AUBURN — City officials are fine with a land swap designed to clean up recreation conflicts in the Mt. Apatite area, but they’re balking at the specific terms of the deal.

A real estate appraisal of the Mt. Apatite area by the Army Corps of Engineers recommends the city give up nearly 74 acres of the recreational area in exchange for the 27.5 acres surrounding the Auburn Suburban Little League’s ball fields on Garfield Road.

“That would be a lot of Mount Apatite,” Eric Cousens, Auburn’s deputy director of planning and development, said. “I don’t think the city should trade three-to-one. I think the study itself said a one-to-one trade would be fair.”

The city and the Maine National Guard have been working on a land use study to find better ways to balance uses at the area.

The study was completed last summer and recommends the two swap some parcels: The city would take over the 27.5 acres along Garfield Road, taking ownership of the Auburn Suburban Little League fields. The Army would take over parts of Mt. Apatite Park.

Cousens said the issue is how much land would be swapped.

A December Army Corps of Engineers real estate value appraisal suggests the city give up about 73.7 acres of the park for the 27.5 acres the National Guard trades, valuing both parcels at about $100,000.

“We can’t even tell which comparable sales they used to reach those values,” Cousens said. “When we talked to the appraiser from the Army Corps of Engineers, he asked for information on a whole bunch of properties that he saw as comparable sales. But some of them were very different than the ones in question here.”

Cousens said the land south of the ball fields is filled with vernal pools and wetlands that cannot be developed according to federal rules. Meanwhile, the land the National Guard would get has trees that can be harvested for profit.

The city has filed a response to the Corps of Engineers’ appraisal.

“But we don’t know when we’ll get a response back from them,” Cousens said.

The area is home to the 344-acre Mt. Apatite Park city recreation area, covered with gemstone quarries, summertime hiking trails and winter cross-country skiing and snowmobile trails. It’s also home to the Auburn Suburban Little League’s team fields.

The Maine National Guard operates its Auburn Training Site there 270 days each year, on 154 acres between the park and the Little League fields.

According to the study, the city originally leased the land for the ball fields from the National Guard in 1989, subleasing it to the Little League.

That lease expired in 1995 and was never renewed.

“They don’t have official permission to occupy the ball fields,” Lt. Colonel Dwaine Drummond, director of facilities and engineering for the Maine Army National Guard, said. “That’s the No. 1 issue we are trying to rectify. The other issues that came out were the encroachment and safety problems — people want to use the recreation area or Army trucks driving through during Little League games.”

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