HOLDEN – Bonnie Collins recently looked out her front window to a basketball hoop 40 feet from her family’s modified cape home off the Levenseller Road in this scenic southern Penobscot County community.

The site of some competitive scrimmages between her two sons, the hoop is in the cross hairs of a planned highway construction project that would gobble up eight acres around the Collinses’ home and come within two feet of the basketball hoop.

“You’d throw a basketball and if you missed the backboard it’s on a semi,” said Collins, only half-joking about a route option that has her and many of her neighbors worried.

Dr. James Haddix and family live in a stately Colonial home on the highest hill on the Levenseller Road. The home, to which Haddix has added a barn and porch, is virtually in the middle of 2C-1, a route option apparently favored by the state that is gaining local infamy because of its invasiveness.

“Apparently I’m sleeping in the southbound lane,” said Haddix.

The pair are among a vocal contingent of about 100 people in Holden, Eddington and some in Brewer protesting a particular route option remaining on the state Department of Transportation’s design table for a highway connector touted as a way to solve a local traffic-safety problem and serve as the early stage of an east-west highway.

Residents of the Levenseller Road, Mann Hill Road, Campbell Drive and Eastern Avenue say option 2C-1 would plow through their back yards and, in some cases, their houses. Country homes that now rest between silent winter snowbanks would bow to a bulldozer or be awash in the unpleasant sounds and smells of a nearby highway. The DOT must pay the fair market value for any homes destroyed or land usurped, but residents of the Levenseller Road claim the payments would not make up for the loss of lifestyle offered by rural Holden.

The popular pastor of the All Souls Church in Bangor, Haddix admits he is irritated by the route selection process, which he says has divided the town and, in some cases, pitted neighbor against neighbor.

“If they could show me some semblance of a long-range plan, most of us could somehow understand. … My real beef is the lack of planning and purpose” demonstrated by the DOT route selection process, Haddix said.

Five houses in Haddix’s area would be wiped out by option 2C-1, one of two routes apparently left from the original list of 70.

Option 2C-1 begins where Interstate 395 ends in Brewer and heads northeast along the Holden-Brewer line. It then heads cross country to Route 9, crossing the Campbell Drive subdivision, Eastern Avenue and the Mann Hill Road before reaching Clewleyville Corners. The road then runs parallel to the Levenseller Road and the Wildwood Estates subdivision before heading toward Eddington. It is the shortest route under consideration, and at $4 million to $5 million a mile to build the project, cost is an important factor.

Debbie and Douglas Schmidt of the Levenseller Road have 26 well-groomed acres of land in their back yard, an area Debbie explores frequently in her role as a nature photographer. They stock three ponds with trout and this winter have welcomed neighborhood children for ice fishing on occasion.

“We would lose 23 of our 26 acres” with the 2C-1 proposal, Debbie Schmidt said.

Tim and Thea Flanagan are award-winning artists who work out of their home in rural Holden.

Their detailed works require a quiet area for concentration, a key reason they settled on 10 acres “where we just hear the birds sing,” Tim Flanagan said. The 2C-1 option would eat up about half their acreage and construction would start 510 feet in back of their multistory passive-solar home in the woods.

“This project would literally destroy us in terms of what we are able to do; our property would be so devalued we probably would not be able to sell our place to continue,” the artist added.

Traffic relief the goal

The state began actively pursuing the connector design about 21/2 years ago with an eye toward diverting traffic and enhancing safety on truck-crowded Route 9 and, secondarily, traffic-jammed U.S. Route 1A. Traffic problems in Brewer also were considered, though the two options remaining fail to address the downtown truck crunch in the city.

A goal of the project is to accomplish the nine- to 10-mile connector with as little impact as possible to the “natural and man-made environment,” according to DOT engineer Raymond Faucher. But residents in targeted areas claim the non-invasive goal will not be met with the 2C-1 option.

Resident anxiety is climbing as the site selection process winds to a close. Faucher said last week a final route may be picked by the end of the summer, though community meetings on the project have been postponed.

The 20-member public advisory committee that has researched the route options has come under criticism by local residents for politicizing the issue.

“The PAC process is a sham,” said Haddix. “It has to do with window dressing and nothing to do with reality.”

Back on the table

Eddington and Brewer residents complain that Holden representatives have dominated the route selection process. Some blame Holden officials for getting the infamous 2C-1 option put back on the table after it was dismissed, a charge Holden denies.

Some residents feel the DOT knows the route it will take – the most direct, least costly and most politically expedient one – and that is 2C-1.

But Faucher said 2C-1 was put back on the table for valid reasons. Wetlands – once avoided by road construction projects – do not have to be as highly protected as once thought, according to information from the Army Corps of Engineers. Route 2C-1 would run through the Felts Brook wetland area, a fact that knocked the option off the table last November. Construction of I-395 more than two decades ago resulted in strict limits placed on local wetlands, but that attitude apparently has changed at the federal level.

Now areas like Felts Brook “need to be treated just like other wetlands, not more important, not less,” said Faucher.

Once a final route is selected, a full analysis will be made of the land and houses possibly affected by the project. At that point, the route can be tweaked and its lines adjusted if necessary, Faucher said.

Option 2C-1 and another route dubbed 2C-1/2B-1, known as the corporate boundary route, best reflect the goals of the DOT project while keeping cost frugality in mind, according to Faucher. While 2C-1/2B-1 seems less invasive to residents, the DOT seems less interested in the option because it would be more costly.

If the state goes the less expensive route, about 40 residential pieces of property will be affected in the short stretch of road through Holden. Another three dozen homes could be affected in Eddington. Fewer homes would be affected in Brewer, although residents of the Brian Drive subdivision off Eastern Avenue claim the highway would be in most of their back yards.

A veteran at guiding controversial road projects to fruition, Faucher said: “I understand when we take people’s homes and properties it’s very upsetting. At this point, though, our objective is to narrow the alternatives.” Once that’s done the DOT might make “possible adjustments to alignments to further minimize impact, but we need a final alternative,” he said.

Community members have been meeting and writing letters to the state’s congressional delegation as well as state representatives on the impact 2C-1 will have on local homes and property values. The Schmidts have hired an attorney from Portland who recently visited the DOT office in Augusta to examine the materials used for the connector-road study.

The Holden residents question the quality of research and the relevance of old maps they say have been used to design the proposed routes. None of the houses that would be demolished with the route option are even on maps used to draw boundary lines for 2C-1, they say.

Haddix said he had planned to stay in the area for at least 10 more years, possibly for retirement.

Selling his home for a profit seems impossible at this point since Realtors are advising clients in the area to deduct almost 25 percent off the selling price of their homes.

Haddix said he bought the home for $133,000 about 13 years ago.

“We’d be lucky to get out with our shirt,” Haddix said.