SACO — A vacant property on Main Street in Saco, known as Saco Island East, is going up for auction on Friday.

Saco Island East is a nearly six-acre parcel on Saco Island, an island in the Saco River that was once home to a booming mill district. Main Street passes through the island, connecting it to the rest of downtown Saco with a bridge to the north and to downtown Biddeford with a bridge to the south.

The western side of Main Street on the island is home to a train station as well as a former mill complex that is in various stages of redevelopment and now houses restaurants, apartments, condominiums and office space.

The eastern side of Main Street has long been vacant. Over the years, there have been several proposals for the area which is referred to as Saco Island East. According to city records, the vacant, riverfront property is assessed at $379,000.

Developer Bernie Saulnier, with J&B Partners had been working this past year on getting necessary approvals for a $40 million mixed use proposed development. The project, called The Waters, was a $40 million project on Saco Island East that included a restaurant, boutique hotel, apartments, boat slips and public space.

Mortgage holder Joan Kurker, through Portsmouth attorney Jonathan Flagg, is putting the property up for public sale for breach of conditions of the mortgage and for the purpose of foreclosure, according to documents filed in the York County Registry of Deeds.

The sale will be held at 3:30 p.m. on Friday at 110 Main St. Those who wish to make a bid must pay a $20,000 deposit, which will be refunded to those whose bids are unsuccessful.

Saulnier was contacted last week and declined comment.

The Saco City Council voted Monday night after a closed door discussion in executive session to allow the city to pay the $20,000 deposit to participate in the public sale on Friday.

“The council thought it was important enough to be paying attention,” Mayor Marston Lovell said in a phone interview on Tuesday.

Lovell said that the city likely doesn’t have the money to compete in a bidding process to purchase the property. There is some contamination on the site he said, and if the city were to acquire it, it could, as a local government, apply for a Brownfields grant with the United States Environmental Protection Agency to safely clean the property

Having a city staff member present at the auction sends a message that the city is interested in what happens to the Saco Island East property, Lovell said.

Multiple developers that have expressed interest in Saco Island in the past, he said, and if a new party is proposing development on the island, the city wants to work with them to assure a successful project that benefits the city.

—Staff Writer Liz Gotthelf can be contacted at 780-9015 or email egotthelf@journaltribune.com.