The Observer: York Village’s makeover faces yet another setback

A couple of months ago, a friend was involved in a car crash near the intersection of Long Sands Road and York Street. Her car had to be towed, and she ended up in the ER. It could have been worse. It was not the first such accident at that intersection.

It can be a tricky place to navigate because of the way cars come around behind the monument and because of the traffic merging onto York Street. You might be aware there have been various plans to improve York Village over the years.

One report, commissioned by the York Garden Club nearly eighty years ago, concluded that “York Village center was once convenient, charming if not beautiful, and safe. Today (1946), it is inconvenient, ugly, and to a degree dangerous.”  The report goes on to ask what remain pertinent questions today: “Are we of this generation, with all our ‘progress’ and technical inventions to admit that we cannot contrive so simple an area as this village center? Why have we not done so?” Why, indeed?

The same questions hang in the air this week as the redevelopment of York Village is once again delayed — until at least 2026

York Village makeover delayed again: Here’s why board is fed up

We have a voter-approved plan in hand. Why have we not implemented it?

In May 2011, York’s Board of Selectmen appointed a Village Study Committee (VSC) to fix York Village. The nine members of the committee worked for five years to come up with a plan.

The committee developed a series of alternatives for an improved Village, plans that would “put the village back in York Village.” On the road to developing its plan, the VSC conducted an outreach campaign that included public meetings and forums with identified stakeholder groups.

Input from stakeholders and the public helped the committee understand what people wanted: better crosswalks, consistent sidewalks, bicycle lanes, more green space, safer parking options, etc. The VSC recommended hiring a professional planning firm to take the VSC’s conceptual work to the next level.

In 2014, the Downtown Revitalization Collaborative was hired to develop a detailed master plan. The next year, TDRC submitted its final report to the town. It is a comprehensive multi-phase plan to fix the Village. York Village Master Plan: A Revitalization Framework to Put the Village Back in York Village is available online.

In November 2015, a vote to incorporate TDRC’s plan into the town’s Comprehensive Plan was approved by a vote of 1,751 to 978 — nearly two-thirds in the affirmative. The next year (May 2016), voters authorized municipal bonding for $400,000 to finance the 10% needed for the town’s portion of the cost. The rest would be shared by state and federal sources.

The town could have asked voters to fund the $4 million project. Had it been approved, the project would have been completed by now. But there were other irons in the fire — notably a vote to renovate and expand the Town Hall. There also was some concern that citizens might balk at being asked to pony up millions for the Village.

The May 2016 vote allowed the project to advance. That crucial vote was somewhat softer than the one the previous year, with almost 900 more votes being cast. Still, more than half (54%) agreed — 1,970 yes vs. 1,658 no — to support it. Everyone thought we were on our way. We weren’t.

The decision to share the Village funding among federal, state and local sources left us still waiting — eight years later. It meant that the Maine DOT would take over as project managers with all that such a shift implied. COVID struck in 2020, and the bureaucracy of the state DOT ground to a virtual halt.

Delaying the project until 2026 — ten years after bonding was approved by the voters — raises serious obstacles to its completion. Four million dollars in 2026 will not go as far as it would have in 2016. It’s a different world now.

Rules governing the implementation of the plan are more complex under Maine DOT. Familiarity with the project, had it been led by our local managers, has been lost. Momentum, too, has been sacrificed. Clearly, York Village is just not a priority to the Maine DOT.

All this puts us essentially where we were in 2016 (and in 1946), dreading the next car crash, bike accident, or pedestrian injury. That’s a shame.

Ron McAllister is a sociologist and writer who lives in York.  

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: The Observer: York Village’s makeover faces yet another setback