By Gillian Graham
Staff Writer

    Stella Woodbury has lived on Pleasant Street in Saco for 74 years and is ready for change. This is not the same neighborhood it once was, she says, and a new retail store wouldn’t be a bad thing.
    Beth Johnston has lived on Pleasant Street for 15 years and wants to see historic buildings preserved. This is a neighborhood closely tied to the history of the city, she says, and a new “big box” store would be inappropriate.
    At issue is a proposed CVS pharmacy that would require razing seven buildings on six lots on Elm Street, Pleasant Street and Thornton Avenue. The 13,225-square-foot building would sit on a 1.17-acre lot where the former Maggie Moo and Quiznos Sub building now stands empty.
    The planning board was scheduled to reconsider the completeness of the site plan application Tuesday night, after the Courier’s press deadline. The board unanimously accepted the plan as complete in December and voted Jan. 5 to reconsider the completeness after concerns were raised about historic buildings in the neighborhood.
    City Planner Bob Hamblen said an area of the site plan application that requires review of historic properties was listed as “not applicable” because no National Register of Historic Places buildings are on or adjacent to the proposed project site and the site is not within the city’s historic district.
    If the planning board decides the application is incomplete, it could request more information from developer John Grammas of Grammas Investment Group. The board could ask Grammas to do a more intensive historical survey of the properties in question to determine if any are eligible to be listed on the national register, Hamblen said.
    Opponents of the plan say 59 Pleasant St., one of the buildings that would be torn down, is historically significant and should not be destroyed. Beth Johnston said the building might have been the home of lawyer Cyrus King, whose relative, William King, was the first governor of Maine. Local historian Sallie Huot said more research is needed to determine King’s connection to the home.
    “If you look at this house, you can’t really deny there is some historic value,” Johnston said.
    Huot said 59 Pleasant St. possibly was built as early as 1799, though noted more time is needed to research the history of the brick building.
    “There’s no doubt it’s a very old building,” she said. “To get the exact date of a house [that old] is very difficult.”
Business leaders who were important to early development of the city built many of the houses on Pleasant Street, Huot said. The house at 57 Pleasant St. was home to Samuel Chase, a grocer in Saco and Biddeford who served in the Legislature from 1863 to 1869. He was Saco mayor from 1869 to 1870, she said.
    Later, Civil War veteran and tinsmith Moses Lowell lived in the same house. He served as a state representative in 1863 and 1864 and was the third mayor of Saco, Huot said. She said she has heard accounts of a brass band breaking away from a parade to play in front of the home while Lowell watched and waved from a window.  

    For Beth Johnston, the idea of putting a “concrete big box” store 20 feet across the street from her bedroom window is unacceptable.
    “t’s really totally inappropriate to put that kind of box store in a neighborhood. It’s way out of proportion to everything around it. It would have a huge impact on the character of the entire downtown,” she said. “For me, I want to be in an area where there are older buildings that are aesthetically pleasing to the eye.”
    Former Mayor Mark Johnston, who owns several historic downtown buildings, said he is opposed to building a CVS downtown because it would destroy historic buildings and change the landscape of the downtown area.
    “It does not make sense to do such a large-scale project in a small area,” he said. “Most people prefer to look at stately older homes than a perfectly square commercial building. This is Maine, the way life should be. When our landscape is starting to look like New Jersey, why would [tourists] come to Maine?”
    Mark Johnston, who grew up on Middle Street in downtown Saco, said he and his children have “no intention” of ever selling their downtown properties to developers.
    “You do worry when you start losing all the nice homes around you,” he said. “I’ve chosen to enjoy what my forefathers gave me and that is a beautiful downtown.”

    Saco Historic Preservation Commission member John Morrill Read said the commission has asked the planning department to perform a survey to further examine if any of the project properties or adjacent buildings are eligible for the national register.
    While the commission decided there are “adjacent” properties that are eligible for the register, including Beth Johnston’s home, Hamblen said those homes are not considered “adjacent” by the planning department because they are not immediately next to the project.
    Read said the commission voted to use a different definition of adjacent than the one used by the planning department. The definition they decided to use includes any property in the general area, not just bordering the project site. Read said he was the only commission member to oppose using a broader definition of adjacent.
    Read said all commission members agree the city should have known the proposed project included a building that could potentially be eligible for the national register. He cited an October column by Huot in the Journal Tribune that discussed the significance of 59 Pleasant St. The article was published more than a month before the planning board voted the site plan application was complete, he said.
Read said he and other commissioners would like the planning board to allow more time for research into the buildings on Pleasant Street.
    “We hope they allow more work to be done in this area. If they are demolished, there’s no second chance,” he said.

    While those opposed to the plan hang “No CVS” signs in the neighborhood and pour over tax and title records, Woodbury sits in her home and waits. Her house is under contract and she is anxious to leave a neighborhood she said now requires frequent police presence in the summer.
    When she was young, the neighborhood had a laundry, grocery store, fish market, pharmacy, beauty shop and a church. Now, it is crowded with apartment buildings and traffic. The project would eliminate buildings that have fallen into disrepair, she said.
    “Pleasant Street was always one of your best streets,” she wrote in a letter to the planning board. “Pleasant Street has been going down for years … I’m really ready to move.”

Staff Writer Gillian Graham can be reached at 282-4337, ext. 213.