SCARBOROUGH – A decision on a plan for a new parking lot near Scarborough Beach has been postponed after neighbors came out in force against the proposal at a public hearing on Monday.

Following a four-and-a-half-hour meeting in front of the Scarborough Zoning Board of Appeals, at which a dozen residents spoke in opposition to the plan, a representative of Black Point Resource Management asked the board to put off its decision until March 9.

“We appreciate everything we have heard. We take your comments very seriously,” Rick Shinay, a lawyer representing Black Point, told the crowd at the end of the meeting. “We will go back, give this a lot of thought and see where we go from here.”

Black Point is proposing a 500-vehicle lot with a bathhouse, restrooms, concession stand and picnic facilities, be constructed on the 64-acre site off of Black Point Road. The site, located next to the popular state park, would serve as an additional access point to Scarborough Beach.

Seth Sprague, president of the Sprague Corp., the land’s owner and sister company to Black Point Resource Management, said the intent of the plan is to provide additional access to the popular Scarborough Beach, while eliminating some of the traffic congestion at the state park entrance.

The new beach park, Sprague said in a presentation, would be modeled after the existing state park, but would not be an extension of the state facility, which is managed by Sprague Corp. The new park, he said, would be opened from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. from May 1 to Oct. 1 and include access via a ticket booth, like the state park.

Terry DuWan, a landscape architect hired by Sprague for the project, said the visual impact for abutters and residents in the area would be minimal due to a series of planted berms, or landscape buffers, that would separate the parking facility from the private residences nearby.

“We don’t feel proximity is an issue. We don’t feel visual impact is an issue,” he said.

The development impact of the area, he noted, is no more intrusive to the native plant and wildlife than the Atlantic House condominiums just east of the proposed site for the parking lot. The parking lot, he added, will cover 7.5 acres of land; the condominium development covers 8.9 acres.

The presentation, however, did not ease the concerns of the dozen people who spoke out against the plan.

John Bannon, a land use attorney for Murray, Plumb and Murray in Portland who is representing a group of residents from the Kirkwood Road neighborhood, said the plan is simply not a permitted use for the site.

Others opposed to the plan said a new parking lot would bring additional traffic and pollution to the area.

Russ Kivatisky, who moved to 386 Black Point Road a year ago, used to live next door to the Higgins Beach lot on the corner of Ocean and Pearl streets. He said the parking lot would bring a lot of same problems to his new neighborhood that he experienced in his old one.

“I can tell you what it is like to live next to a beach parking lot and the noise and pollution that comes with it,” he said.

Doreen Morrow, of 9 Kirkwood Road, said she is concerned that a new parking lot would increase the safety risk to both pedestrians and bicyclists, with more vehicles traveling along Black Point Road. She is also worried about the health effects of exhaust fumes from the cars in the parking lot.

“This is absolutely an environmental insult for those of us who live in the neighborhood,” she said.

Dick Levy, of 43 Kirkwood Road, said the agriculture fields on the site, which provide produce to Hannaford supermarkets, would also be adversely impacted.

“I think there would be some real trouble maintaining the agricultural uses abutting the land,” he said. “It needs to be looked at.”

Mary Ann Rodrigue said she, too, is concerned about the health impact of a large parking lot being so close to Atlantic House, a 39-unit facility whose residents mostly include retirees and young families.

“I would respectfully ask you not to put the health of our elderly, their grandchildren and our young families at risk for the sake of profit and greed,” she told the board.