Building, shopping and angsting over buying a house — it’s a two-Buzz week.
First up: Growth in Lewiston.
The Planning Board on Monday night approved two new projects.
The board backed the Aroma Joe’s proposed for 760 Main St. by a unanimous vote, according to City Planner Doug Greene.
Franchisee Tulio DeAlmeida, with his company, Mr. Deal, LLC, will build his third Lewiston-Auburn coffee shop in a 1,640-square-foot former Little Caesar’s pizza restaurant.
DeAlmeida said last week that he’d like to begin the renovation as soon as possible and open by the beginning of spring.
The new location will be entirely drive-thru with no walk-in or walk up service and is a roughly $450,000 project, including equipment, according to filings with the board.
Greene said approval was with the condition of additional signs and barriers to direct traffic entering the Marden’s Shopping Center and headed to the drive-thru.
By a 6-1 vote, the board also approved construction of a 6,600-square-foot marijuana grow facility at 7 Lexington St. with the condition that Ryan Bourque and his Segmentum company include a landscape plan, Greene said.
The parcel is just under an acre in the Lewiston Industrial Park subdivision and a vacant lot at the corner of Lexington Street and Alfred Plourde Parkway.
The 64- by 124-foot building is a $1.4 million project, according to a filing with the board.
ATTENTION SHOPPERS
Turns out local Black Friday shoppers can sleep in, just a little.
Auburn’s Walmart, JCPenney and Kohl’s are sticking with the 5 a.m. Black Friday opening hours all three adopted last year, according to store staff.
For GameStop, it’s 7 a.m.
But do bundle up: The National Weather Service is forecasting 31 degree temps at 5 a.m. Friday with a 20% chance of precipitation, according to meteorologist Donny Dumont.
And, ho ho ho: It might be a rainy/snowy mix by that evening.
HOUSING REMAINS ON THE UP
The latest stats Monday from the Maine Association of Realtors showed the number of sales dropping 3.3% in Androscoggin County from August through October this year compared to last year, while the median sale price increased 13.6% to $250,000.
In Franklin County, the trends were the same with overall sales down almost 7% but prices up nearly 10% to $225,000.
And the split was more striking in Oxford County with the number of sales down 10.8% but prices up almost 18% to $265,000.
Officials are pointing to fewer houses going on the market and continued high demand.
So maybe this next stat tracks?
WELL, WILL YOU LOOK AT #!@%$ THAT
According to HouseFresh.com, Maine is the third most stressful state in the country to buy a house and Bangor tops its list of most stressful cities in the country to buy.
It came up with the rankings based on your %$!#@ tweets:
“We built a list of terms related to moving house and pulled US tweets using Twitter API. We used the language analysis tool TensiStrength to classify if a tweet was stressed or not, and calculated the proportion of stressed tweets for every state to reveal the most stressful state to buy a house.”
In Washington state, 42.8% of tweets were stressed; in Maine, 41.7%.
In apparently loves-to-home-buy South Dakota, it was a mere 19.2%.
Quick hits about business comings, goings and happenings. Have a Buzzable tip? Contact staff writer Kathryn Skelton at 689-2844 or kskelton@sunjournal.com.
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