WINDHAM – Residents packed the Windham Council Chambers Monday night for a public hearing designed to solicit input on a proposed expansion of the commercial zone in North Windham.

The proposal, brought forth by the Windham Economic Development Corp., calls for extending the Commercial-3 district along Route 302 from Page Road near Pinelyne Furniture south to where Route 302 crosses over the Pleasant River near the rotary.

Some residents at the meeting lamented the encroachment of what they view as North Windham’s unsightly development with its traffic and pollution concerns. But others argued that the rezoning would increase their property value and create little additional traffic, which they say is already overwhelming, especially during the summer.

The rezoning proposal was also called for in 2003’s Comprehensive Plan. According to Town Planner Brooks More, who moderated Monday’s hearing and took notes on residents’ feedback for future discussions by the Planning Board, the rezoning proposal, if approved, would take about a year to take effect.

Monday’s initial public hearing, More said, will be followed by months of discussion by the Land Use Ordinance Committee, then consideration by the Planning Board. A second public hearing would take place sometime in late summer or early fall with the Town Council taking the matter up and with additional chances for public comment.

While the stretch is now zoned Medium Residential with mostly single family homes, the mile-long section of Route 302 also has several home-based businesses, a church, a business park and a medical arts building. Several of the larger businesses in the strip, such as the Lakes Region Primary Care building, already are zoned C-3.

Abutters were polled by the Windham Economic Development Corp. prior to the public hearing ,with most responders favoring the zone change. Only 29 of the 105 residents polled via a mailed questionnaire responded and of those only five said the stretch of Route 302 under consideration shouldn’t be rezoned C-3.

Those residents attending the meeting on Monday however, were more vocal in their opposition.

Priscilla Payne, a resident of the Cornerbrook Condominium neighborhood located within the proposed rezoning area, said she was worried about what she described as Windham leaders’ lack of concern of “quality of life” issues when making land-use changes.

“More commercial development in a heavily residential area would bring with it increased traffic, noise, signs, etc.,” Payne said, who then asked, “Who would basically profit from this change?”

Windham’s economic and community development director, Tom Bartell, who ran the meeting along with More, replied, saying, “I would guess, the landowners along the section” would benefit.

Payne then said, “We live in an area that’s one of the more attractive areas of Route 302. And once you get up over the hill, I certainly wouldn’t want this area to look like that. And so do you have any design standards should this proceed?”

More said the town has design guidelines that come into play if a project has to get site plan approval or a structure will be larger than 2,000 square feet. “In that case, it’s kind of a negotiation between the town and the person proposing the building,” More said.

Payne then asked whether the development corporation’s proposal was at the request of any business that has indicated a desire to move to the section. Bartell said no business had yet come forward and that the change would open another section of town to prospective builders.

“You don’t know that a business wants to go somewhere unless there’s a place for them to go,” Bartell said.

Patricia Toms, another resident of Cornerbrook, doesn’t see the need for more commercial space, noting the open storefronts in North Windham.

“I’d like to know why you’d want to create more commercial districts when businesses in Windham are closing and there are vacant buildings not being used,” she said.

Resident Josie Morrill said she would “hate for it … to look like North Windham,” and that she’d hate to see the farmland in that stretch “disappear into business and other things that we really don’t need.”

“You go up there on a Friday night and that traffic is atrocious,” she said. “If you add businesses in there that people are pulling in and out of, you’re going to have many more accidents.”

Nash Road resident Margaret Pinchbeck, who owns the former Hall barn at the southern end of the proposed commercial district, questioned how new businesses would meld with existing residences.

These businesses, she said, “can have safety lights in their parking lots that will be on all night, and there’re going to be Dumpsters. I just think it’s going to be a nuisance for abutters.”

Not all who attended were against the rezoning. Lee Wright, who lives across from Lakes Region Primary Care, which is a pocket of C-3 district within the greater Medium Residential stretch, said traffic has “easily” increased 40 percent in the last 20 years because more out-of-staters are using Route 302 to access western Maine.

Because of the heavy use, Wright said, growth will continue to happen.

“If you look at the zoning coming out of Westbrook, it’s slowly creeping commercial the whole way up (Route 302). Eventually it’s going to end up being there anyway,” he said.

“I don’t think it overly impacts the area,” Wright continued. “It theoretically wouldn’t impede people’s property values because it doesn’t make the property less valuable. It makes it more valuable.”

Resident Patrick Corey, who led an effort to halt a rezoning proposal that would have allowed greater housing density in rural areas of South Windham last year, spoke against the Route 302 rezoning proposal. Corey said the town’s residential taxpayers wouldn’t benefit from the extended commercial zone because the taxes generated wouldn’t cover the added expenses that would result.

“If commercial development doesn’t offset residential taxes,” he asked, “what is the benefit to residents? Residents need sound quantifiable plans with regard to commercial development and the economic development and job diversity it could bring … so what’s in it for us?”

Bartell disagreed.

“Whatever business taxes are paid does offset residential taxes,” he said. “Having a new 2,000 square-foot business come in and develop a property, does that make an impact on your property taxes? No. Do they pay taxes? Yes. They pay the same rate as everyone else does, and that goes into the pot just like anything else.

“We have a $2 billion property valuation in the town,” Bartell said. “In order to have a large impact on the tax base, you’d need to have a tremendously large business development, something on the scale of $100 million, $200 million to see a significant drop in the tax rate.”