RAYMOND – After a drawn-out battle over a proposed Raymond Cape park-and-ride facility, the town of Frye Island and the Friends of Raymond Cape advocacy group appear to have buried the hatchet.

The new spirit of cooperation comes on the heels of the Raymond Planning Board’s March decision to deny the island town’s original application for a 43-car parking lot and ring road on a 25-acre parcel of undeveloped land across from Ferry Landing Road. The Planning Board denied the application, which the advocacy group has fiercely opposed, on the grounds that the proposed four-way intersection with Cape Road and Ferry Landing Road was unsafe and that the proposed parking lot was too small.

Although Frye Island has appealed the board’s decision, on July 18 it submitted a substantially modified application for a 50-car parking lot on the same property. According to Danielle Loring, Raymond’s code enforcement administrative assistant, the proposed lot will be set back much farther from the road. It also eliminates the proposed ring road in favor of walking paths, and replaces the 25-foot lights with 4-foot “bollard” lights, among other changes. A public hearing on the changes is set for the Aug. 20 Planning Board meeting at the Raymond Broadcast Studio starting at 7 p.m.

“You have to take a path from the parking lot and walk down to the ferry landing,” Loring said. “They’ve eliminated the vehicular traffic. That was one of the concerns, the competition between vehicular and pedestrian traffic, both using that intersection across Cape Road and into Ferry Landing road.”

The ring road was designed to reduce traffic backup on Cape Road during busy periods such as holiday weekends, when island-bound vehicles form queues on Cape Road waiting for the ferry. Instead, the new application would widen Cape Road for queuing traffic.

“It’s now just a parking lot that’s set back in the woods,” Loring said. “From what I’ve heard, people have described it as meeting the rural characteristics of that neighborhood.”

Gary Donohue, the new town manager of Frye Island, declined to comment on the new application. But according to Barb Lovell, a spokeswoman for Friends of Raymond Cape, the town and the advocacy group have been in discussions about a potential de?tente since late October.

Tom Ewig, another member of Friends of Raymond Cape, said that the group met with Frye Island town officials at his home to iron out a compromise.

“We all sat together here in my kitchen and we said, ‘What can we live with and what can’t we live with,’ ” Ewig said.

“We said, ‘Let’s put 50 parking spaces off in the woods where nobody can see them anyway and then with a type of lighting that will not be intrusive to the neighbors nor the night sky.’ And then we said, ‘We’d like to have gravel, not paving,’ ” Ewig added.

Under the deal, Frye Island has also promised to monitor the parking lot at peak hours to ensure that it is only being used by Frye Island residents and visitors. According to Lovell, Frye Island has also promised that it will not seek an expansion of the parking lot in the next seven years.

Ewig said that the advocacy group figured that it might as well work the town of Frye Island to craft a proposal more suitable to its liking.

“They’re not going to just go away no matter how loud we shout,” Ewig said. “So we decided, ‘Look, let’s be reasonable people and let’s see if we can’t sit together with the town fathers of Frye Island and reach some sort of a compromise solution.’ ”

Loring said that she had not heard much opposition to the new application yet.

“Before, there was a huge outcry against this project,” Loring said. “It’s nice to see that Frye Island is working with the residents of the Cape in terms of trying to find something that meets everybody’s needs. Now it almost feels like the Planning Board can focus on the ordinances instead of trying to balance the needs of the two groups out.”