Fight or Flight

(Did I say I was through reporting on village life? Hah.)

We've been cooking up a bilious brouhaha in Bowdoinham this month. Thought you'd enjoy a taste. It has all the ingredients: land use ordinances, surveyor's flags, outraged neighbors, waterfront views, a surprised seller, environmental hysteria, a sleazy developer.. and airplanes. The local airfield has been sold to a developer from New Hampshire. He's talking 30 houselots. The following account is oral tradition stuff. Don't take any of the details as gospel. But here's the yarn as told.

Autumn Airfield

Lifting Hay

Bud has been parting with the last of his family's land over the past few years. They used to own a big chunk of Brooklyn neck, running from river to river, a sizable portion of the village waterfront, and a woodlot uptown. Bud's father cut ice in the river, and Bud says he can remember supplying 40 dairies in Bowdoinham with ice, before the war. Now the dairies are all gone, but the ice keeps making. The family farm is valuable real estate.

Bud has been one of the town fathers. Ran the local insurance agency, been first selectman, scout leader, and active concerned citizen. He's leased the airfield on his land to Wayne and the boys for a nominal fee out of pure goodwill, but chickens eventually come home to roost.

Airfield Pasturage

Airport Office

The private pilots who use the field tried to put together a consortium to buy the airport separately, but Bud didn't want to subdivide the tract again, because that would force him into site plan review (with all the attendant costs), and because the whole parcel, including the waterfront property, was more valuable than it would be piecemeal. Or so the hindsight goes. Various neighbors were interested in purchasing the backlots, but didn't want the airfield.

Enter the bad guy. Fast-talking Fred. He looked like the man in the white hat. One of those outastate duck hunters who come to the Bay for gunning season, looking for a seasonal camp on the river. There was Bud's camp "Peace and Quiet" under the powerlines, and his old house up the hill for year-round use. This cowboy was a pilot, who said he wanted to keep the airfield so he and his buds could fly in.

Peace and Quiet

Hangar

Oh sure: he WAS a developer, and would like to build a few houses, to pay for the deal. He spoke about maybe four, with their own hangars, so other flyers could have a Bowdoinham getaway. He asked all the right questions of the Codes Enforcement Officer and Town Manager, about large lots and houses around the airfield. When the deal went down, some of us wondered what might actually happen, but that's progress for you. Topsham has been overgrown with suburban sprawl, and we're next. The buzzing is like hornets in a hayfield. You're not sure when you'll get stung, or where. But the chances are good.

From a development standpoint the airfield is primo. High dry ground with paved access at the end of the town water lines. There are attractive houselots on the river, with (rare) deep water alongshore, for upscale edifices, and lots of open sites for ticky-tack. But Fast-talk wanted to keep the airfield, didn't he?

Development

View of Frank's House

This month the new owner approached Frank asking for a wider deeded access road to the backlots, and Frank refused. He doesn't want to see any more development surrounding the old Wallentine house he's raised his family in. Frank has gone so far as to survey the land he owns across the road from the airfield, with the thought of parceling off himself a houselot in the woods, if this development actually happens. But he's in no haste to encourage it.

In hindsight the idea of a few designer cottages for flying sports seems disingenuous. When the surveyor staked out the waterfront lots at least two of them were right under the flightpath at the end of the runway. And the fact that the owner brought in a fromaway surveyor might be revealing. Brian, our local transitman, would have likely told all over town if the plan was to chop up the airfield. When some locals started checking on this protector of airfields they discovered he's a bigtime slash and burn operator. Or so they say. Great bogeyman stuff.

Parawing Circling

UltraLites Landed

We recently voted in a comprehensive plan, after 18 years of wrangling, which didn't create any protective ordinances, but did say that the town would like to keep its "character", including such amenities as the airfield. All very huggykissy. Now we'll see what the town will actually do when such amenities are under the dozer. The lines are drawn. There are the protect us at all costers, the do what I damned please with my landers, and those of us in the middle. And Bud, of course, who is caught in the crossfire.

Various schemes have been floated. Assuming the new owner would sell, another consortium of buyers could purchase the land, parcel off the field to an airport association, split the rest for their own development, and all that would change is the solitude of that bit of shore. And Frank's view. Or the town could buy the land. Wiscasset owns their airport, why not us? There are "development" grant monies for such ventures, and our own windfall funds from the gasline taxes. This would please the waterfront preservationists, who would rather keep new houses off the shore. And nothing would change, except, possibly, our taxes. This might even be accomplished by eminent domain. And/or the developer could take the town to court, and we'll have a real showdown. If this were Jonesport, there might just be a fire at Bud's old house. I wonder if the new tenants are prepared for vigilantism. So much for peace and quiet.

Bowdoinham Municipal Airport?

Ice Out by Peace and Quiet

However this haps, the handwriting is on the wall for Bowdoinham. We will get sprawled, one way or another. People want to "live in the country", and that usually means disappearing that country. Ironically, the airfield would be the perfect place to build one of those idealized clustered villages, within walking of the amenities, with open land around. A way to have growth without sprawl. But that isn't what people want. They want their own piece of the country with a house plunk in the middle of lawns and woods and all. And they want to drive everywhere. So the traffic will thicken. But maybe not on the top of this hill. Maybe the Cessnas and Aeronkas will continue to throttle down over our house, and Bud's oaks along the Cathance be full of turkeys. The other kind.