A proposed impact fee for new development along the booming Wilson Street corridor was soundly endorsed Monday night by members of the City Council and planning board, even by one of the first major developers expected to pay it.

Sachs said many of the landowners and developers most likely to be affected by the impact fee were notified of the proposed fee well in advance of Monday’s hearing.

After the hearing, Sachs said, planning board members recommended some minor changes and then unanimously endorsed it. The amended version of the new ordinance article that would enable the city to collect the fee is slated for adoption during the council’s June 12 meeting.

The formula for assessing the fees will be established later. The ordinance includes an appeals mechanism and allows the council to waive or reduce impact fees for projects that would result in “significant public purpose or benefit.”

Impact fees are one-time payments collected from builders or developers to help pay their share of the costs of new public infrastructure, Sachs said Tuesday. The idea is to share costs with developers whose projects trigger a need for improved city infrastructure or services.

The fees have existed nationally since the passage of the federal Standard Planning Enabling Act in 1922. Some Maine communities that have established impact fees in designated districts are Augusta, Portland and South Portland.

Sachs said some of the needs the impact fees would help cover might include wastewater and stormwater collection, pumping and treatment facilities; water and solid-waste facilities; police and fire protection facilities and equipment; roads and traffic control devices; public transportation; public parks and other open space or recreation areas; and public schools.

City officials’ proposal to assess impact fees in a designated area — bordered by Wilson Street, Parkway South, Interstate 395 and Chamberlain Street — is tied to the development boom now being experienced along the Wilson Street corridor, Sachs said.

Historically, most development-related infrastructure improvements here have been funded by local property taxpayers, who no longer can shoulder the burden alone.

Though businesses have existed on Wilson Street for years, recent months have seen the area become one of the region’s hotbeds of economic development.

Last summer, the city touched off the development boom when it acquired two adjacent tracts amounting to more than 80 acres as the basis of a corporate center and began work on plans for a parallel access road that would open up some of the back land in the area that has gone undeveloped for lack of access. Construction of the parallel access road could begin later this year.

In November, the city struck a deal with EMH for a 72-acre health care park in the city’s corporate center. Also reportedly in the works are an office complex, hotel and restaurant proposed by local developers Eremita and Valley. Last week, Wal-Mart announced that the company is gearing up to build a 155,083-square-foot Supercenter on outer Wilson Street.

This is a copyright article written by Dawn Gagnon that appeared in the Bangor Daily News, Wednesday, June 23, 2001.

dmain-boyington@brewerme.org