SCARBOROUGH — The private operator of Scarborough Beach State Park has submitted an application for a plan that would more than double public access to the popular beach.

The Sprague Corp. proposes as many as 500 new parking spots in the middle of 64 acres of open space, a building for restrooms and concessions and a walkway leading through fields and dunes to 1,700 feet of beach north of the state park.

The park is a popular destination in the summer for beach-goers and surfers. Its limited space for parking often causes traffic backups along Black Point Road, said Seth Sprague, the corporation’s president.

There are 290 parking spots at the state park and an additional 140 spaces across Black Point Road. “The layout (of the park) creates traffic,” Sprague said. “We’re trying to figure out a way to alleviate that” with the expansion.

With two lanes leading to a gatehouse set back from Black Point Road, Sprague said, visitors with season passes would drive through quicker and those waiting for day passes would not block the main road.

The Sprague Corp., which manages the state park and owns the oceanfront land to the north, hopes to have the first 277 parking spots, the access road and the walkway to the beach ready for this summer, and a second phase of construction done for the 2012 season.

Before the project can get under way, the Sprague Corp. needs approval from the town’s Zoning Board of Appeals to allow a commercial outdoor recreational use in the rural and farming zone, said Town Planner Dan Bacon.

The board will meet at 7 p.m. Wednesday to begin discussing the plan, he said, and input from neighbors will be welcome.

If the plan receives the approval, Bacon said, a more detailed version will go before the Planning Board. He said there may have to be additional review by the state Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife and the Department of Transportation, for concerns regarding habitat preservation and traffic.

Bacon said some neighbors have already reviewed the company’s application, and he has heard concerns about the proposed change in the land’s use and the additional parking.

More than 50 residents attended a meeting in November, after the Sprague Corp. and Black Point Resource Management LLC, its management arm, sent a letter about the plan to the immediate neighbors.

Martha Baidarka said she grew up on Black Point Road, in the home that her grandfather built in 1940. Throughout her life, she has kept coming back to the home, in a neighborhood that “has been quiet and rural for all of my life.”

She worries that the Sprague Corp.’s plan would change the character of the neighborhood dramatically.

“It’s not that I don’t want people to be able to go to the beach. I just have trouble picturing three times as many people on the beach, and what that will do to the dunes, the birds and the environment,” Baidarka said.

She said the expansion also would add traffic to Black Point Road.

“One hundred percent of my neighbors are opposed to this expansion,” Baidarka said Thursday.

Among them is Paul Regan, who lives on Kirkwood Road, about a five-minute walk from the beach.

“Most of us are not very happy,” he said. “They are talking about bringing in an additional 500 cars, with three or four people to a car. It’s a much bigger development than what they already have” at the state park.

Baidarka and Regan said neighbors plan to speak against the proposal at next week’s meeting of the zoning board.

“I don’t know of anyone who can support this,” Regan said.

Sprague said, “It’s a question of what is acceptable. In our view, building houses there is not.”

He said the proposal fits the town’s comprehensive plan for maintaining open space while increasing public access to “a fabulous resource.”

Staff Writer Dennis Hoey contributed to this report.

Staff Writer Emma Bouthillette can be contacted at 791-6325 or at:

ebouthillette@pressherald.com