Milo buys Derby Shops for $1

Former B&A site now home to new railroad

By Stuart Hedstrom
Staff Writer

MILO — Via a special town meeting vote on June 21, residents accepted the conveyance of the approximate 97-acre Derby Shops commercial railroad property on B&A Avenue. Those in attendance also authorized the selectmen to apply for and accept any grants for cleaning up the property, currently the home of Central Maine & Quebec Railway and 20-plus employees and which had been part of the bankruptcy proceedings for the former Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway.

Select Chair Lee McMannus said the board had been looking to into the Derby Shops for a long time, with former Selectman Jerry Brown putting in a great deal of effort.

“About a year ago the trustees of the bankrupt railroad got in touch with the town and said they wanted to give it to us for a $1,” Brown said. He said Milo officials wanted to look into the Derby Shops before bringing the acceptance before the town, working with the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP).

“What we want to do is get everything on the tax roll and to do that we need to clean it up so the railroad will have property free of problems,” he said. Brown explained Milo could assume ownership of the Derby Shops as a tax-acquired property, “but that would be three years down the road and we wouldn’t have cleanup started.”

“By purchasing it we are in control of it and we can start the cleanup,” Brown said with the work taking about three to five years to complete.

“We currently have the railroad down there and if we wait three years who knows where they will be,” McMannus said. “We want to keep them in Milo.”

“What they are doing now is their due diligence and their environmental homework,” Piscataquis County Economic Development Council Director (PCEDC) Christopher Winstead said about the environmental review. He said the PCEDC will work with the town and DEP, as the council has brownfields funding available for projects such as at the Derby Shops.

Peter Scherr of Ransom Consulting Engineers and Scientists said the cleanup of the property can be funded through grants and the PCEDC revolving loan fund. “We are going to work with the town to apply for grants,” he said.

Nick Hodgkins of the Maine DEP’s Bureau of Remediation and Waste Management said preliminary tests indicate the groundwater from the Derby Shops site are at an acceptable drinking water level and if contaminated the data would indicate as much. “I think the biggest issues we are going to find are the building issues, old buildings have asbestos,” he said.

“We don’t want to leave, we can’t replicate that facility at another location,” Central Maine & Quebec Railway Chief Operating Officer Ryan Ratledge said. The company, he added, does not need all 97 acres and “there’s plenty of room there and plenty of cooperation.”

Before the vote, McMannus said he had asked about problems at the Derby Shops during a previous meeting with the DEP. He said the answer was not a definitive yes, “but they saw no concerns in accepting the property. With everything there’s risk but no risk, no gain.”

In other business, citizens authorized the selectmen to sell and convey an approximate two-acre lot at the Eastern Piscataquis Business Park to Four Stars, LLC of Waterville. Four Stars, LLC is planning to lease the parcel to Lepage Bakeries for a distribution warehouse, office space and baked goods thrift shop.