Feds to buy land for customs house

CALAIS – The federal government has agreed to purchase the land it needs to construct a U.S. Customs House, state officials announced last week.

The issue of who would pay unfolded last month when the U.S. General Services Administration said the state should write a check for the $1.4 million needed for the 40-acre parcel. The land is north of the city’s downtown area.

The state objected saying it was inappropriate for the state to pay for land that a federal facility would be built on.

The matter recently was resolved when the federal government agreed to buy the land it needs to construct the facility.

The purchase of the land is a critical piece of the funding package needed for the construction of a $100 million bridge that soon will connect this border community with St. Stephen, New Brunswick.

“We are very appreciative to GSA and Customs,” Maine Department of Transportation Commission David Cole said last week.

“This is important for the state because this is $1.4 million we won’t have to come up with.”

Cole did not fault the federal government. He said it was not unusual for the state and federal governments to put together these types of partnership programs. “If you go on the Mexican border they’ve had a number of public-private partnerships where folks helped sponsor [bridges],” he said.

The commissioner added that he believed this was a positive first step. “We are on task to finish the necessary engineering and design work. The partnership with the New Brunswick Department of Transportation is going very well,” he said. “However, funding for the customs facility has to be secured because we are not going to build a bridge without it.” U.S. Sen. Susan Collins is working to secure that funding.

For a time, it appeared the bridge might face additional delays with this latest wrinkle until Collins interceded on behalf of the state.

The senator was in Calais in May to talk to members of the Maine-New Brunswick Trade Corridor Committee, which is pushing the governments of Canada and the United States to build a third bridge to connect Calais with St. Stephen.

Collins told members of the committee she has spent months lobbying the GSA for funding for the new customs facility to accommodate traffic entering the United States at the new bridge.

Two other bridges in downtown and in Calais’ Milltown neighborhood are already heavily used.

Supporters would like to see a new bridge built by 2006, but the timetable now calls for the bridge to be completed by 2007.

The Canadian government already has pledged its half of the nearly $100 million needed to construct the Maine-New Brunswick bridge, which would have one end near the Calais industrial park.