LEWISTON — A Planning Board review of a controversial housing development is aimed as much at voters as it is at city officials.

Developer Jim Hatch said he’ll present plans for Phyllis St. Laurent’s housing development to the board Monday, Sept. 22.

“It’s not a formal review at this point,” Hatch said. “We haven’t made a formal submission to the city, but we know that there are people in the community who have a lot of questions about this project. The Planning Board seems like a good venue to answer some of them and show what the project is actually about.”

The meeting is scheduled to begin at 5:30 p.m. in City Hall.

St. Laurent hopes to build a 29-unit complex on her downtown properties. Her apartments would replace buildings she owned at 149 Bartlett St., and 110 and 114 Pierce St. that were destroyed in a rash of fires in May 2013.

The plan calls for 77 bedrooms spread over three buildings, 32 off-street parking spaces and a large green space among the buildings. There would be one-bedroom and two-bedroom units, and larger apartments.

The $5 million project would have subsidized rents and federal Section 8 housing vouchers tied to it.

The development would be aimed at families making 60 percent of the median income, which is about $33,700 for a family of four. It was approved by city councilors, but a group of local landlords, led by Stanley Pelletier, collected enough signatures to force a public vote.

The original plan was to have all of the units in a single building. St. Laurent’s project breaks the development into three buildings.

“What we’ve done is to work with the architects to break the development into something that fits in more with what’s already there, in the neighborhood,” Hatch said.

Voters will decide the fate of the project in November.

staylor@sunjournal.com