By Ward Peck

Editor

    The Maine Mall’s owner, General Growth Properties,
is moving forward with a proposal to reconfigure the large retail
complex to include a 14-screen, stadium-style theater, an expansion of
the JC Penney store, two detached restaurants and fewer parking spaces.
The theater would be built on the site currently occupied by the former
Filenes Department store.

    General Growth Property’s (GGP) development team,
led by Al Palmer of the engineering firm Gorrill-Palmer, briefed the
South Portland Planning Board on the proposal, dubbed the “Maine Mall
Revitalization” at a workshop on Wednesday. The Planning Board has
scheduled the approval process to begin July 24. Palmer said GGP hopes
to begin the project by the fall.

    The plan has already cleared several hurdles,
including permits from the Maine Department of Transportation, the
Maine Department of Environmental Protection and approval from the
South Portland Zoning Board of Appeals for the reduction in the number
of parking spaces required by the city’s zoning ordinance. Joe Soule, a
commercial property owner who owns the nearby Shops at Clark’s Pond, is
currently appealing the parking reduction approval. The Shops at Clarks
Pond was until last month the home of Regal Cinemas, the tenant of the
proposed mall theater.

    GGP petitioned the board of appeals for a 5.5
percent reduction on the number of required spaces based upon the
concept of shared parking– that peak time for restaurants, retail
shopping and theater-goers occur at different times and that parking
space users are likely to combine trips to more than one establishment
at the mall.

    According to the ordinance, the proposed mall
reconfiguration would require 5,992 parking spaces for its 914,300
square-feet of retail space, 14 restaurants and the 3,200-seat theater.
GGP successfully sought to reduce that number to 5,663 spaces based
upon the shared parking concept.

    As currently configured, the ordinance requires
4,841 spaces, which according to Palmer, exceeded the peak demand
during last year’s holiday rush by 10 percent.

    Several members of the planning board expressed
skepticism based upon personal experience that the mall suffers from
excess parking spaces. Planning Director Tex Haeuser told the planning
board that because GGP received approval from the appeals board, it
conforms to the parking ordinance.

    The two restaurants proposed will be constructed in
a parking lot on the corner of Gorham Road and Philbrook Avenue, which
separates the mall property from the Hannaford Supermarket and forms a
loop around the mall.

    There are currently no tenants for the proposed restaurant sites.

    The plan also calls for improving stormwater
management in the reconfigured parking areas in the mall’s northeast
and southeast quadrants. Overall, the reconfiguration will increase the
amount of impervious surface– asphalt and roof area– by almost an acre.