MDI tree delivery halts traffic; buyer regrets mishap

MOUNT DESERT ISLAND – It’s one thing to be stuck in traffic on Mount Desert Island because of the tourists; it’s another when it’s a Texas millionaire’s apple tree.

“I can tell you that people are ugly,” said Bianca Cooke of Trenton, who sat in traffic for five hours Thursday, along with hundreds of other motorists, as contractors transported a 20-foot-tall apple tree from Ellsworth to the Northeast Harbor estate of Charles Butt.

The 20-mile trip took 10 hours and snarled traffic in both directions for as far as the eye could see. Cooke lost four hours of pay Thursday because of the traffic jam. Countless others showed up late for work at the Mount Desert Island Hospital, the Hinckley boatyard, The Jackson Laboratory and other firms on the island.

“The tree is probably going to be cut down with the mutiny I’ve heard,” Cooke said, her dark eyes still glittering with anger hours after she finally made it to work at the Somesville One Stop. “We’re hard workers here, and we need our money, and it was taken from us because some rich guy wanted an apple tree. That’s just irresponsible.”

Cooke said the Subway sandwich shop staff that works in a corner of One Stop also got stuck in traffic and opened for business about 90 minutes after the lunch rush.

“This has cost a lot of people a lot of money,” she said.

Dwain Johndro, a general foreman for Lane Construction Co., said seven of the company’s 10 trucks, due in Southwest Harbor early Thursday morning, were delayed nearly three hours – at a cost of $30 a truck per hour. The crew paved the downtown as planned, but the traffic jam delayed work on Southwest Harbor sidewalks.

Johndro didn’t care that Butt was getting a nice old apple tree. He only cared that everyone seemed to be paying for it. “It set us back a little,” he admitted. “It cost everybody.”

Butt, reached Thursday afternoon through his San Antonio office, apologized for the transportation nightmare his tree caused and promised he would never attempt to move such a large tree via the highway again.

At 20 feet, the height of the tree posed the biggest problem, according to Butt and his contractors. Telephone, electrical and cable TV crews had to lift wires all along the route so the tree could pass. At the same time, the tree’s 30-foot width hogged most of both lanes, making it nearly impossible for traffic to move on either side of the road.

About 50 years old, the tree will join two smaller ones Butt had bought from Atlantic Landscaping in Ellsworth and had transported to his home – without any trouble – earlier in the week.

“I know it’s a mess and I know people were furious and I don’t blame them,” said Butt, whose family-owned grocery business sold $9 billion in products last year, according to published reports.

“We would never have moved it if we had any idea it would cause this delay. I can say that unequivocally,” Butt said. “We feel terrible about what’s happened and we apologize. It’s ruined my week to know I’ve offended people. That’s just not something I go around doing.”

Butt, a longtime summer resident of posh Northeast Harbor, has tried to be an active and generous benefactor to the town and its nonprofit causes. His company, H.E. Butt Grocery Co., based in San Antonio, has been generous to Texas causes, too: Last year the grocery chain donated $1 million to the University of Texas Health Science Center to find cures for major diseases.

Butt did not want to elaborate on his philanthropy in Northeast Harbor, considering the self-promotion uncouth, but he wanted people to know he is not irresponsible or inconsiderate.

“I feel so badly about this,” he said. “I’m embarrassed by it.”

Butt bought the aged apple tree because he wanted to give it a second life. He’s not sure exactly how much the tree and its transport cost him, but the word on MDI Thursday was that it set him back $60,000.

Tim Francis, owner of Atlantic Landscaping, wouldn’t reveal the cost, nor would a spokesman for O’Halloran Machinery Transport. But the tab was likely as high as the tree. The transport required two state police escorts, four private escorts, an 18-wheeler and utility crews from Verizon, Bangor Hydro and Adelphia.

“I haven’t heard one person in here yet that’s not bitchin’ about it,” said Gena Alvarez, a clerk at Parkadia Exxon at the head of the island who missed the traffic jam because she worked the afternoon shift.

“It’s all I’ve heard about since getting in here,” she said. “We figured it wasn’t anyone we know that’s buying the tree.”

Even Maine State Police Lt. Wesley Hussey, who fielded a dozen calls himself from angry motorists, said many people thought the traffic jam was the result of a wealthy out-of-stater “who didn’t care about the little people” who had to get to work on time or make it off the island for appointments.

Hussey said the state Motor Vehicle Division issued a permit for the tree to be transported from Atlantic Landscaping in Ellsworth to Butt’s waterfront estate in Northeast Harbor.

Hussey said he didn’t think the traffic jam could have been avoided, even if the crew had delivered the tree at night. First, he would have been concerned about the safety of utility crews, Hussey said, and second, to avoid the morning commuter rush hour, the crews would have needed to start at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday. Hussey thinks traffic would have been a logjam then, too.

“I’m not sure what we could have done differently,” he said.