CAMDEN — Town leaders have agreed it is time to recruit a commercial broker to help divest property once home to a leather tannery in the Millville neighborhood of Camden, and will circulate a request for proposals. At the same time, a call will be made to the independent Watershed School to see if it is interested in the land as a possible campus.

“We have been talking about the tannery for years,” said Peter Gross, chairman of the Community Economic Development Advisory Committee (CEDAC), which was created in 2009 and charged with helping the town sell the 3.5-acre brownfield since cleaned according to state and federal environmental agency guidelines.

“It was the initial issue CEDAC took up when it [the municipal committee] was created,” he said, speaking to the Camden Select Board Monday evening, Nov. 27, at a regulary scheduled meeting in the Washington Street Meeting Room. “The downturn in the economy did not help marketing efforts. The economy seems to picking up. Hopefully we won't go off the fiscal cliff.”

The lot at 116 Washington St. has been staring in the town's fiscal face since 2003 when Camden acquired it in a lien foreclosure, and at the 2011 Camden Town Meeting, it was characterized by one resident as “Camden Follies, Act II.”

The Apollo Tannery had closed in 1999, following a fire and financial problems.

But Camden voters agreed to clean it up and attempt to sell it. The town invested close to $1 million, first demolishing the decrepit buildings, carting off some contaminated soil and capping more, hoping the vacant lot would eventually provide the community with a source of enterprise and employment. The town is still paying off that environmental investment, with annual bond payments of approximately $60,000. Aside from a brief period in 2006, when a Florida-based investor offered to purchase it for $100,000 (a deal that was terminated), and another deal that soured in 2011 with a film production company, the site of the former Apollo Tannery has held both promise and cost for the town for nine years.

In 2008, another town committee that preceded CEDAC, the Tannery Work Group, recommended the town sell the property in accordance with guiding principles and buyer/developer qualifications. Incentives proposed by the group included supplying a "land for jobs" rebate as a means of encouraging the creation of year-round jobs. The goals then were far loftier than just divesting the land: the town wanted any potential buyer to create at least 24 new jobs, each each paying at least $40,000 in wages and benefits annually.

Furthermore, preference should, according to the town, be given to businesses that would stimulate other new employers to come to Camden without taking customers from any already existing business in the town. A list of acceptable businesses was created, along with a list of those that should not be encouraged in the redeveloped site.

Acceptable businesses included bio-technology and life sciences; research and development; marine trades and boat building; higher education institutions; precision manufacturing and health care. Unacceptable businesses included outdoor boat storage; poultry, meat or seafood processing; auto repair shops and warehouse.

In 2009, CEDAC retained Chris Shrum and the then-Knox-Waldo Regional Economic Development Council, with the help of approximately $24,000 in marketing funds, to attract a buyer. At the same time, CEDAC began to focus on its broader mission to help Camden stimulate its economic engine and create year-round employment.

And while those efforts were under way, a group of Camden residents also began working on the idea of a Camden Riverwalk, a pathway that would run along the Megunticook River, and use a portion of the town-owned tannery property that borders the Megunticook River. In 2008, Camden voters had approved creating a 25-foot-wide easement on the tannery land, keeping it forever under the feet of the public. Last month, the town secured a $15,000 grant to plan and design the River to Harbor Walk connecting Shirttail Point Park to Camden Harbor.

As the town and CEDAC pushed marketing the tannery site and its land for jobs concept, it placed an ad on Yahoo's financial website in 2010. B.D' Turman'd Entertainment LLC, whose principals were in Los Angeles and Milwaukee, responded, and pursued acquiring the land, proposing to construct there two sound stages to be used in film production. The deal, as crafted by the town and the LLC principals, became controversial, and LLC pulled out. Reasons for terminating a purchase and sales agreement were attributed to the overly constrictive land configuration, size, and restrictions affecting title that would make it impossible for the business to develop the studios, adequate parking, office facilities and river improvements.

Since that flurry that ended in May 2011, the tannery lot has sat quiet, a sad picture of fencing, old pavement and scrubby grass.

But at Monday's meeting, the consensus of the Select Board and CEDAC was to find someone else to sell it.

"Instead of trying to market it ourselves, bring in somebody who does it for a living," said Gross.

He acknowledged the various ideas for using the land that have floated through the community: turn it into a park, subdivide it, or ask the Farmers Market if farmers would rather gather there than in the parking lot on Limerock Street. In the end, he said, Camden is still paying off the bond for environmental remediation. The best outcome for the town?

“Get some businesses in there to create more jobs,” he said.

Those accepted uses established three to four years ago to define what might occupy the tannery property continue to be “sound recommendations,” said Gross, on Tuesday evening. “We unanimously recommend that the board enlist a commercial real estate broker. Instead of trying to market it ourselves, bring in somebody who does it for a living. Create an request for proposals to go out o commercial realtors to make suggestions or proposals for selling the tannery property,” he said.

And, he added, CEDAC also recommends that town staff be responsible for drafting the RFP, while CEDAC would remain in an advisory role.

“Is the value below $100,000,” asked Select Board member John French.

In 2008, the appraised value was $450,000. That dropped to $175,000, and today, it's appraised value is unknown. Its assessed value by the Town of Camden is $75,700.

Board member Leonard Lookner said that in the late summer, the Watershed School, which now occupies space in the Knox Mill, expressed interest in finding a home.

“Has that been brought any further,” he asked Brian Hodges, Camden's economic development director. “We're talking about an asset that is not worth a lot. It would be an enormous asset to have a school.”

“I don't see why that would preclude getting a commercial broker,” said Gross.

In the end, the Select Board voted unanimously to have the town draft a request for proposal to circulate to commercial brokers, as well as contact leaders of the Watershed School to determine its level of interest.

And some, walking out the door into the night at the meeting's end, continued discussion of the lot, wondering why citizens who want it to be vacant park land don't begin raising the money to buy it — if the value is now so low.

Editorial Director Lynda Clancy can be reached at lyndaclancy@PenBayPilot.com; 706-6657.