Bates Mill No. 5 cleanup application to be resubmitted
A funding setback delayed a brownfields cleanup at Bates Mill No. 5, but planned tenants are still looking to move in.
The Sun Journal reported that the Auburn-Lewiston YMCA, the University of Southern Maine’s Lewiston-Auburn campus and St. Mary's Regional Medical Center still hope to have space in the mill.
The city plans to reapply for a $200,000 federal Environmental Protection Agency Brownfields Cleanup Grant this fall. The city submitted its first application last fall for a portion of the cleanup, but the application wasn’t fully completed as required. The city owns the mill.
Developer Tom Platz of Platz Associates in Auburn has the option to rehab the mill. Renovation has been estimated at $70 million, but cleanup is considered a must for Platz to get financing. The old building has lead paint, asbestos and polychlorinated biphenyls.
Platz Associates, an architectural, engineering and construction firm, has been involved since 1997 in the redevelopment of the 1.2 million-square-foot Bates Mill, which occupies 12 acres along Canal Street in downtown Lewiston. At 350,000 square feet, Bates Mill No. 5 is considered architecturally unique, in part because it was designed by Albert Kahn, one of the foremost industrial architects of the 20th century.
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