Greenville officials focus on potential of Spruce Street business space

By Stuart Hedstrom, Staff Writer

GREENVILLE — Currently Glacial Wear creates its fur and leather products via a lease agreement on municipal property at the Greenville Business Center on Spruce Street. With a couple of other inquiries about the 3.8-acre parcel being made, town officials are now looking at a master plan to cover various lease agreements, development, property lines, and more.

During an Aug. 2 select board meeting Town Manager Mike Roy said last month he had mentioned the inquiries on the Spruce Street property. He said Code Enforcement Officer Ron Sarol put together a packet for the board.

The 3.8 acres has about 168,000 square feet available in Greenville’s commercial industrial district. “There’s plenty of room to split off lots there if you wanted to,” Sarol said.

He said there are no restrictions on how many ways the Greenville Business Center could be utilized, such as four or five different buildings with a separate occupant in each.

Roy said a contractor who had expressed interest in the site for a structure has decided not to pursue anything at the time but conversations with someone looking to bring a nationwide veterans radio station to the community continue. “He said he is still putting the pieces of the puzzle together so they’re still interested in coming to Greenville,” the town manager said.

Select Chairperson Geno Murray said the town should have a master plan in place to see what all the options are. “We want to have good concrete answers for any parties and potential opportunities,” he said. “Right now we have this land I think we want to do something with but I think we need to get into a more definitive process.”

 “Any sort of tax dollars, that certainly would be a benefit to the town,” Murray said. 

The select board previously agreed that the lease rate would be 25 cents per square foot. The land would need to be surveyed and any formal lease agreements would be negotiated and brought before the select board.

Roy will come back with more information on the Spruce Street property.

In other business, a special town meeting has been scheduled on an amendment to the vendor’s ordinance. The special town meeting will take place on Wednesday, Aug. 16 prior to the regular select meeting.

Planning Board Chairperson John Contreni said this board has been looking at the ordinance adopted in January 2019. “Specially focusing on what we call special events,” he said, as confusion has arisen on vendors and/or organizers needing to pay a fee to sell their wares during a special event.

Contreni said the definition of a special event will stay the same in the ordinance, “Any organized annual event such as the Greenville Fourth of July celebration and the Greenville Fly-In. Special events typically involve multiple vendors and activities under the direction of an event organizer.”

He said the amendment would set up a tiered fee schedule. For one to 25 vendors the organizer would pay $50 to the town, for 26-50 vendors the organizer would pay $100, and the fee would be $150 for 50 or more vendors. Nonprofits are exempt. 

“An umbrella organizer of the event would pay to the town and the individual vendors — however many there may be — would not be liable to pay a fee to the town,” Contreni said. He said the vendors would be required to display a copy of the permit granted to the organizer.

The planning board chairperson said the amendment would alleviate the burden of permits for individual vendors, “who come from long distances and frankly don’t make very much at these events.”

Selectperson Richard Peat said years prior there were a number of roadside farmstand vendors and some were selling odd combinations of products, such as screen doors and cucumbers. Peat said the town did not know who all these people were and enforcement of fees and permits proved difficult.

Murray said Sarol would be enforcing the permits. “During this process I think it’s important we provide you with as much clarity as possible,” Murray said, as  in the past the language has not been clear.

“We want people to be successful, we want our events, we want people in town, we want our businesses to be successful,’ he said. “What we don’t want is to be in the middle of a bunch of pillow fights and I think that has happened in the past.”