Plans called for Optimus Senior Living to get back to Wiscasset’s planning board Aug. 22 with answers to the board’s questions from Aug. 8. The needs included an estimated project cost and an up-to-date boundary survey.

Also Aug. 8, the board set an Aug. 16 site visit for that proposed project, Wiscasset Senior Housing at the former Wiscasset Primary School, 146 Gardiner Road.

“I think considering the importance of the site, even though we all know it, and a site visit is optional, that we should schedule it,” Chair Karl Olson said. The board and applicants agreed to meet at 4 p.m. Tuesday.

According to the meeting, the board on Aug. 22 may set a public hearing for next month on the project.

Eric Dube of Trillium Engineering Group in Yarmouth told the board the playground and front parking lot will go, parking on the site’s southeast side will stay and the facility will have less traffic for Gardiner Road than the school did. The building will get a three-story addition, he said. 

Project representatives said they are excited about enclosed courtyards where they said residents in memory care can spend time, including raising plants, without the risk of wandering. Project representatives added, next door neighbor Morris Farm may help with the gardens, and has only asked that if the facility sprays for bugs, it tell the farm so it can lock up its bees for the day.

Also Aug. 8, the board nodded a request from Maine Drilling and Blasting of Auburn, New Hampshire to blast at the solar farm project at Wiscasset Municipal Airport, on the condition the town receive geolocations. The firm’s Phillip Atkinson congratulated the town on the airport’s new runway he said looks lovely.

Olson stepped away from the board’s table and to the front to address the board instead as an agent for J & V Properties, LLC, in its pre-application meeting for an expansion of Napa Auto Parts, 693 Bath Road. The building would grow by 40 feet in the back, for warehouse space, and employee parking would be added there, Olson said.