AUBURN – Local businessman George Schott wants to build a retail plaza with three restaurants and a drive-in bank on the southeast corner of Mount Auburn Avenue and Turner Street.

The fate of the project, which would be across Mount Auburn Avenue from the Auburn Mall, depends on traffic studies, Schott said, who is looking for approval from the Maine Department of Transportation.

“Ultimately, there will be a million different issues,” he said. “But right now, it’s transportation. We won’t know what we’re doing until we meet with the state.”

DOT officials are scheduled to meet next week with city leaders and with Schott’s engineer, Mike Gotto of Technical Services Inc.

Schott said he hopes to take his plans before the Auburn City Council in January. Construction work would begin in the spring and the plaza would be expected to open in the fall of 2005.

“But the timing depends on what the traffic studies say,” Schott said.

The plan, for a Mount Auburn Plaza, is divided into two phases. In the first phase, Schott would build a 5,404-square-foot restaurant and a 6,103-square-foot restaurant.

The second phase would include a 6,400-square-foot restaurant, a 51,329-square-foot retail plaza and a 1,500-square-foot bank.

Schott said he did not have a signed contract for any of the restaurants. He declined to name them until he has the contracts.

The first phase would bring an estimated 1,463 cars to the plaza daily, while the complete development should bring more than 5,000 cars per day.

“If the state will let us, we’d like to do it all in one phase,” Gotto said. “But we’ve submitted it in phases to see what the state is going to say. Once they figure out what they want us to study, we can move forward.”

Schott bought the land more than a year ago with plans to develop it, he said. The city’s assessed value of the property is $930,000.

“I’ve owned it for a year and a half,” he said. “I guess it’s time to do something with it.”

In 1999, Schott bought Auburn Plaza on Center Street at a time that many stores had left it. He turned the plaza around financially and resold it in 2003. Since that time, he has purchased a number of properties, including the original Wal-Mart at 105 Mount Auburn Ave.