Lewiston extends developer’s option on Bates Mill No. 5
Lewiston’s city council gave developer Tom Platz a one-year extension on his option to buy and redevelop Bates Mill No. 5, the last and most challenging building of the sprawling Bates Mill complex to be redeveloped.
The Sun Journal reported that the extension comes after Central Maine Healthcare announced last week it was pulling out of the project as a possible core tenant due to revenue shortfalls.
Platz told city councilors he had three other potential tenants whose collective needs exceeded the space that had been planned for CHM, adding that he remained optimistic the redevelopment effort at Bates Mill No. 5 would succeed.
Lincoln Jeffers, the city’s director of economic and community development, updated councilors on Lewiston’s application for a $200,000 federal cleanup grant to do environmental work that's seen as an essential next step for the $70 million redevelopment of Bates Mill No. 5 by Platz Associates of Auburn.
Jeffers told councilors the city must retain ownership of the mill until after the $200,000 grant and subsequent environmental work is complete. which he estimated to be early 2018. After that, the newspaper reported, Platz would close on the property.
Platz, an architectural, engineering and construction firm based in Auburn, has been involved since 1997 in the redevelopment of the Bates Mill’s complex's 1.2 million square feet of vacant industrial space occupying 12 acres along Canal Street in downtown Lewiston. At 350,000 square feet, Bates Mill No. 5 is considered architecturally unique, in part because it was designed by Albert Kahn, one of the foremost industrial architects of the early 20th Century.
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