AUBURN — The biggest complaint New Auburn residents and neighbors had Tuesday about a proposed Loring Avenue townhouse development wasn’t about taxes or affordable housing policies but about the damage the project would do to the neighborhood’s character.

“We are a village,” said Kelly Henry of 97 Loring Ave. “It’s not that we don’t want outsiders in our village. We want to protect the village we have established.”

About 100 people came to the Walton School gymnasium Tuesday night for a special City Council workshop dedicated to two affordable housing projects — the 48-unit Loring Farm project in New Auburn and the effort to replace the old Dillingham Funeral Home building on Spring Street downtown.

Both projects are seeking tax-increment financing benefits from the city and a $250,000 share of Auburn’s federal HOME fund allocation. Both will be competing with dozens of other projects around the state for Maine State Housing Authority tax credits this fall.

Both will be featured items on the City Council’s Sept. 12 meeting agenda. Councilors are scheduled to vote on TIF deals and federal money for both projects then.

Developer Matt Teare of Manx Developments and his consultant, Kevin Bunker of Developers Collaborative, led a walking tour of the Loring Avenue site before the meeting, guiding nearly 50 residents and city officials around the 15-acre site. Of that, about 5 acres would be developed and the remaining land would be reserved for conservation.

Teare and Developers Collaborative want to build 48 rental townhouses close to one another at the center of the 37 Loring Ave. lot, at the bottom of a basin and surrounded by trees. Teare estimated the project at $8 million in total costs.

Bunker said the developers picked the Auburn site because they thought the market would support their development.

“What we did, we looked at the market in Auburn and what we thought we could rent,” Bunker said. “Then we looked for a piece of property that would meet that demand. We’ve determined the market demand in Auburn is pretty strong, so we went looking for a site and we found this.”

Many of the questions centered around design specifics: road alignments, final building locations and utility access, among other things.

Bunker said he did not have answers to those questions and would not have them until he had prepared to go to the Planning Board.

Neighbors said they were most concerned about the changes the project would bring to the residential neighborhood in the form of more traffic.

“It affects the value of my home and I know it does,” said next-door neighbor Gina Mallozzi of 45 Loring Ave. “I don’t want to live here if what it’s going to be is headlights coming in my living room and my bedroom, construction, people. I’m not going to be able to leave the stuff out on my patio because I’m afraid it’s going to get stolen.”

Bunker said his projects don’t turn out like that, and he invited the group to investigate and visit the other projects his group has been involved with.

“Everybody can point to a kind of project that’s turned out like a horror show,” Bunker said. “There are things that have gone wrong. But that isn’t what we have done and it hasn’t been my experience. Now, you can say I’m just saying that to get my project through, but you can go look at the projects we’ve done.”

After the walking tour, the meeting reconvened in the Walton School gym, with a discussion of Portland developer Ethan Boxer-Macomber of Anew Development’s Spring Street project.

When completed, it would be managed by the Auburn Housing Authority. It calls for 39 units in a four-story building, a mix of reduced rents for working people and full-market rents. Councilors approved versions in 2014 and 2015, but the project did not score high enough in the Maine State Housing Authority rankings to get tax credits.

But most of the people were there to voice their opinions on the Loring Farms project, and some were very vocal: teasing, yelling and begging the developers to just go away. Mayor Jonathan LaBonte asked for respect.

“At the very least, we owe folks the courtesy to be respectful in our questions and to tell anyone we don’t want them here is out of bounds,” LaBonte said.

staylor@sunjournal.com