AUBURN — A longer-term lease for the entrance to the city’s intermodal freight facility could lead to more robust use, according to Auburn Economic Development Director Michael Chammings.

“We are marketing the Intermodal Facility,” Chammings said. “When we have people coming in interested in it, we need to be able to show them we have a long-term lease on the access.”

Auburn councilors Monday agreed to negotiate a 99-year lease for the strip of land connecting the city’s freight yard with Lewiston Junction Road, the main entrance to the facility.

That strip is owned by the Auburn-Lewiston Municipal Airport, which initially gave the city a 20-year lease when the Intermodal Facility opened in 1994.

“We would have preferred a permanent right of way to a lease, but this is a feasible alternative,” Chammings said. “It was a 20-year lease originally, but 20 years went by fast. We could have expanded it out every 10 years, but the council felt it would be better off to have a 99-year lease. Anybody that wants to put infrastructure in there wants to be guaranteed access for more than 10 years.”

The Auburn facility, off of Lewiston Junction Road across from the Auburn-Lewiston Municipal Airport, opened in 1994 and was expanded in 2000 by the St. Lawrence and Atlantic Railroad.

The rail line abutting the facility is owned by St. Lawrence and Atlantic Railroad. It connects the L-A Railroad line — just southwest of the intersection of West Hardscrabble Road and Lewiston Junction Road — to St. Lawrence and Atlantic’s northwestern-bound line in Poland.

The line connected Auburn to international ports via the Canadian National Rail, until Canadian service to Auburn ended in August 2014.

Since then, the facility has been used mostly for storage.

The Hawkeye Elecnor Group pays the city $10,200 every six months to rent staging space and to store materials and equipment for the Lewiston Loop project, part of Central Maine Power’s Maine Power Reliability Program. The Power and Construction Group is leasing buildings on the site for $650 per month. That group is also renting space on the site to store utility poles.

Chammings said he hopes the longer-term access lease will help interest potential customers.

“Right now, we are digging into contracts and putting it out there,” Chammings said. “We are trying to utilize that area better now. It is being very underutilized at this point.”

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