GORHAM – Large Gorham land tracts, now rural and near Westbrook, could sprout professional offices, wholesale facilities, more houses and even hotels in a futuristic vision for town development through the next 10 to 20 years.

All this and more are revealed in a proposed, 170-page comprehensive plan for Gorham unveiled last week. The Town Council could approve the plan as early as this spring.

Gorham’s Town Planner Tom Poirier and Zoning Administrator David Galbraith, aided by a consultant, Mark Eyerman, president of Planning Decisions Inc., prepared the updated draft of the town’s comprehensive plan.

“It’s consistent with what we had in the comprehensive plan, but brings it into the 21st century,” Town Council Chairman Michael Phinney said on Tuesday.

The comprehensive plan has not been updated since 1994. At the same time, the town has experienced substantial growth. The population jumped from 14,141 in 2000 to 16,381 in the 2010 census.

Figures show that the town had a total of 1,352 residential building permits from 2000 to 2012.

“Now we have to get ready for the next 20 years,” Phinney said.

Galbraith said the Town Council was presented copies of the updated plan last week. Galbraith said a public hearing on the plan would be held at the council’s regular meeting at 7 p.m. on Feb. 4, in Gorham Municipal Center, 75 South St.

Phinney anticipates multiple hearings for public input before the council would vote on the matter.

If approved, the updated plan would be a harbinger for rezoning, Galbraith confirmed this week. In an overview of the plan, a town document reads, “under state law, the comprehensive plan serves as the basis for the town’s zoning ordinance.”

Here are some of the items addressed in the updated comprehensive plan:

• Create a planned development area for most of Mosher’s Corner.

• Expand Gorham and Little Falls villages.

• Consolidate South Gorham contract zones into a village center.

• Adjust zoning at the intersection in White Rock to allow mixed-use development.

• Continue pursing economic growth to expand tax base.

• Shift from rural to suburban residential land bounded by Brackett and New Portland roads and Westbrook.

• Protect town’s historical and archaeological resources.

• Link the bypass to the interstate system.

• Improve parking in Gorham Village.

• Explore bus service.

• Support more affordable housing.

A Mosher’s Corner Planned Development Area would be along the Presumpscot River side of lower Main Street and up Mosher Road nearly to the Little River. It would also include industrial-zoned land on the westerly side of Mosher Road. Language in the plan said it would not allow residential development. It would allow businesses, manufacturing, wholesale and distribution facilities, hotels, mineral extraction and agricultural uses and reuse of agricultural buildings.

Once a large agricultural community, Gorham has just four remaining active, milk-producing farms.

The updated plan would place a rural zone westerly and northerly of Gorham Village. Town Councilor Benjamin Hartwell, a farmer, worries about a lack of emphasis on agriculture in Gorham’s proposed comprehensive plan.

“When the draft of the new plan came out last week, I compared it to the current plan,” Hartwell said in a statement for the American Journal. “The current plan mentions the importance of agriculture to the community. In Part III pages 18-19 it states, ‘In very real terms, agricultural land use is tied to the profitability of agriculture and forestry in the community. Therefore, the policy of the town is to vigorously encourage the continuation of agricultural enterprises as a tool for preserving agricultural land.’”

But, Hartwell said, “This language has been eliminated in the new draft.”

Hartwell said that “people want to reconnect with where their food comes from” and agriculture is in a growth period in town.

“We need to recognize the importance of the farms we have in this town, but also the potential for new farms that can use the land that may have gone fallow,” Hartwell said.

A CLOSER LOOK

Gorham’s proposed updated comprehensive plan can be viewed online by visiting www.gorham-me.org.

A Town Council public hearing on the plan is scheduled for Tuesday, Feb. 4, at 7 p.m., at the Gorham Municipal Center, 75 South St.

Gorham is attracting new development, and the town is updating its comprehensive plan. Construction site work is under way here for a Martin’s Point Health Care facility on the westerly side of the busy Mosher’s Corner, now a four-way intersection.