Sail Inn suit drags as bridge nears opening

PROSPECT – After nearly three years of construction, work on the new Penobscot Narrows Bridge and Observatory is nearing completion, but the Dyer family’s claim over the taking by eminent domain of their popular Sail Inn restaurant for the bridge project still has not been resolved.

The bridge should open for traffic by year’s end. The earliest the Dyer’s case could go to trial is November, but a spokesperson for the Maine Department of Transportation said recently that it could be next year before the dispute is resolved.

“It’s taken us three years or more to get to this point,” said Dick Dyer, a brother of the restaurant’s two owners, who has been the family spokesman during the dispute. “This is something that could affect any business in Maine that is located in a high traffic area where most eminent domain takings occur. There has got to be a quicker resolution, some way to get an immediate judicial review.”

For more than half a century, the popular family-owned restaurant had drawn loyal diners with its down-home cooking and views of the Penobscot River, the bay and the old Waldo-Hancock Bridge. But it closed in November 2003 after the state DOT announced plans to seize the property by eminent domain for the bridge project.

At issue since then has been the value placed on the property. DOT appraisers had determined a value of $225,000. Owners Paul and Robert Dyer, two sons of Richard “Eddie” Dyer who started the restaurant, are also questioning whether the department needed to take the property in the first place.

Although initially the Dyers did not challenge the seizure, they rejected the state’s initial offer of $225,000 and the State Claims Commission’s increased appraisal of $48,000. The 5-acre parcel includes the restaurant, 364 feet of frontage on Route 1 and nearly 500 feet of shore frontage on the Penobscot River.

“The property is worth far more than even the increased appraisal,” Dyer said Sunday. “The value is nearer to the $1.6 to $1.8 million range, depending on what numbers you look at.”

Those figures are based on appraisals done for the family.

The case has now moved to the Waldo County Superior Court where the Dyers will ask a jury to judge if the DOT’s award was too low and whether the department wrongfully took the property.

The western pylon sits on one corner of the former restaurant land, and construction crews have used only a small portion of the former restaurant property during the construction of the bridge, he said.

“The property didn’t need to be taken in the first place,” Dyer said.

Carol Morris, a DOT spokesperson for the bridge project, said Friday that the property has been used as a staging area and for parking throughout the project. More of the parking lot area will be used now that crews are preparing to connect the bridge deck to the reconfigured section of Route 1, she said.

It is the reconfiguration of Route 1 and the location of the new bridge, however, that was the primary reason for taking the property, Morris said.

“With the new configuration of the bridge and Route 1, traffic moving to and from the restaurant was, in our opinion, going to be highly unsafe,” she said. “There was too high a likelihood of a serious crash at that location.”

Both noted that much of the restaurant parking lot was already within the state right of way on Route 1, but Dyer said that the new configuration has moved the road farther away from the restaurant, which should make it safer.

Dyer also questioned whether safety was a legitimate issue for eminent domain action.

He said the family is not trying to get the property back, but he said that could be one outcome of the jury trial.

“We’ll let the court decide what should happen,” he said. “The family has never said that we want the property back, but that could be an alternative depending on what the court decides.”