Maine’s Land Use Planning Commission has given interveners until Oct. 10 to file a petition in response to an amended development plan recently submitted by J.D. Irving Ltd subsidiary, Maine Woodlands Realty Company, affecting more than 400 seasonal camp and year-round homeowners in the Fish River Lakes region.
The Land Use Planning Commission anticipates holding a public hearing on the plan during the winter of 2018.
The petition from the Irving company proposes to rezone approximately 51,000 acres and involves portions of T15 R 5, Madawaska Lake Township, T16 R 5, T17 R3 Sinclair Township and Cross Lake Township, according to press release issued by the LUPC.
Irving submitted a proposed development plan to the Maine Land Use Planning Commission in early 2015. The Canadian-based company, which owns 1.3 million acres in Maine, three years ago announced it no longer wished to hold leases on the land it has owned since the 1980s and began working on a concept plan that included selling the lots to the leaseholders over the next 25 years.
When the concept plan was first introduced in 2015, Anthony Hourihan, Irving’s director of land development, told the Bangor Daily News that the company wanted to focus on forestry and its northern Maine timberland.
He said at the time that the company had spent three years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to create a plan that strikes a balance among recreation, development and conservation.
Concept plans are initiated by a landowner and must be approved by the Land Use Planning Commission.
On Aug. 31, LUPC staff deemed the petition is “complete for processing,” meaning that the information provided was sufficient to understand the proposal and therefore to begin the formal review process. Additional information could still be requested of the petitioner by LUPC staff during the review process.
The purpose of the anticipated public hearing is to allow the applicant and members of the public the opportunity to present testimony and evidence as to whether the applicant’s proposal meets the statutory criteria for approval, according to
Any petitions to intervene should be sent to the Maine Land Use Planning Commission, 22 State House Station, Augusta, Maine 04333-0022. Petitions also may be submitted by email to Timothy.Beaucage@maine.gov.
A copy of the zoning petition, proposed concept plan, and all supporting materials has been posted on the Commission’s website at www.maine.gov/dacf/lupc/.
