Through its eight meetings with community members in the past year, the developers of a proposed mixed-use project at the old Liberty Shipyard in South Portland identified a top concern: the project’s impact on traffic.

“We know traffic in general is going to be a large issue for this site,” David Packard of developer PK Realty Management told The Forecaster. “That’s one of the reasons why we’re studying it, using past studies, current studies and there are going to be future studies.”

The 30-acre Yard South project would be built on the site adjacent to Bug Light Park, roughly a half-mile from Southern Maine Community College with the intersection of Breakwater Drive and Broadway located between the two. Planning is still in its early stages, with few concrete details presented at a City Council workshop Tuesday.

In general, the developers’ goal is to create an environmentally sustainable “community and destination” to “live, work, play and shop.” It would include “housing for people of different ages, incomes and backgrounds and integrate arts and culture,” host waterfront events and be pedestrian- and bike-friendly.

“We’ve been picking away at this project for the last three years,”  Jennifer Packard, president of PK Realty Management, told the council. “We’ve been afforded the luxury of taking our time on this project, because we have existing tenants on the site, and that means that we can take our time and be very deliberate and thoughtful.”

A goal, she said, is to push vehicular traffic to the Madison Street side of the site rather than coming through Ferry Village.

Town Councilor Katherine Lewis was worried about the traffic as well.

“As a resident who lives on Broadway, it’s very clear the differences in vehicular traffic when SMCC is in session versus not in session,” she said at the workshop. She encouraged the developers to take the college traffic into consideration as they move forward.

Other challenges the developers cited include the neighboring oil tanks, the Portland Pipeline running through the site and implementing both affordable and market-rate housing.

The developers also face a zoning hurdle. South Portland Planning Director Milan Nevajda said current zoning of the Yard South site doesn’t allow residential use. That zoning, however, doesn’t align with the city’s comprehensive plan, he said.

“The Comprehensive Plan identifies this Yard South project site as a growth area of a mixed-use nature, and it specifically calls it the Shipyard Development District,” Nevajda said.

David Packard said he’d like to see Yard South provide a better connection from the Greenbelt to Bug Light Park.

“Something that we immediately noticed about the property is that there’s the old Pickett Street extension,” he told The Forecaster. “It connects at the corner right where the Greenbelt comes out onto Madison Street, and that connection from Greenbelt to Bug Light Park is just kind of messy.”

“It’s a great opportunity to bring people in and through the site and connect the neighborhood and ourselves to Bug Light because it’s such a great amenity,” Packard said.

The developers have partnered with OnePlanet Living, a sustainability consultant company based in the United Kingdom.

“If everybody lived like a European, we’d require the resources from three worlds,” Packard said.  “If everybody lived like a North American, we’d require the resources of five worlds.”

The developers’ work with OnePlanet focuses on “how we manage and bring our impact down so that we’re only using the resources that we should be,” he said.

He also said it helps “provide a system of accountability” to keep the project environmentally friendly as it is developed, something developers have especially emphasized due to the site’s proximity to the ocean shore.

The developers and council are expected to hold future workshops as the project progresses.

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