Boothbay selectmen on Wednesday will hold a public hearing and then consider taking action on a proposed settlement with Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens that would overturn a decision by the town’s Board of Appeals and let the gardens move forward with a $30 million expansion.
As part of the settlement — proposed as part of a federal lawsuit filed in December by the botanical gardens against the town after the town filed a stop-work order — the botanical gardens will agree not to build any additional structures east of the Knickerbocker Lake watershed line, but may seek to and build pedestrian trails and walkways according to existing conservation easements.
CMBG would also place 75 acres within the watershed zone into a conservation easement.
Jodie and Vaughan Anthony and their sons, Jason and Kevin, whose property abuts the gardens, appealed a development permit granted to the gardens by the Boothbay Planning Board in 2016 to build what would eventually include a new visitors center and gift shop, a restaurant in the existing visitors center, a 16,000-square-foot horticulture research and production facility, and a nearly six-story conservatory, along with expanded parking, formal gardens and trails.
In appealing that decision, the Anthonys and other opponents, including the Boothbay Region Water District, cited, among other concerns, further degradation of the water quality of nearby Knickerbocker Lake, already listed by the state as “most at risk from new development.”
William Cullina, the gardens’ executive director, said the expansion was necessary to accommodate a growing number of visitors, many of whom attend the annual Gardens Aglow lights display in December.
Despite the appeal, construction at the gardens began in early 2017.
The suit claimed that the board indicated in a 4-to-1 straw vote in September that it would affirm the gardens’ permit, but support for the permit “somehow reversed just three weeks later.”
Following that meeting, the suit alleges, board members Stephen Malcolm and Scott Adams met with the Anthony family in private and visited the Anthonys’ and gardens’ property, “ex parte proceedings that violated the gardens’ clearly established procedural due process rights.”
The board subsequently visited the area together, but the suit alleged that visit “was insufficient to purge the taint of Mr. Malcolm and Mr. Adams’ ex parte proceedings with the Anthonys.”
In December, two days after the town’s Board of Appeals upheld a decision to revoke the building permit to the botanical gardens, attorneys for the gardens sued, charging the town with a violation of the Civil Rights Act.
They charged that the town violated the gardens’ 14th Amendment rights to due process of law.
The proposed settlement filed in U.S. District Court would vacate the November 2017 Board of Appeals decision overturning the building permit granted to the botanical gardens for the expansion, and would allow Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens to complete all construction initially approved by the Boothbay Planning Board in December 2016 and April 2017.
Should the town agree to the settlement, CMBG would dismiss its lawsuit in Lincoln County Superior Court with prejudice, according to the proposed settlement.
The Board of Selectmen in Boothbay will hold a public hearing at 7 p.m. Wednesday on a proposed settlement of pending litigation with Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens.
CMBG marketing director Kris Folsom said Tuesday that the gardens had no comment.
Boothbay Town Manager Dan Bryer did not return phone calls or emails Monday or Tuesday seeking clarification of whether the proposed settlement had been made public or whether selectmen would vote on the settlement following Wednesday’s public hearing.
Calls to Board of Selectmen chairman Charles Cunningham and vice chairman Steven Lewis on Tuesday were not answered.
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