After Pike Industries missed another deadline to have its latest plans for its Spring Street quarry appear in front of the Planning Board, neighboring businesses are ready to put pressure on the city to make a decision about the future of the property.

Both Doug Finck, general manager of WPXT and WPME, and Kirby Pilcher, president of Artel Inc., say their companies are unable to move forward with their own plans until they know whether Pike will be allowed to expand on Spring Street.

“We’re all very concerned that the city get involved in making a decision,” Finck said last week. “We’re getting kind of antsy.”

According to Finck, the television stations on Ledgeview Drive are in the process of converting to digital broadcasting and adding new channels – changes that will require investments, new equipment and additional employees. Though the company’s intention has always been to expand at its current location, he said, “we cannot co-exist with a quarry or extraction business as a neighbor.”

Artel, a laboratory technology company on Bradley Drive, is currently negotiating a partnership with a firm that has developed technology for the discovery of new drugs, Pilcher said, which would require the company to expand in manufacturing, marketing and distribution.

“The potential business partner will not be interested, if the prospect of a working quarry, crushing operation, heavy truck traffic, dust, noise and fumes in the immediate neighborhood is a probable reality,” he said.

Staff and elected officials were caught in a bind when another neighbor, Idexx, which develops, manufactures and distributes veterinary tests and equipment, told the city in March that if Pike’s plans were approved, it would likely not move forward with building its corporate headquarters, which was discussed when Idexx was negotiating for a tax increment financing agreement with the city.

In an effort to stop Pike’s expansion and ensure that Idexx would stay, Mayor Bruce Chuluda proposed rezoning the land between Spring and Saco streets – including Five Star Industrial Park and Pike’s property – from industrial to light manufacturing. The Committee of the Whole tabled the issue in hopes that the two companies could reach a compromise, and the city wouldn’t have to choose sides between two of its biggest taxpayers.

Negotiations between the companies broke down in June, and though Pike said it was willing to adjust its site plan to appease neighbors, the alternative plan that was presented still didn’t satisfy Idexx.

When Pike returned to the Planning Board in July, it presented its original plan, again putting the city in a position where it would have to choose between the companies.

In the weeks following that meeting, Pike representatives said they were working on a new plan, removing a second quarry and a permanent rock crusher from the proposal, which Idexx and other members of WestbrookWorks, a group of residents and businesses against the expansion, including Finck and Pilcher, saw as an insignificant improvement.

City Administrator Jerre Bryant said the city didn’t give Pike a deadline to come forward with its new plans because “we thought the application was imminent,” he said. But that could change now that Pike, which indicated last summer that it would be back to the Planning Board in the fall, failed to submit its expansion plans in time to be taken up by the Planning Board in December.

However, since Idexx, the leading opponent to Pike’s expansion, brought forward a legal analysis of the situation in September, concluding that Pike never had permits to operate a quarry on Spring Street, the city needs to give Pike ample opportunity to respond.

“It raises very serious issues,” Bryant said about Idexx’s findings.

According to Idexx lawyer Bill Plouffe, in the late 1960s the city denied approval of rock crushing to Blue Rock, the company which originally owned the Spring Street quarry and was purchased by Pike in 2005. Blue Rock blasted anyway, Plouffe said, and the city simply never enforced its ruling.

Bryant said it seems unusual that the city wouldn’t have enforced the ruling, especially considering the decision’s high profile – it was the subject of many front-page stories in the American Journal at the time.

“Maybe there’s an approval out there,” Bryant said. “We’ve got one perspective, and we’re giving them the opportunity to respond.”

According to John Koris, environmental manager for Pike, a formal response to Idexx’s analysis will be presented to the city within a couple of weeks. Last week, Pike released a statement asserting that the company does believe it has proper permits from the city and the quarry has been operating legally for the past 40 years.

The company said it paid more than $16 million to acquire Blue Rock assets and would lose more than $620 million in revenue if forced to close the quarry. An attempt to limit Pike’s use of the Spring Street quarry for the benefit of other businesses, Pike said, would be illegal.

According to the opponents of Pike’s expansion, the threat of legal retaliation by the company shouldn’t scare the city.

“Every great gain comes at some expense. Somebody has to say this is worth a fight,” said Pilcher, who believes the ultimate benefits the city will see by rezoning the property to light manufacturing will greatly outweigh the cost of a court battle.

According to Finck, even if the city wants to avoid a legal battle with Pike by allowing them to expand, it’s still going to end up in court.

“Do you want to be sued by Pike or do you want to be sued by somebody else?” he said.