Ellsworth debates traffic options Improvement, development issues intertwined

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ELLSWORTH – On a recent muggy Friday, cars and trucks crept along High Street, blocking intersections and entrances to strip malls and shopping centers, as traffic signals overhead ineffectively changed from one color to the next and back again.

“Is there an accident on High Street?” one officer asked over his police radio, trying to find out whether a collision was to blame for the bumper-to-bumper traffic.

“No,” was the reply. “It’s just a typical summer day in Ellsworth.”

A lot of people think Ellsworth has a major traffic problem, and they want the state to do something about it.

Others, including some local officials, think the state – or, more specifically, the Maine Department of Transportation – is the problem, and they blame the department for the city’s development and traffic congestion woes.

The DOT “has a stranglehold on Ellsworth,” City Councilor Larry King said recently.

The burden of fixing the traffic problem, for which the DOT leaves city and local developers responsible, is “unfair,” according to King, whose family owns a Route 3 property that Wal-Mart wanted to develop into a Supercenter.

The traffic problem is a regional one, not Ellsworth’s alone, and the state should look to sources outside Ellsworth to help pay for road improvements, he said.

Ellsworth and Route 3, known as High Street in the business district and the Bar Harbor Road as it heads up Beckwith Hill out of town, constitute a significant focal point for the area. Here state roads from Bangor, Bar Harbor, Bucksport and Machias converge, and here many of the retail businesses that serve the region are located.

The number of vehicles that travel along High Street each day, averaged over the entire year, is between 26,000 and 27,000 vehicles, according to DOT estimates. In the summer, as many as 40,000 vehicles traverse High Street each day.

The issues of traffic and development in the area of High Street, Ellsworth’s busiest route, are intertwined, causing headaches for city officials, city departments and developers.

A proposed community advisory panel that was supposed to consult with the DOT on possible options for improving road and traffic conditions hasn’t materialized.

Nonetheless, discussions continue between city and state officials about how to deal with the gridlock that affects local residents, businesses and tourists in the area.

No doughnuts

A Bangor businessman’s stymied interest in building a doughnut shop on Route 3 is a good example of the current stasis in Ellsworth, according to Councilor King.

Lou Lima, who owns four Dunkin’ Donuts shops in the Bangor area, recently approached the DOT about opening a Dunkin’ Donuts franchise in Ellsworth on Beckwith Hill, on the site where Wal-Mart once planned to build a Supercenter.

Lima scrapped the idea after he found out from the department how much he would have to spend on local road improvements to get state approval.

Lima said recently that the DOT never quoted for him an estimate for road improvements at the Route 3 site, but that he got the impression that the required traffic mitigation costs would be high.

“From what I understand, it hasn’t changed from what [the DOT] wanted when Wal-Mart was going to go in there,” Lima said.

Wal-Mart, under similar circumstances, abandoned in January 2002 its proposal to build a 208,000-square-foot Supercenter at the Beckwith Hill site after the DOT told the company it would have to spend roughly $3 million in road improvements that stretched miles away to intersections in Trenton.

Steve Landry, DOT assistant state traffic engineer, said recently that the department’s rules require any developer of a project generating enough traffic to pay the costs of fixing nearby high-crash locations.

Several blocks of Route 3 on or near Beckwith Hill have such a high crash rate that they must be improved, at the developer’s expense, before any significant development can occur in the area, Landry said.

Wal-Mart’s decision and the lack of development in the Beckwith Hill area have had a ripple effect on Ellsworth’s economy.

In 2001, the city established a tax increment financing district, or TIF, on Beckwith Hill that includes the land on which Wal-Mart wanted to build, a Home Depot store, and other properties slated for development. Property tax funds from the district were to be designated for other specific development projects in Ellsworth, such as dredging the harbor or building a business park on Route 1A.

Because of the lack of development in the district, however, city officials have been forced to adjust their estimates for how much revenue the district would produce – down from $4.5 million over a 15-year period to $3 million over 20 years.

Lima said local and state officials need to come to a solution before any road improvements in the area will be made, because no developer is willing to abide by the DOT’s current rules and foot the entire bill on its own.

“You can’t hit one person or company to fix all the [traffic] problems so everyone else can come in and get a free ride,” Lima said.

The city is concerned that DOT’s rules are “driving business away” from Ellsworth, Lee Beal, City Council chairman and acting city manager, commented recently.

“It seems unreasonable,” Beal said of the state’s position.

Beal noted that there seems to have been a lack of communication between the state and the city. The DOT has told city officials it wants to maintain contact with them as it considers traffic mitigation options, he said.

“I think it’s important we get everybody together and talk,” Beal said.

No community group

Since Wal-Mart withdrew its Supercenter plans, one attempt at establishing a more direct line of communication between the DOT and Ellsworth seems to have been abandoned.

In July 2002, DOT regional planner Fred Michaud said a community-based group would be formed in Ellsworth to review traffic problems and find solutions.

According to city officials, however, no such panel ever materialized.

Landry said that the group was never formed and may never be formed for Route 3 improvements. He said that public advisory committees, or PACs, are formed only for bigger, more specific projects, such as the new Waldo-Hancock bridge.

Michaud of DOT said the community group idea had been suggested by former Ellsworth City Manager Tim King, who left at the end of June. Though DOT has not formed a local PAC, Michaud said, it is required to seek public comment one way or another for any project it pursues.

To date, no public meetings have been held on Route 3 improvements or on traffic issues in that area.

Ellsworth Police Chief John DeLeo said recently that the state also should look outside of Ellsworth for money to improve the city’s roads. Much of the traffic in Ellsworth is bound for destinations outside the city, such as The Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park, he said.

Jackson Lab has doubled its work force from about 600 employees to more than 1,200 employees in the past 14 years, making it the largest employer in Hancock County, according to laboratory officials.

“Where are these workers coming from?” DeLeo asked rhetorically. “How many hotel rooms have been added in Bar Harbor over the past 10 years?”

DeLeo said that two of three improvement projects DOT has planned for Ellsworth in the next few years – none of which includes roads or intersections in the Beckwith Hill area – are expected to cost the city of Ellsworth a total of $250,000 of the projects’ anticipated $4 million total cost.

The DOT has held public meetings on all of them, and the city councilors have expressed their concern with having to pay the entire local share.

Not all recent major road projects in Maine, however, have required contributions from municipalities or developers.

A ramp from Interstate 95 onto Stillwater Avenue in Bangor that opened in 2001, giving motorists an alternative route to the Bangor Mall, was funded entirely by federal and state tax dollars, according to DOT officials. Neither the city of Bangor nor any of the property owners in the mall area had to contribute money to the ramp’s overall $8.1 million price tag.

Landry said any project involving the interstate highway usually is funded by a 90-10 percentage split between federal and state funds. Exactly how a project is funded, and whether it is considered a priority, depends on the type of road involved and the size of the municipality it is in, he said.

“[Projects] that get the biggest bang for the buck are usually what go forward,” Landry said.

Possible solutions

One option first considered in 1970 – but apparently not included in current discussions – was construction of a bypass around the urban center of Ellsworth. Two local proposals requesting that the DOT conduct a bypass study were rejected last year by the Ellsworth City Council after local merchants vociferously objected to the idea, claiming a bypass would threaten their livelihoods.

According to King, one possible partial solution is for Ellsworth to adopt a traffic impact fee ordinance. With such an ordinance, each developer of major projects in Ellsworth would help pay for nearby road improvement costs, and not just the first developer in a specific area to submit a construction application to DOT, King said.

One problem about relying on an Ellsworth ordinance for assessing traffic impact fees is that Ellsworth has no power to collect from developers who build in neighboring towns. Landry said the state, however, can assess such fees and is considering the possibility of implementing them to help pay for road improvements in Ellsworth.

The DOT has set aside $50,000 for a traffic study of the High Street corridor, Landry said. Such a study could cost around $150,000, and the state is looking for local contributions from the city and interested developers who want something done.

John Corbett, project manager for a Boston-based company, said Monday the company is willing to contribute money to a study of the High Street corridor. The company, W/S Development, has been in discussion with DOT ever since it was told in 2000 by the state department that it would have to spend approximately $2 million on nearby road improvements to build 200,000 square feet of retail space on Myrick Street, which connects Routes 1 and 3 on Beckwith Hill.

Corbett said he hopes the study could be completed quickly and that, with an agreeable compromise, W/S Development can start building next spring.

“This is not something that will be drawn-out,” Corbett said.

King acknowledged the state cannot afford to pay for road improvements in Ellsworth on its own and that DOT leadership has indicated a willingness to keep working with city officials to find a solution.

Ellsworth badly needs tax revenue that further development would bring to the city, however, and cannot afford to wait around for the state to find a cure, King said.

“I’ve never known DOT to be proactive on anything they’ve done,” he said. “The [city] council has got to take a leadership role in this thing.”