A growing publisher of textbooks plans to move his business from Yarmouth to the recently closed J.L. Coombs discount store at 262 Route 1 in Freeport, given town approval.

The Freeport Staff Review Board was scheduled to consider Wayside Publishing’s request for a change-of-use permit during a meeting Wednesday morning, Feb. 4. If approved by the board, the change will allow Wayside Publishing to switch the use of the building from retail to business and professional.

Wayside Publishing, which employs 10 people, electronically creates the textbooks, which are printed and bound in Massachusetts. They are then shipped to the company’s present location, at 50 Downeast Drive in Yarmouth.

Wayside Publishing owner Gregory Greuel, a Freeport resident, said he needs the larger space of the old J.L. Coombs building, which closed late last spring. J.L. Coombs then closed its last two Maine stores, on Bow Street in Freeport and in Portland, earlier this winter.

The building on Route 1 would give Wayside Publishing 8,500 square feet of space, compared to the 5,000 square feet in Yarmouth.

“We need a bigger space,” Greuel said. “My poor employees are all on top of each other, and that’s the reason we’re moving. It gives us a nice office area for us to edit our textbooks, and a warehouse area.”

Caroline Pelletier, assistant to the Freeport town planner, said that the Staff Review Board has final say on Wayside’s proposal.

“Smaller plans such as this go to the Staff Review Board,” Pelletier said. “They’re not actually printing and binding books here. It’s all digital.”

Greuel plans to lease the building from JAF Realty of Portland. Once it is renovated, Greuel hopes to move Wayside Publishing to Freeport in late March or early April.

“I look forward to being in Freeport with my wife and two daughters, who go to school there,” he said.

Greuel hopes to expand the business by up to double, to 20 employees.

“The business has grown significantly in the past five years,” said Greuel, a former IT manager at L.L. Bean. “I purchased it from my uncle in 2010, when he ran it on Cape Cod. I put it all on a U-Haul truck and moved it up to Yarmouth.”

Wayside Publishing works with educators from institutions such as Harvard University, Columbia University and Middlebury College to produce its textbooks. Major printing houses produce the finished product.

The company produces around 50 titles, and orders several thousand copies to be shipped to its warehouse in the summer.

“That’s when schools order, in the summertime,” Greuel said. “We work with authors and author teams to write the texts, then with editorial teams to lay them out and get them formatted for printing. Then comes the hard part, the marketing. Orders go out every day, especially in the summer.”

Freeport True Value Hardware is a retail business on the southerly end of the long building at 262 Route 1. Woody Woodbury, owner of the store, said he has not heard from the town regarding any proposed change of use in his section of the building.