Sebago Brewing Co. officials gave the Gorham Planning Board on Monday a taste of its plans for a new headquarters in Gorham.

The company is asking the town for an OK to build a 21,000-square-foot building, with the brewery production area occupying 18,000 square feet, on lower Main Street (Route 25), on part of the so-called Ross Grant. It wants to construct  a brewery, restaurant, event/function center, manufacturing, warehousing and corporate offices on a 4.45-acre site.

Sebago Brewing Co.  is operating in cramped quarters in the Gorham Industrial Park, where it has been housed for a decade.

“We need to increase the brewing footprint,” Kai Adams, a company co-founder, told planners.

The hours of operation would be 11 a.m.-11 p.m., Adams told planners.

Company officials said they would return in August with an architectural design for the building.

The site is across the street from Nappi Distributors.

“It’s at the gateway to Gorham,” Adams said.

Planning Board Chairman Edward Zelmanow said the town hasn’t received an official application yet.

“We’re very early in the process,” the project’s engineer, said Andrew Morrell, of the Gorham firm BH2M.

Morrell was seeking direction from the Planning Board.

“I’m excited to see what this looks like,” Zelmanow said.

Adams indicated the building would have an agricultural feel and a silo to hold grain used in the brewing process. The parking area will have 130 spaces.

Planning Board member Rachel Sunnell is asking for landscaped islands in the parking lot and green space around the building.

“I love your presentation,” Sunnell told Adams and Morrell.

Another Planning Board member, George Fox, wants the parking area screened from the street. Morrell responded that parking would be lower than the road.

Sebago Brewing co-founders Tim Haines and Brad Monarch accompanied Adams at the meeting. After the meeting, Haines and Monarch said their headquarters has 17 employees now and the expansion would add 15-20 more jobs.

The facility would need to connect with a public sewer, according to the town’s printed pre-application information sheet. A line could be constructed about 1,900 feet to the intersection of Main Street and Mosher Road, or run a line across Main Street and through a private lot owned by Nappi and another private lot owned by TNT Quick Stop to connect with a sewer main.

The company would lease its building site from the nonprofit Shaw Brothers Family Foundation, which earlier this year bought a 258-acre tract from ecomaine, the regional waste and recycling company. The foundation plans to restore 100 acres to farm land and to create trails for public recreation including public access to the Presumpscot River.

 

Kai Adams, left, a co-founder of Sebago Brewing Co., points out details of the firm’s plans for a new headquarters on lower Main Street in Gorham during Monday’s meeting of the Gorham Plannimg Board. Andrew Morrell, right, is the project’s engineer and the company’s representative.

 

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