Plans for new Pen Bay Medical Center office building to get reviewed

Tue, 02/28/2017 - 4:15pm

    Rockport’s Planning Board will begin its review March 1 of a new physicians’ building proposed for the Pen Bay Medical Center campus on Route 1 in Rockport. The two-story, 41,566-square-foot building has been sited for the northwest corner of the 63-acre hospital parcel, just southwest of the Sussman House, on Glen Cove Drive.

    The meeting begins at 5:30 p.m. at the Rockport Opera House meeting room.

    Preceding the meeting, the board will conduct a 5 p.m. sitewalk at Camden Glass, at the corner of routes 17 and 90, in West Rockport, where that business wants to add a new used car sales area to its existing parking lot.

    The physician’s building is designed by SMRT Architects and Engineers, the Portland-based, privately-owned company with offices in Virginia, New York, New Jersey, New Hampshire and Massachusetts.

    With a proposed footprint of 20,888 square feet, the medical office building is positioned in an area of undeveloped woods with southerly slopes toward the ocean. There will be no clearcutting, according to the plans on file at the town office.

    According to Rockport zoning, the parcel is in the town’s Section 909 Hospital and Resort district.

    Plans call for the building to contribute approximately 1,700 gallons per day of wastewater to the sewer system that runs to the City of Rockland.

    In 2011, the average daily flow to Rockland was 82,313 gallons per day, and Rockport’s current agreement with Rockland allows the town to send 100,000 gallons per day to the Rockland sewer treatment plant.

    Of the current average flow, Pen Bay Medical Center sends approximately 32,376 gallons per day to Rockland.

    According to the plans filed at the town office, construction of the new physicians’ building will entail some blasting.

    The engineers are also pursuing permits from the Maine Department of Environmental Protection (air license amendment and a Natural Resources Protection Act amendment), the Department of Transportation, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Tier 2 Wetlands permit).