic activity downtown, he said.
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