ORONO, Maine — The town manager has issued a warning to the developer of Orono’s largest student housing complex stating that an occupancy permit will be withheld until construction problems discovered by inspectors are repaired.
“We’re seeing some things that we’re having concerns about,” Town Manager Sophie Wilson told the Orono Town Council’s community development committee on Monday about The Avenue Orono, located off Washburn Drive near the University of Maine. The 33-building complex features 270 units designed to house up to 897 tenants. It is scheduled to open in summer 2016.
Code Enforcement Officer William Murphy and Deputy Fire Chief Henry Vaughan conducted a recent inspection and found that two of nine townhouses in various phases of completion had some support footings for rear decks that were not installed correctly. The problem was originally identified by a third-party inspector, local engineering firm Carpenter Associates.
Some of the 20-inch-diameter cement footings may need to be moved or modified, Murphy said Wednesday.
“The posts rest on them. They should rest in the center and an inch or two doesn’t matter,” Murphy explained. “They are off center. They are off center by a considerable amount.”
New York-based Park 7 Group, which has built student housing developments in other areas of the country, is building the clustered subdivision consisting of single and multi-bedroom apartments.
Murphy said the Park 7 engineer overseeing the construction is addressing the deck support issue.
Leasing should begin this fall, but nobody will be allowed to move in until June, which is when the approximately $50 million gated community is expected to be completed, Jason Johnson of The Avenue Orono said in August. The Park 7 Group has framers and heating, ventilation and air conditioning crews that travel from one project to the next, and the rest of the workers are local subcontractors, Johnson said.
One apartment has approval to be used for viewing starting on Saturday, Murphy said.
Construction on two of the buildings also started before Park 7 was issued a permit earlier this year, Murphy said, resulting in a pending “enforcement action” that includes a fine to resolve the issue.
Messages left for Johnson and Carpenter Associates on Wednesday seeking comment were not immediately returned.
Once complete, The Avenue Orono will be larger than The Grove, which opened in September 2012 and has approximately 200 units with room for 620 tenants.
The town added the requirement for large developers to hire a third-party inspector after the construction of The Grove, which was plagued with code problems after opening and put a lot of pressure on the town’s lone code enforcement officer.
“[The Grove] was so big — this one is bigger — it took up an inordinate amount of my time, so it was decided [the developer would] hire a third-party inspector to do the day-to-day inspections,” Murphy said. “Things happen. The normal way these things are handled … is either it’s corrected or a structural engineer provides proof that it will work as designed.”
The town manager said changes were put into place to protect the town’s future residents.
“Even if the third-party inspector says everything is fine, we can withhold the [occupancy] permit if we find violations,” Wilson said.
“I can’t issue and won’t issue an [occupancy permit] for something that is unsafe,” Murphy said.
The town manager ended the The Avenue Orono discussion with the committee by saying, “It’s been a real challenge to work with this company.”