By Gail Geraghty

Staff Writer

Harrison Marina, Inc. received conditional approval from the Bridgton Planning Board Tuesday to build a boat sales and snowmobile repair facility at 251 Portland Road, just past NAPA Auto Parts.

The T-shaped lot has just 50 feet of frontage on Portland Road, so the 1,200-square-foot boat sales showroom and parking lot will be set back from the highway on the larger part of the lot, and accessed by an existing gravel driveway.

David Randall, who with other family members has operated Harrison Marina on Long Lake since 2001, also operates a boat repair facility on Route 117. The new location in Bridgton will be for boat sales in summer, and snowmobile repairs in winter, he said.

Randall said the new boats will be showcased along the gravel driveway and at the edge of the parking lot, as well as in the showroom. Boat repairs will be done at their Route 117 location. A sign will be placed at the entrance on Portland Road.

Initially, Randall had proposed placing the building at the entrance, but the board quickly ruled there wasn’t enough frontage to do so. The board agreed to waive the standard 100-foot frontage requirement to allow Randall to use the property with only 58 feet of Portland Road frontage.

Randall said there may also be some snowmobile repairs done on the property in winter. A snowmobile trail runs at the west end of the larger part of the lot, and Randall said he has talked to members of the Easy Riders Snowmobile Club and agreed not to make any changes in the trail.

Tuesday’s approval came after the application was tabled three previous times in order to clarify financial capability and stormwater issues. Randall provided a letter from Northeast Credit Union saying he was a member in good standing, but the board wants to see more specific financial information before making the approval final.

Randall provided the board with an engineering report on stormwater runoff, but Board Chairman Steve Collins said he was still “uneasy” about whether a proposed mitigating pond would be adequate. Willett Brook runs along the back border of the property.

Added board member Dee Miller, “A lot of this is just copied from a manual, and I was hoping it would be more site-specific.”

The property is served by public water, and the Bridgton Water District said it could handle the use, which will be no more than that used by an average household.

Randall said he has received a Maine Department of Transportation entrance permit, and the hours of operation will be from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday.

In other board action, approval was given to Ira Ball, who owns a home in the West View Ridge subdivision, to revise his property’s lot lines. Bob Neault, representing Ball, said he inadvertently built a workshop too close to his neighbor’s property line and the mistake is holding up sale of his property.

Neault said Ball negotiated with his neighbor to buy a tenth of an acre of the neighbor’s property in order to meet the 25-foot setback rule, and as a result the subdivision’s lot lines need to be changed.

The board will hold a workshop on suggestions for subdivision review with the Lakes Environmental Association on Tuesday, Oct. 20, at 7 p.m.