SOUTH PORTLAND – Following a neighborhood meeting on Nov. 21 between representatives of Cafua Management, a Massachusetts-based operator of Dunkin’ Donuts restaurants, and 10 immediate abutters of the former St. John the Evangelist Church at 611 Main St., a citizens’ petition was expected to be delivered to the South Portland City Council at its Dec. 4 meeting.

“I have heard that they are circulating something, although I’m not sure exactly what it is,” said Mayor Jerry Jalbert on Monday.

Wednesday’s council meeting took place after deadline for this week’s print edition of the Current. More details will be posted online on Thursday.

Because he lives in the Thornton Heights area near the church, Jalbert was reportedly the only city official invited to the Nov. 21 meeting, during which Cafua outlined its plans to tear down the shuttered church and build a freestanding Dunkin’ Donuts.

According to Thirlmere Avenue resident Joyce Mendoza, who hosted the meeting, the store would be “a full-service Dunkin’ Donuts restaurant with a drive-through, open 17 hours per day.” However, Jalbert said one of the three drawings he saw included leaving the church in place.

In an email Tueday, Brian Frost, another Thirlmere Avenue resident who attended the private meeting, said a petition has been signed by “over 80 registered South Portland voters opposing redevelopment” of the St. John’s lot by Cafua. Instead, local residents are backing Frost’s call for the City Council to adopt a land swap deal. More than 20 copies of an email detailing that concept have been sent to city councilors over the past week.

Frost, who works in commercial real estate, says it’s a “no-brainer” for the city to swap a 2.33-acre vacant lot it owns at the corner of Main and Westbrook streets with Cafua, assuming it goes forward with the purchase and sale agreement signed in June with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland.

The city plans to use the lot as a staging area for Main Street reconstruction set to begin next April and lasting two years, and then turn the site into a public park.

Frost said the swap would benefit Cafua, which already operates a Dunkin Donuts on an adjacent lot at 633 Main St. while a park on the St. John’s site makes more sense from a public safety standpoint than one at the busy corner of routes 1 and 9.

“Traffic at that location is very heavy and [it] is a longer distance from where the neighborhood children live,” agreed Mendoza, in a Dec. 1 letter, in which she also pitched the idea, to City Planner Tex Haeuser.

South Portland officials have known about the Dunkin’ deal since at least June, when the City Council held an executive session on the topic. Frost and Jalbert say that meeting was held in June, while City Manager Jim Gailey, saying it was hard to remember, “because we don’t keep notes on those kinds of meetings,” thought it took place in August. Council meeting agendas posted on the city website list only one executive session, on July 22.

Gailey and Councilor Tom Blake have acknowledged that the closed-door meeting involved discussion about the disposition of St. John’s church. In his last council meeting as mayor, Blake promised Frost the council would workshop the land-swap idea. However, Jalbert said on Monday, “That’s a difficult thing to do that if the city has no interest in either end of the sale.”

Meanwhile, Jalbert insisted that the previous executive session about St. John’s, whenever it occurred, “involved city-owned land,” while declining to verify the vacant lot at the corner of Main and Westbrook streets was the land under consideration during conversations about the church.

Maine law allows municipal officers to enter executive session when contemplating the purchase or sale of real estate, but “only if premature disclosure of information would prejudice the competitive or bargaining position” of the city.

An executive session concerning real estate was on the agenda for the Dec. 4 council meeting, although Gailey said Monday the property to be considered at that meeting did not involve St. Johns.

A spokesperson for Cafua could not be reached for comment.

Residents of the neighborhood surrounding St. John the Evangelist Church on Main Street in South Portland are expected to submit a petition regarding the potential sale of the church to Dunkin’ Donuts.