WESTBROOK – Negotiations to rehabilitate the aging Maine Rubber property at the edge of Westbrook’s downtown have stalled yet again.

“As far as I know, there’s no conversation going on about the property,” said the owner, David Elowitch, whose property management office is in Freeport.

The building, at 942 Main St., has been considered an eyesore on the city’s landscape for some 20 years, since the Elowitch family’s tire manufacturing and sales business closed.

In recent years, the Elowitch family has been negotiating off and on with the city on various proposals to raze the building and redevelop the property.

In December 2011, a new Community Development Block Grant for $125,000 that would have been used to raze the building, and the possibility of Westbrook Housing getting involved with a project, led city officials and the Elowitch family to say they believed the impasse was over. Proponents even showed off a preliminary concept drawing for a new building, which would have had a retail business or bank on the ground floor and housing on upper floors.

But nine months later, nothing has changed. There are no plans as of this week to do anything with the building, and no clear answers on just when or how things went wrong. Elowitch said he had heard Westbrook Housing had backed out of the project. He reiterated that the city’s refusal to loosen the rules about bank drive-through windows – an old argument that Elowitch said derailed previous proposals – remains a problem. A drive-through is restricted in that area by zoning.

Westbrook Housing officials could not be reached to speak to their involvement in the project.

Bill Baker, Westbrook’s assistant city administrator for business and community relations, said he has reached out to the Elowtich family this week to try to salvage the project.

“I’m trying to reinvigorate some discussion,” Baker said.

There isn’t a lot of time left. The $125,000 grant was issued by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development through the Cumberland County Community Development program. Aaron Shapiro, director of the program, said the city has until Dec. 31 of this year to use it.

While the city has the option to extend the deadline, Shapiro said, it’s better to make use of the grant soon.

“HUD insists that we use the funds in an expeditious manner,” he said. “Having a project lag behind is not a good thing.”

Baker said this week that he’d like to take action with the grant soon, either to use it for the Maine Rubber property, repurpose it for some other qualifying project in the area or give it back.

“I think one of those three things is going to have to happen,” he said.

Shapiro said giving the grant back would not hurt the city’s chances to get future grants.

“We don’t hold it against people,” he said. “They need to be up front with us about what’s happening.”

To change what the grant is used for, Baker said, would require a new proposal and approval by the development program.

“I think it would have to be a very well-crafted alternative,” he said.

In the end, Baker said, it would be better to use the grant for what it was intended for – to help clean up an old problem in the downtown area.

“The city would obviously like to see some attractive use of the property,” he said.

The building at 942 Main St., known to most as the Maine Rubber building, still sits at the western end of downtown, despite the city getting a $125,000 grant nearly a year ago to clean up the property.
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