FREEPORT -– Ideas ranged from the practical — add parking at the Pownal Road athletic fields — to the sublime — build an observation tower on Hedgehog Mountain.

Those are just two of the concepts that arose at a community planning session Thursday night on potential future development of 250 acres of town-owned open space on Hunter and Pownal roads.

Fifty-six citizens, representing a cross-section of townspeople, participated in the two-and-a-half-hour meeting at the Freeport Community Center.

The congenial, sometimes lighthearted gathering was a step toward addressing the fact that the town built several fields on Hunter Road without a comprehensive environmental review. It also was a move to resolve controversy that has polarized residents for more than a year.

In that time, the Town Council spent $2.3 million on the Hunter Road project, then backed away from a contentious deal that would have allowed Seacoast United Maine to build an indoor-outdoor soccer complex on 12 acres between the Hunter and Pownal road fields.

“This (community planning session) should have happened before everything else,” said Joanne Anthony of Murch Road, a participant who lives near the recreation area.

Common goals and ideas gathered at Thursday’s meeting will be distilled into a development plan, which the town will submit to the Maine Departmen of Environmental Protection as part of an application for a comprehensive site plan permit. The application must be filed by mid-January.

Participants, including several town councilors, worked in groups of six or seven and focused on four questions on whether to add parking, expand the trail system, connect to the former landfill area and develop blueberry fields on Hunter Road.

Here are some of the results:

• 45 percent wanted to connect the Hunter Road project to the former landfill area, but in a way that would minimize traffic.

• 89 percent wanted more running/recreational trails to be developed.

• 60 percent opposed an observation tower on Hedgehog Mountain.

• 70 percent wanted to save the blueberry fields.

A majority also wanted additional parking and a playground at Hunter Road fields, water service extended to Pownal Road fields, reinstatement of a municipal parks and recreation department and an inventory of recreational trails in town.

Participants also suggested selectively cutting of trees on the mountain to improve vistas, preserving existing uses and woodlands, making more facilities handicapped accessible, funding trail maintenance, building a community pool, developing a sledding hill, improving trail signs throughout town, and focusing on playing field needs at Freeport High School.

A development plan for the recreational area will be delivered to the Town Council in the coming weeks. The council is expected to take public comment on the plan before voting on a final draft to include in the DEP permit application.

Alton Palmer, senior vice president of Gorrill-Palmer Consulting Engineers of Gray, said the town must start work on the development plan within two years of receiving the permit, but it wouldn’t be required to complete improvements within a set period.

Staff Writer Kelley Bouchard can be contacted at 791-6328 or at:

kbouchard@mainetoday.com

CORRECTION: This story was updated at 10:15 a.m. on Sept. 28, 2012, to correct that concepts arose at the planning session and that 60 percent opposed an observation tower on Hedgehog Mountain.

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