Quirk Auto explores auto service and dealership at former Bangor Kmart
A zoning amendment will allow Quirk Auto Group to convert the building at 688 Hogan Road in Bangor that housed Kmart into a vehicle service center and dealership.
The city’s planning board on Feb. 19 and the city council on Feb. 25 approved an application from QV Realty Trust, the group’s real estate arm, to amend the city’s land development code by changing the 9.27 acre Hogan Road parcel from a shopping and personal services district to a general commercial and service district.
The parcel, which includes the former Kmart building, has “probably outlived its usefulness as a retail center,” Rudman Winchell attorney Ed Bearor, representing QV Realty Trust, told the planning board on Feb. 19.
He said that the Quirk family has determined that a service and dealer center would likely be the property’s “highest and best use.”
While the shopping and personal services district allows car sales, it doesn’t allow repairs. The general commercial and service district will allow both uses.
“The retail sector is certainly challenged these days,” said Bearor. “This particular property is a very large parcel, one of the first parcels developed, as a Kmart, in the Bangor Mall area in the 1970s.
“We’d like to be able to revitalize the property,” he said.
With zoning amendment approval, the family would return to the board with the plan at a later date, he told the board.
The parcel includes an Applebee’s restaurant that has a lease, and the Quirk plan would not affect the restaurant, he said.
Bearor said that the site was developed before modern-day standards were affected by things like storm water runoff, landscaping and traffic. He said the Quirk family will update the property in accordance with modern-day standards.
The Quirk family, owners of the Quirk Auto Group chain, bought the property near the Bangor Mall in March 2017. The Kmart closed the same month.
Last fall, the Quirk family established the Bangor Market Bazaar, offering crafts, clothing and more, in vacant retail space at the property.
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