Staff Writer 

 Long-time Scarborough residents may remember the days when the Orion Center, currently three vacant buildings on Route 1, was the home of “Mammoth Mart,” a shopping center Town Planner Dan Bacon said predates WalMart.

“Mammoth Mart was kind of the original super-center in the 1960s,” he said. 

Bacon said there hasn’t been anything “mammoth” going on in the space other than some light industrial and manufacturing that ended in 2004. While the operations may have been small, Scarborough Economic Development Corporation President Harvey Rosenfeld said some of the tenants – including manufacturers of electronics packaging, water filters and hearing aids, belonged to larger, national companies. 

“It was quite a good little light industrial center,” Rosenfeld said. “The owner, Dead River, was really more of a retail developer, however.”

In 2004, Bacon said Dead River considered converting the space into a large shopping center. 

“They were going to reopen as retail space and build five new buildings,” Bacon said. “It was going to have a grocery store, restaurants and a movie theater.”

The project took two years to receive approval from the planning board and they were granted a one-year extension for the project in 2007, Bacon said. Ultimately, the project fell through due to the Stop & Shop supermarket company’s reluctance to make the move to Maine, he said. 

“Part of it was the demographics,” Rosenfeld said. “The problem you run into when working with national chains is they look at the numbers and have a formula. We figured out that within 50 miles of Scarborough we have half the population of Maine, and that’s typically about an hour drive. In Maine, an hour drive isn’t odd but in Massachusetts an hour drive just gets you three miles out of Boston.”

Rosenfeld said Dead River failed to renew leases for their light industrial tenants, who eventually “scattered” away from Scarborough while Dead River sought another supermarket for the project.

 “We already have a lot of retail sites here, with more to come,” Rosenfeld said. “I think that may have had something to do with the fact that we couldn’t attract more food chains to the property, and in Maine that’s what you really need to anchor these retail sites.” 

Hannaford Brothers company purchased the land from Dead River – who owned the property for more than 20 years – in 2007. The supermarket chain never brought forward any proposals for the property. Bacon said he believes the company purchased it “to prevent competition” from moving in. Calls to Hannaford Brothers were not returned by the Leader deadline.

Now, Town Assessor Paul Lesperance said the property has changed hands again, this time to MaineHealth, who Lesperance said purchased the property – valued at approximately $5.5 million – from Hannaford Brothers in November. 

Bacon said MaineHealth, an organization of laboratories, hospitals and practitioners across central and southern Maine, is hoping to convert the space into administrative offices and a new home for Nordx Laboratories, currently located farther north off Route 1 on Campus Drive. The long-term plan for the parcel could include construction of additional buildings closer to Route 1, Bacon said MaineHealth is planning to “reface” the three existing buildings – a total of more than 95,000 square feet – to prepare for the new offices. 

The planning board is scheduled to review a sketch plan prepared by SMRT engineer Mark Johnson during its Jan. 12 meeting. Bacon said since the property is located in a Business 3 Zone, which means the development will be subject to a planned development review process before an individual tenant may move into a space larger than 30,000 square feet.

“I’m excited, I think it’s a good project for Scarborough,” Rosenfeld said. “We need higher paying jobs and I think this will bring them.”