ROCKLAND, Maine — A longtime downtown coffee roasting operation has launched a fundraising effort to purchase equipment that will save the business by eliminating smoke and chaff that has generated complaints from neighbors.
The online indiegogo crowdfunding effort began Friday. There was also a kickoff event held Saturday evening at Rock City Cafe at 316 Main St. where musical groups performed and money went to Rock City Coffee Roasters.
Rock City Coffee Roasters seeks to raise $80,000 for a smokeless coffee roaster. The owner already has raised $20,000 toward the total $100,000 cost of the equipment, shipping, installation and renovations to the 252 Main St. building to handle the roaster.
As of Sunday afternoon, Rock City Coffee had raised $7,095 online through 96 donations.
Rock City Coffee Roasters owner Susanne Ward said she has been working for the past two years to find a solution to the emissions problem.
“There’s no sense in us being hated by neighbors,” she said.
The purchase of the new roaster will also help keep the company going as Ward changes ownership of the business from herself to an employee-owned cooperative. She has been working with the Cooperative Development Institute of Northampton, Massachusetts to complete that transition.
The roasting company opened in 1999 at the downtown location, an offshoot of Second Read Books & Coffee that opened seven years earlier. The coffeehouse and bookstore remain a couple of blocks away but has been renamed Rock City Cafe.
Rock City Coffee Roaster employs 23 people.
Formal complaints to the city about the roasting operation did not begin until 2007, when a couple purchased an adjoining property. The city appointed an odor control committee that visited the site and found the business in violation of the city’s odor ordinance. The issue generated national headlines, and the city later reversed its stand after the roaster owners agreed to extend the smokestack 15 feet in height in an effort to better disperse emissions.
But the higher smokestack has not eliminated the problem. Two neighbors say the problem has gotten worse.
Christian Dehlinger, whose family has lived since 1986 on Pleasant Street behind the building where the roaster is located, said the problem is not just the stink from the roasting that occurs four to five hours per day during the weekdays.
“There’s an intense 15 minutes of smoke, and then there is this chaff that covers our pool, cars and outside furniture,” Dehlinger said.
When there is no wind to disperse the emissions, the family will bring the children inside and close the windows when the roasting is occurring, he said.
The taller smokestack helped disperse the emissions but simply extended the problem to another block, the neighbor said.
Another neighbor, Leslie Spiers, who operates the Myrtle Street Tavern on Myrtle Street, said the chaff settles on its outside area, and when the smoke is thick, the doors must be closed.
She said it has driven customers away.
Also, next door to the roaster, a five-story boutique hotel is under construction. Rockland Code Enforcement Officer John Root said the hotel owners have not complained to him about the roaster.
Ward acknowledged, however, that when the hotel opens, likely next year, she expects there will be complaints if she does not address the issue. Ward also said construction of the hotel has affected wind currents in the area since the hotel is taller than the smokestack. The south wind that used to disperse the wind has now been blocked and results in the chaff settling more often on neighbors, she said.
Root pointed out that the city has not cited the roaster as a result of the recent complaints. He met with the owner once during the summer and when he was informed the business was planning on purchasing the new roaster, he was thrilled.
“I was tickled pink,” Root said, adding that he plans to donate to the fundraising effort.
The Loring Smart Roaster that Ward is buying is a 15-kilogram closed-system air roaster that uses a single burner to roast the coffee beans while simultaneously incinerating the smoke and chaff that traditional roasters release into the atmosphere.