Bangor businesses owners are furious at the city for not issuing any warning that downtown roads would be closed for paving Wednesday.
Crews began applying a new layer of asphalt to several downtown roads on Wednesday morning, which shut down or limited vehicle traffic throughout the area. The affected roads include portions of Main, Hammond, State, Water and Franklin streets.
Vehicles in the area were also towed from those streets at some point overnight Tuesday into Wednesday.
“The city has been contacted by people saying they were not adequately informed of parking being prohibited in some areas, resulting in their vehicle being towed,” said David Warren, spokesperson for the city.
Jason McAmbley, the Bangor Police Department’s public information officer, said the Bangor public works department requested police presence to “facilitate the removal of vehicles for the scheduled paving project,” but did not say how many cars were towed and when.
The city did not issue alerts about the upcoming work — or the associated parking ban — on the city’s website, social media pages or through the city’s text notification system. The lack of communication from the city has been disastrous for downtown businesses that rely on local parking and foot traffic for customers.
Business owners and employees said they received no advance notice of the work, either by phone, email, mail or in person.
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John Dobbs, owner of Paddy Murphy’s on the corner of Main and Broad streets, is “furious” at the city for not warning him that the road in front of his business would be closed.
If he had known, Dobbs said he would’ve changed his hours or taken the opportunity to close for renovations or hold a staff meeting.
The lack of communication is a stark difference from the ways Bangor has previously communicated other road work or parking bans for snow removal. Those notices, which include specific dates and times the construction or ban will take place, are issued through email, text and social media accounts, and posted to the city’s website.
The only messaging to residents of the upcoming work and parking restrictions was a digital sign placed at the intersection of Harlow and Central streets late Tuesday. The sign says there is no parking allowed on Main, Hammond, State, Water and Franklin streets on Wednesday.
The city is reviewing complaints from residents who had their vehicles towed to “determine whether other notification efforts were provided in a timely way or if additional alerts were needed,” Warren said.
A post on the city’s Facebook page, published on May 15, said the city would be conducting paving work downtown at some point during the week of May 19. Crews hoped to complete the work in time for the Memorial Day parade, but “this schedule is subject to change depending on how the weather holds up,” the post said.
Autumn Diveley, who has worked at Mainely Juice on Main Street for seven months, said she didn’t know the road work would be happening until she started her shift at 7 a.m. Wednesday.
“I’m grateful that they’re fixing the roads, but some warning would’ve been nice,” Diveley said. “I looked through our mail and email again today looking for a notice and didn’t see anything.”
Conversely, Diveley said someone from the city hand-delivered a letter to the store days before crews fixed a water main near the business and needed to shut off water to the building to do so.
Diveley had only served two customers as of 10:30 a.m. Wednesday, a far cry from the roughly 60 orders Mainely Juice receives in a typical day, many of which are usually in the morning, according to Dively.
If Diveley had known about the work and road closure in advance, she said she would’ve spoken to her boss about adjusting the business’ hours that day, reducing staff or closing altogether.
“It costs us money to be open,” Diveley said.
Next door at Stay Gold Barbershop, barber Mason Caron said he expects some of his clients to be late to their appointments or cancel altogether.
“Once one person’s late, it trickles down and screws up the rest of the schedule for the day,” Caron said.
Like Diveley, Caron said he’s pleased the necessary road work is being accomplished, but said a warning about the work would’ve been helpful, as most of his customers usually park on Main Street.
If Caron had known that Main Street would be closed, he said he would have told his customers to park elsewhere and allow extra time to walk to the barber shop.