Town councilors in Gorham Tuesday night agreed to proceed with a purchase and sale agreement with Amazon, a potential first step in bringing the online retail giant to southern Maine.
The measure allows Gorham to sell 94 acres off Main Street to Amazon for $4 million.
Some town councilors, including Seven Siegel, said at a meeting Tuesday night they were conflicted about the town doing business with Amazon.
"We constantly talk about bringing new businesses into Gorham, and it feels like a devil's bargain here," Siegel said. "You can get a large business that's going to bring in, honestly, quite a bit of property tax revenue. But it's Amazon."
The town of Gorham purchased the land off Main Street several years ago, with the intent of selling it to a developer who could generate industrial business and property tax revenue for the town.
Town Council Chairman Suzanne Phillips said Gorham had fielded a handful of different offers for the parcel over the years, but none have worked out.
It's not clear what the company intends to do with the land. But town officials said if the sale goes through, it will be up to Amazon to design a project and submit it for public feedback and permitting.
"I really want Amazon to have a really good relationship with the community," Phillips said. "I hope that they do what they say they're going to do, in other communities, I hope that happens here."
Amazon opened its first and only warehouse in Maine in Caribou over the summer. The facility serves as a shipping hub and is part of a broader effort by the company to expand delivery services to rural areas.
Several years ago, Scarborough launched an unsuccessful bid to establish the former Scarborough Downs racetrack as the site for Amazon's second headquarters. A few years later, town officials tried again to bring an Amazon warehouse to Scarborough but were not successful.
