Staff Writer 

In the 23 years Scarborough Planning Department Secretary Carol Logan has worked for the town there has always been enough development activity to put together an agenda for a planning board meeting. 

Until now.

Last Monday, the regularly scheduled monthly meeting for November was cancelled due to lack of agenda items.

“It’s a little disturbing,” Scarborough Economic Development Corporation (SEDCO) President Harvey Rosenfeld said. “I hate to say it, but it’s indicative of the financial situation in the rest of the country.”

Town Planner Dan Bacon said developers typically deal with planning board applications during the winter months in preparation for a busy spring construction season, creating “heavy” agendas for the board. 

“We do have some items for December,” Bacon said. “We also have a lot of ongoing construction in the town.”

Future agenda items include a revised site plan for a proposed Walgreen’s development at the vacant Burger King location near Oak Hill, several residential construction requests, zoning modifications and a “pretty major” proposal for a site along Route 1, Rosenfeld said. Despite the instability of the economy, SEDCO is also still receiving inquires about vacant lots in town and has yet to see a project completely abandoned, he said.

“We’re not as busy as we have been,” Rosenfeld said. “There are some projects in the pipeline.” 

Carey Anderson, spokesperson for Ballantyne Development LLC – the developer behind the Eastern Village project near Oak Hill – said some projects had been affected by the unstable market, but there isn’t reason to panic.

“It’s affecting everybody,” he said. “Fortunately we do things a little differently, take a careful approach and have some planning in place. It’s not like we’re shutting down.”

Rosenfeld said developers  who are “holding off” on projects due to a shortage of funds in the local economy could be misled by general reports of an oncoming financial recession. 

“The national media keeps saying there isn’t any money, but all the local banks we’re listening to are saying it’s there,” he said. “Developers need confidence.”

While it may be slower than usual now, a lack of school funding at the state level could spur the town council and planning board to focus on encouraging commercial development during the next budget cycle, Rosenfeld said. 

“We have to find somewhere to get that money and the next place to get it is commercial development,” he said.

Both Rosenfeld and Bacon said they are confident Scarborough would weather a financial recession better than some communities, as seen in several prior economic downturns at the national level.

“We’ve been through two recessions and shown that the town can actually grow during them,” Rosenfeld said. “We’ll wait and see.”

Bacon said one positive result of a lull in development is that the planning staff has a chance “to catch up for the next wave of development.”

“I think we’ll weather this,” he said. “Scarborough’s been pretty resilient, even recession proof.”