WESTBROOK – Stroudwater Street residents asked tough questions at a neighborhood meeting last week, seeking to know more about a proposed zone change that could open the door for development on roughly 60 acres between Stroudwater Street and Westbrook Arterial.

J.B. Brown & Sons, a longtime Portland developer, is working to purchase the parcel, once the site of an ambitious development plan known as Stroudwater Place, which was subsequently abandoned following foreclosure last year.

Vincent Veroneau, president and CEO of J.B. Brown & Sons, presented his company’s proposal to the Planning Board last month, and hosted a neighborhood forum Jan. 9 to provide information and gauge opinion on the proposal, which includes rezoning the property into a roughly 45-acre zone for potential commercial development, and a 15-acre zone for possible residential development.

However, the land’s Stroudwater Place contract zone is still in effect. Because developers have said the current zone is too ambitious within today’s market, neighbors are reluctant to support the zone change, instead believing that if the zone change doesn’t occur, the neighborhood is likely to remain unchanged.

“Being totally transparent, if the community doesn’t want anything to happen on this land, keep the current zone,” Veroneau said.

The Stroudwater Place development was proposed by original landowner Jason Snyder, who lost the land last year after it was sold back to mortgage lender Kimco Capital in a foreclosure auction.

Since the foreclosure, however, Kimco has said it has no interest in pursuing the development, which was a proposed 1.6-million-square-foot project, with planned upscale retail stores such as Nordstrom and Bloomingdale’s, as well as restaurants, a skating rink and more.

“Our interest in the property is to change that zone because we don’t think that vision is possible,” Veroneau said last week. “I don’t think the market will allow for that type of intensive development.”

J.B. Brown has signed a purchase agreement with Kimco contingent upon a successful zone change. At the foreclosure auction, Kimco bought the land back for $1.2 million.

“We think the property holds a good opportunity for development, but over time,” Veroneau said. “I don’t think it’s going to happen in 12 months. We’re willing to be patient.”

For example, he said that getting state approval for access off the arterial could be a time consuming process.

Neighbors inclined to support the project noted the track record of J. B. Brown, as well as the smaller-scale nature of the potential plans. Veroneau told neighboring residents that any development proposed on the parcel would be less intensive, with a residential development stemming from Stroudwater Street and a separate, commercial development limited to access from Westbrook Arterial.

Under the zone change, any commercial development must be at least 800 feet from Stroudwater Street, compared to 200 under Stroudwater Place. Currently, the outlying commercial zoning across the Westbrook Arterial is known as Gateway Commercial Zone, which is what Veroneau is seeking for his commercial portion of development. This proposed zoning allows for auto repair services, business offices, childcare, greenhouses, a hotel or motel, medical offices, municipal facilities and more.

Veroneau has said that J.B. Brown is not looking to do “big-box” stores, but instead mixed-use development. The preliminary sketch calls for a roughly 64,000-square-foot development, which is a fraction of the proposed scope of Stroudwater Place.

Drew Gattine, a state representative from Westbrook who lives on Stroudwater Street, inquired at the meeting if J.B. Brown, which is not known for residential development, would be developing the proposed 18 housing lots. Veroneau said that the most likely scenario would be for his company to develop road and utility access and to sell the housing lots to builders.

Veroneau added that the houses would be of size and values consistent with the area surrounding the development.

However, many neighbors at the meeting expressed concern for a lack of specific plans for the site, which Veroneau said would not be developed further until after the zone change was acquired.

“It’s fairly expensive to pull together the engineering to plan without knowing that, by zoning, we can do it,” he said.

Veroneau did provide neighbors with a rough sketch of what the two zones could look like, but cautioned that any eventual development could look much different, given commercial interest in the property stemming from the arterial.

Abutters to the proposed residential property cited traffic concerns in the area, stating that Stroudwater Street is already congested due to Westbrook Middle School.

However, Mark Malone, the real estate broker for Kimco, again compared the proposed zone with Stroudwater Place.

“The prior development had 6,000 cars on site, so the chances were, there would be more traffic coming down Stroudwater to get to the other entrance to attend an event.”

Another factor presented by Veroneau is the presence of wetland on the parcel, which he said was not made clear during the original development proceedings.

According to Veroneau, in order to accomplish the Stroudwater Place development, roughly 15 acres of wetlands would have to be filled, which isn’t allowed under state laws.

“We’d have trouble filling two to five acres if, in fact, we looked at that for any development,” he said. “Not only is the market not feasible, but environmentally it’s not feasible.”

The zone change goes back to the Westbrook Planning Board, which meets Tuesday, Jan. 21, at 7 p.m. in Room 114 of Westbrook High School. Zone-change approval would still require a second reading, however, and then move on to the City Council, which would ultimately decide on the change.