FREEPORT – Residents of Freeport have a unique opportunity this week to help shape the future of some of the town’s recreation land.

The Freeport Town Council is hosting a Community Charrette to brainstorm ideas for future development on the town-owned recreation lands on Hunter and Pownal roads. The event is Thursday, Sept. 27, at 6:30 p.m., at the Freeport Community Center.

Freeport Town Planner Donna Larson said the charrette is a planning and design exercise where planners, property and business owners and residents work together to discuss issues and potential solutions, create alternatives and settle on a preferred plan for the future of an area.

“It’s a way to get information on a specific piece of property,” Larson said. “We don’t do it all the time, but it’s not the first time we’ve done it. (We’re) looking to get some specific ideas from the public about what should be done at the fields.”

The intent of the meeting is to take suggestions for a plan for submission to the state for the future development of the recreation lands as part of a required Maine Department of Environmental Protection site plan review.

The town had explored the possibility of avoiding state review of the site by transferring ownership of the 7-acre Pownal Road facility to Regional School Unit 5, which uses the playing fields for the high school’s football team, among other things. At a meeting on July 10, councilors voted 6-1 (Councilor Kate Arno opposed) against the proposed transfer, instead electing to hold onto the property for future town use.

Council Chairman Jim Cassida has said that the state requires a state permit for projects that exceed 20 acres in size, adding that as it has been developed, the Hunter Road facility is 19.98 acres.

The state review was triggered after the council rejected a proposed project from Seacoast United Maine to create an indoor soccer facility. The soccer club had sought to acquire land from the town between the Pownal and Hunter road fields to create a complex with both outdoor and indoor soccer fields. Cassida said that public sentiment was overwhelming against the indoor soccer facility, leading the council to reject the proposal.

When the town decided to hold onto the land that Seacoast had eyed for its project, it meant that the state considered the Pownal and Hunter road facilities as one, which, Cassida said, triggered the review. If the Seacoast project had gone through as planned, Cassida said, a state permit would have still been required, but it would have been the soccer club’s responsibility to secure.

The town was given two choices by the state, Cassida said. It could either submit to review, or divest itself of some of the land, bringing the project back under the 20-acre threshold.

Although the school district is already maintaining the fields, councilors chose not to give away land, even if that meant having to submit to state review.

Larson said she is hoping for a good crowd at the charrette. As of last week, she had about 35 people registered to attend, and she was looking to have more people than that attend.

“You’re bound to have a stronger cross-section when you have more people involved,” she said.

During the session, Larson said, attendees would be broken up into smaller groups, with every group charged with coming up with a plan. After that, all of the small groups will come together to determine which elements of the various designs will take priority.

Larson said it’s important to prioritize, because the town doesn’t want to waste money designing things that might not ever come to fruition.

“To submit the application to the DEP, it has to be fully designed,” Larson said, adding that to include things in the plan that might not be constructed in the initial stages isn’t always the best idea. “Because standards change and you don’t want to spend a lot of money designing something only to find out that the (state) standards have changed and that design is no good anymore.”

Larson said sessions like the one on Sept. 27 can be more successful than the typical procedure of forming a committee, having the committee work for up to a year discussing and coming up with a plan and then reporting back to the Town Council.

“I think these brainstorming sessions are really more effective,” Larson said. “Because it brings people together. It’s really concentrated, it’s focused and you get a lot of different people’s opinions instead of having a committee of seven or eight people. It really puts the design into the hands of people that are there.”