The intersection of Bay Street and China Road on Wednesday in Winslow. The town’s comprehensive plan sets a tentative 10-year vision for future development to include the expansion of a proper “downtown.” The stretch of Bay Street from the intersection of China Road to the town office is the focus of the plan. Anna Chadwick/Morning Sentinel
WINSLOW — New storefronts, restaurants and other businesses along Bay Street. Unified architectural design standards. Encouraged pedestrian walkability. Preparation for the impacts of climate change.
This is the vision laid out in a new comprehensive plan for Winslow, in which town officials have described their goals over the next decade for making community improvements.
Winslow Town Manager Ella Bowman said that the comprehensive plan will maintain Winslow’s rural character while advancing new development downtown.
“I think Winslow’s gonna grow, just like everybody else,” Bowman said. “Winslow is a nice community to live in, and we want to keep going in that direction.”
A comprehensive plan is a nonbinding document drafted about once a decade that broadly plans how the town will grow in the future. One of the plan’s loftiest goals is building Winslow a proper downtown. The comprehensive plan aims to develop a downtown stretch along Bay Street that would reach from its intersection with China Road to the Winslow Town Office.
“I think that’s a logical area to try to direct business,” Bowman said. “It’s something that’s been talked about by the town of Winslow for a couple years.”
Still, concerns remain about the viability of a future downtown Winslow. The high traffic on Bay Street may hamper the town’s plans to attract business downtown, according to Councilor Ray Caron, who sat on the comprehensive plan committee for the last 2 1/2 years while the document was in development.
“A downtown, per se, in Winslow is difficult at best, just because it’s not going to be what I would consider a traditional downtown,” Caron said. “I think there’s some challenges here because of U.S. Route 201 and the traffic it has. But hey, any time you can get business in, that would be very positive for the town.”
Roughly 5,000 cars travel up and down Bay Street each day, according to data recorded last year by the Maine Department of Transportation.
The town has commissioned a study with the Central Maine Growth Council to determine how the downtown area should develop. The comprehensive plan notes that the town will seek to encourage walkability and create architectural design standards for new buildings.
MIXED-USE CONCERNS
At a Town Council meeting Monday night, Planning Board Chairman Gary Owen said Winslow’s widespread usage of mixed-use districts will hinder future development, especially along Bay Street.
A mixed-use district is a type of zoning area that allows residential and commercial development to coexist. And in Winslow, it often includes larger individual plot sizes. Roughly one-fifth of Winslow’s land is classified as a mixed-use district.
“There is an over-reliance on this sizable district because it’s (the) largest district in the growth area, and this over-reliance essentially enables a lot of incompatible development and land uses,” Owen said. “The Planning Board determined that this change ought not to pass. I am standing here to encourage you to either table this or look for another option.”
Vehicles travel through the intersection of China Road and Bay Street in Winslow on Oct. 5, 2023. About 5,000 vehicles travel Bay Street every day, according to 2023 data from the state Department of Transportation. Rich Abrahamson/Morning Sentinel file
Most of the area along Bay Street is already classified as a mixed-use district, which Owen said draws both businesses and residents away from one specific area, resulting in Winslow’s lack of a proper downtown. The comprehensive plan recommends the zoning be amended before development begins.
“As it currently exists, the mixed-use district is too sprawling to be the town center,” the plan reads. “Incompatibility issues and haphazard results occur when a community simply enables multiple uses without providing guidance about the mix of uses.”
Building new and affordable housing will also be critical in the next 10 years, the plan says, though it does not call for a specific number of housing units to be built.
Caron said that the town is eyeing a number of projects that would put new housing units inside of older unused buildings, such as its proposal with Kennebec Valley Community Action Program to build more than 40 affordable housing units inside the old Winslow Junior High School building.
“There are lots of opportunities in the town of Winslow for increased housing, but at this particular time, those are not in the developmental stage for whatever reason,” Caron said. “We haven’t seemed to be able to connect the dots to take the facilities we have and retrofit them to housing.”
The comprehensive plan notes that Winslow’s current vacancy rate of about 9% means the town does not face a housing shortage as acute as many others in the area and encourages the development of new affordable single and multi-family homes to incentivize more people to move to Winslow.
“Essentially, it is important to keep in mind that affordable housing is not ‘low class’ housing,” the plan states. “Promoting housing affordability is for the seniors already living in Winslow who want to downsize, it’s for the young couple who are struggling to start their careers and a family, it’s for the younger generation who want to live in the town where they grew up.”
Still, the plan forecasts that Winslow’s population will continue to decline over the next 15 years, falling from roughly 8,000 now to about 7,000 people by 2040.
FUTURE IMPACTS
Officials are also bracing for future impacts related to climate change as part of the plan, most notably recurring flooding along the Kennebec River.
The area surrounding Bay Street, which runs parallel to the Kennebec, has long been notorious for flooding. The area became inundated with water nearly every time a large rainstorm blew in for decades, prompting crews to begin work late last year to curtail the flooding at Bay Street’s intersection with China Road.
Concerns have also arisen about potential erosion along the river’s banks since the Dec. 18 storm. When floodwaters swelled over Fort Halifax Park, which is off Bay Street, they took chunks of soil and warped the ground as they went.
About 130 structures in Winslow — including businesses, homes and barns — currently sit within a floodplain. The comprehensive plan does not lay out specifics as to how the town will address flooding or other impacts of climate change, but notes that they must be a consideration for future development.
“I think we’re seeing the results of climate change right now,” Bowman said. “In the past year, we’ve had three high-rain events. Mother Nature is going to do what Mother Nature does, but we can try to adjust and prevent the erosion.”
Onlookers pass debris on Dec. 20, 2023, that damaged a picnic shelter when the Kennebec River, in background, flooded Fort Halifax Park in Winslow the prior day. Rich Abrahamson/Morning Sentinel file
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