WINDHAM — A community workshop focusing on potential land use ordinance changes in North Windham began Monday night with pizza and ended with residents and business owners presenting their ideal visions for development in the area.

The open house and workshop gave town officials the opportunity to outline their efforts to implement the town’s 21st Century Downtown Plan and allowed attendees to share their opinions about future development and redevelopment in North Windham.

The event at the Little Meetinghouse was organized by the Windham Planning Department and two planning consultants hired by the town to draft the new zoning ordinances. The feedback provided by the public during the workshop will inform the work being done by the consultants, Vanessa Farr of Maine Design Collaborative and Kara Wilbur of Principle Group, as they draft the potential ordinances and present them to the Town Council and Planning Board.

“I’m excited to be here, and Kara’s excited to be here, because you’ve been making a lot of great steps forward to talk about the evolution of your community,” Farr said. “And so that gets us into this conversation about zoning. It’s sort of the next step that we need to take to implement those great plans.”

The 21st Century Downtown Plan was adopted by the Town Council in 2013. The plan, which was named Plan of the Year in 2014 by the Maine Association of Planners, aims to address traffic and safety concerns on Route 302 while giving downtown North Windham a “renewed sense of place,” according to the town website.

Planning Director Ben Smith said that as the town explores changes that include intersection and sidewalk improvements, it is also looking at ordinance changes that affect private property development. Those potential ordinance changes were the focus of Monday’s discussion.

“The cheapest part of the whole process to make North Windham better is underway right now: the ordinances where we look at regulations for how property redevelops,” said Smith. “We need to be thinking longer term – these buildings are going to be here for 40-, 80-plus years, so once a property is developed it really becomes part of the future of North Windham as well.”

After Smith and Farr gave presentations, the group of about 30 attendees broke up into smaller groups. Each had a map of North Windham that allowed them to build their own 21st Century Downtown with new streets, community spaces and businesses according to their own vision for the area.

There was also a “visual preference survey” with images of commercial buildings and community spaces from other towns and cities. Attendees were encouraged to place green stickers on images that they liked, and red stickers on those that they didn’t.

Tim Graham, who works on Route 115 in Windham and had not been to previous planning meetings on the issue, said he’d likely attend future discussions.

“They’re doing it keeping everybody in mind, and so that everybody will benefit,” said Graham. “It was good to get a different perceptive from all the business owners to keep an eye on the future.”

Some other folks in the room, however, were less optimistic.

“I honestly feel that this is putting the cart before the horse because we don’t have a sewer, we don’t have the access roads,” said George Bartlett, owner of Busy Bee Dry Cleaning in Windham. His group’s map of ideal changes included access roads off Route 302 to help with traffic. “But that being said, we all know that, so let’s go into what’s supposed to happen tonight.”

The potential North Windham ordinance changes are several steps from being realized. Farr and Wilbur will draft the proposed changes, and those changes will go before both the Town Council and Planning Board for a series of votes and public meetings before anything is adopted.

“I would see our recommendations coming forward through the Planning Board process and Council in late March or April,” Farr said after the workshop.

Moving forward, the town still has work to do when it comes to getting some local business owners on board with their development plans.

Stephen Napolitano, owner of the Dairy Queen in Windham, asked Smith, “Are you guys going to be able to do this without disrupting the current businesses that are in this area that built this town?”

“We need to work with the existing businesses,” Smith replied. “I can’t say there won’t be any disruption when it comes to things like construction, but that’s part of the reason we’re here.”

Town Manager Tony Plante, who spent most of the evening listening, chose that moment to emphasize that this is a long-term plan.

“The North Windham we have now didn’t happen all at once, so the North Windham we’re envisioning isn’t going to happen all at once, either,” Plante said.

Matt Junker can be reached at 781-3661 ext. 123 or mjunker@theforecaster.net. Follow him on Twitter: @MattJunker

Planning consultant Vanessa Farr discusses input from local residents and business owners during a workshop on potential ordinance changes in North Windham.