Plan B | Jim Lehner discusses Plum Creek Timber Co.'s new Moosehead development proposal
For a year, Jim Lehner has been the frontman for Plum Creek Timber Co.'s controversial plan to remake the woods around Moosehead Lake with new house and resort development. There are certainly easier jobs, roles that come with fewer slings and arrows.
Yet Lehner says Plum Creek, for which he's a regional general manager, has used a few of those arrows to chisel a revised development plan with significant differences ˆ— increased conservation most prominent among them. Critics had hammered limited development protections included in the initial proposal to rezone 427,000 acres of the North Woods. The revised Plum Creek plan released on April 4, however, contains 400,000 acres of lasting conservation, while also constricting the sprawling development originally proposed by the Seattle-based company. "The themes were pretty clear," Lehner says of public comment on the plan. "One was 'More permanent conservation' and the other was 'Development is okay, as long as it's in the right places.'"
Lehner, 52, admits he was surprised by the widespread opposition to the first proposal. He wasn't so naïve as to expect universal approval of a blueprint to significantly alter one of the state's most treasured regions. But Plum Creek officials and consultants had worked for two years to develop the plan, and Lehner believed it was solid enough to withstand intense scrutiny.
But a series of so-called "scoping sessions" held by the Land Use Regulation Commission ˆ— which has approval authority over the proposed rezoning ˆ— made it clear many Mainers had grave concerns with Plum Creek's plan. After the sessions, Lehner says, the company knew it would need to return to the drawing board to incorporate changes such as permanent conservation easements.
Permanent conservation, Lehner admits, was "a road we did not want to go down in the beginning," if only because it would drastically reduce land values. Lehner, a New Mexico native who has worked for Plum Creek for 31 years, declined to say how his bosses out west initially responded to the suggestion of such easements ˆ— but they may have concluded that a plan with conservation is preferable to a plan rejected outright by the state.
Make no mistake, the Plum Creek proposal remains very large. It still, for example, calls for nearly 1,000 house lots ˆ— unprecedented construction for the North Woods. It also still includes the development of pristine shoreland. But supporters note that it scales back, from 3,000 to 500 acres, a controversial resort proposed for Lily Bay, across from a popular state park, and moves nearly 100 house lots from pond shorefronts to inland sites.
Plum Creek hopes those changes help it reverse what has so far been a losing public relations battle (with at least one public opinion poll showing that Mainers in every part of the state disapproved of its proposal). The company scored a public relation coup by teaming with large environmental groups like the Nature Conservancy and the Appalachian Mountain Club, which announced the conservation in the revised plan a week ahead of its public release. Plum Creek also has launched a television and newspaper advertisement campaign designed to convince Mainers of the plan's value.
That PR campaign has critics, though. The Natural Resources Council of Maine blasted Plum Creek for unleashing "an army of public relations professionals and hired lobbyists" to convince Mainers of the merits of a plan that hadn't been submitted to LURC. Given that response, it's unclear whether the Plum Creek's strategy will work, and it's likely the company will never win over all the plan's critics.
Yet Lehner says the revisions at least show Plum Creek is willing to consider constructive criticism. The first plan, he says, was a company plan, while "this plan is more of a public plan."
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