ST. ALBANS – Even in midwinter, the view from Peter Duncombe’s kitchen window on Town Landing Road is glorious. The home is perched high atop the rim of a geographic bowl that holds Big Indian Lake in St. Albans. The crisp winter sunshine reflects off bits of snow, and you can see for miles.

Yet Duncombe’s retirement paradise became his fortress seven years ago, the heart of a boundary controversy that has split this community. At least five lawsuits have been filed; a town manager of 27 years was dismissed; and neighbors with limited income are struggling because they were forced to hire attorneys.

Throughout those seven years, Duncombe has remained silent about how he feels to be in the eye of the storm.

“For many years, I thought the right approach was to say nothing. If I kept quiet, I thought the controversy would go away,” Duncombe said recently.

During those seven years, however, Gary Jordan Sr., the neighbor who has been suing Duncombe, St. Albans and a handful of neighbors, has been a persistent voice at selectmen’s meetings. Since 1999, Jordan has been quoted or told his side of the dispute in 32 separate articles in this newspaper alone.

Sitting at his kitchen table last week, Duncombe said quietly, “It is time I told my side.”

The boundary dispute began when Duncombe built his home and a storage unit business across the street from Jordan.

Jordan lives at the east corner of the entrance of Town Landing Road, a dirt road that leads to the town’s public swimming beach and boat launch. Duncombe lives on the western corner. It is a popular place in summer, and as waterfront properties become more and more desirable in Maine, it has become sole access to nearly a dozen homes.

The town purchased the right-of-way over the road in 1963, and Jordan bought his home in 1998. His deed stated his land abuts the east side of Town Landing Road.

A year later, Duncombe bought two parcels of land across the road.

“The property had been for sale for at least three years, and there was a for-sale sign stuck in an opening in a stone wall along the road,” Duncombe said.

Although Jordan has repeatedly claimed that Duncombe broke through the stone wall, Duncombe said the previous owners raised nursery trees on the land and used the opened area to turn tractor-trailers around in the 1970s. Duncombe applied for and was denied permission by Maine Department of Transportation to use Route 43 to access his land. “The only access I have is the Town Landing Road,” he said.

Once Duncombe began construction of his business, Jordan began a pattern of harassment, as documented in court records.

“He harassed the contractors. He blocked their vehicles. He threw Central Maine Power off the land,” said Duncombe. In Duncombe’s court request for a protection from harassment, filed in August 2000, the court found that Jordan harassed a contractor on the Duncombe property so severely that the man left the job, never to return. The court ruling also recounts two incidents when Jordan threatened Duncombe with a running weed whacker.

“[Jordan] has acted precipitously, foolishly, recklessly and irritatingly with regard to his boundary dispute with [Duncombe],” Judge Kevin L. Stitham ruled.

Duncombe maintains that the harassment continued. “In September 2000, Mr. Jordan adjusted his deed, changing the eastern boundary from the east side of Town Landing Road to the west side of the road.

“When this first started, Mr. Jordan didn’t abut anything,” Duncombe said. But in May 2002, Jordan bought the land under the town’s right-of-way from Arthur Vicnaire for $500.

“Forty-five days later he sued the town and 15 other people,” said Duncombe. It was the second suit against the town by Jordan. In 1999, he sued for damage to his property and shrubs allegedly done by the town’s plow trucks.

In 2001, the town purchased a second right of way to attempt to diminish the dispute. It didn’t work.

By 2002, town officials offered a solution to voters: Take the road by eminent domain. Voters agreed at the March town meeting, and St. Albans paid Jordan $5,000. Jordan sued twice more, disputing the validity of the eminent domain proceeding and the price paid. A jury ruled that he should be paid $6,700. Jordan is now appealing that award, asking for $106,000.

“As much as I’m opposed to eminent domain, I think it was necessary in this case because of the continual threats to individuals and town employees,” Duncombe said.

Last fall, two selectmen refused to renew Town Manager Larry Post’s contract with the town, based on the eminent domain issue. An opinion paper released by Selectman Wolfgang Fasse said the eminent domain never should have happened and that it was not done “for the public good” but for private interests.

Post has now filed a lawsuit based on a lack of due process in the board’s decision not to rehire him. He is hoping that a new board will be elected in March and he will be reinstated. The lawsuit will be dropped if he gets his job back, his attorney, Clifford Goodall has said.

“This is a very sad time for St. Albans. We have all become victims of Mr. Jordan,” Duncombe said. “We have tried to be good neighbors, yet this has been going on for seven years. That’s one-tenth of my life. “