Two firms purchase lots in Gardiner business park
Gardiner’s City Council has approved two real estate purchase-and-sale agreements on three commercial lots at the Libby Hill Business Park, located at Interstate 295’s Exit 49 in central Maine.
The lot sales will bring two businesses into the business park that was created in 2008:
— Riverside Disposal, a locally owned waste disposal firm serving municipal, commercial, and residential customers, to the park in an expansion driven by the growth of its customer base and vehicle fleet over the past decade.
— Northeast Meats, a Gardiner-based, USDA-certified meat-processing facility, which will open a new beef, pork, lamb, and chicken meat-processing plant to help alleviate heavy demand for animal processing around the state.
In a press release announcing the recent purchase agreements, Nate Rudy, Gardiner’s director of Economic and Community Development, said lot prices for “pre-permitted, shovel-ready lots for commercial development” in the business park were dramatically reduced by the City Council in 2012. More recently, he said, the city is offering a “free land” promotion, “through which qualified businesses can finance the cost of a lot through credit enhancement payments on the taxable value of their new plant and equipment investments at Libby Hill.
Rudy said the program reduces the initial cost of entry to 10% of the lot’s selling price, which can also be repaid through the “Free Land” program.
“These incentives are part of our ongoing campaign to show the world a new face of Gardiner,” Rudy said in the release. “We have eliminated every financial obstacle that we can to lower the cost for businesses to locate in central Maine.”
Rudy said the business park incentives complement the city’s Gardiner Growth Initiative, a public-private partnership launched with The Bank of Maine, Gardiner Main Street and the Gardiner Board of Trade to bring name brand, Maine businesses to the historic downtown Gardiner shopping district. The program offers forgivable loans and start-up grants to existing businesses looking to open a new location in central Maine.
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