Greenville referendum hearing set for Oct. 20

GREENVILLE — A public hearing on Greenville’s upcoming referendum question on a community building will be held next month.

The referendum question will ask residents to approve Greenville spending $1 million to cover the remaining costs of the Yes Project community building. The project, which stands for youth, education and sports, includes creating a $4.1 million building that will house collaborative activities, a child care center, public pre-school classrooms and a community recreation center.

The public hearing will be held at 6 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 20 at the public safety building. Members of the Yes Project committee will be in attendance to answer questions.

The Maine Municipal Association’s legal department recommended that the question be a non-binding advisory vote to see if the town will seek up to a $1 million bond through the Maine Bond Bank.

The Moosehead Caring for Kids Foundation received a $1,561,000 federal grant several years ago to build a new facility on the school campus on Pritham Avenue. The new building would be located approximately where the former Nickerson Elementary once stood. The foundation designated the town of Greenville as the subrecipient of the grant, which means that the town will build the new facility.

The foundation, town and school have been working together to plan and construct the building, which has yet to be named. 

After negotiating with contractors, building costs were reduced from $4.6 million to $4.1 million. The group has raised $3.3 million, but they feel there are not too many other non-municipal funding sources and a request for more was made to the town.

In other business, the select board heard a request from members of the Open Bible Church to discontinue Crescent Street.

The church owns land on both sides of the dead end road, which does not have town water and sewer, and would like to expand its property.

“Before we can do this, there’s a whole process that we have to follow with the state,” Select Chair Geno Murray said, as the select board voted to move forward with the request. Applications need to be sent in and then there will be guidelines that will need to be followed for the road to be discontinued. A public hearing would be part of the process.

Town Manager Mike Roy has met with Sargent Corporation – Stillwater on the forthcoming Northern Forest Center housing project off Spruce Street. The contractor is hoping to get in this fall so construction can start sooner.

Water and sewer will go in first and then “the new street itself going into the property,” Roy said. 

The land for future home parcels was cleared earlier in the summer.

The Northern Forest Center purchased 5 acres of land downtown off Spruce Street and plans to build housing to serve the local workforce. The housing project plan seeks to develop 29 units that incorporate a mix of multi-family buildings, duplexes and single-family homes to be built over three years. The Northern Forest Center Center hopes to use the project to demonstrate the environmental and economic benefits of utilizing mass timber construction. The project has an estimated $11.5 million cost.

The Spruce Street development will be the Northern Forest Center’s sixth housing project and the first to be built from the ground up. The project will focus on providing housing for the middle-income, year-round workforce and building the sustainability of the Moosehead Lake region’s year-round economy. Greenville’s high rate of second homes and absentee homeowners has left few options for locals or people trying to move to the community, raising concerns about maintaining school enrollment, civic participation and vital services. 

The Northern Forest Center uses a mix of funding sources to achieve its goal of creating high quality housing that can be rented or sold at rates that median-income earners can afford. Sources include the Northern Forest Fund — which integrates private impact investments, donations and grants from public sources — and grants and donations specifically for this project.

The Northern Forest Center is an innovation and investment partner serving the Northern Forest of northern Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and New York. In 2017 programming expanded to include redeveloping underused properties to enable young professionals and families to find homes and contribute.