Harmon’s Tires in Ellsworth is the kind of business most Maine communities would like to keep. Locally and family-owned and operated for 61 years, it employs 18 and has become a fixture in the city’s commercial district.

But city officials recently announced a proposal to move a traffic light providing direct-access to the tire center and create a new road nearby for a soon-to-be-constructed big-box pharmacy, believed to be a Walgreens. The plan also calls for extending a traffic median, which would cut off northbound access to Harmon’s. The pharmacy would sit partly on land currently being leased for a local walk-in medical service.

Albert Harmon, owner of Harmon’s Tires, said the proposed new traffic patterns would cause safety problems and provide inferior access to his business, funneling traffic right into the middle of his tire stacks.

“You would create a major bottleneck,” Harmon said. “You would interfere with the workings of how this business operates.”

Ellsworth soon will undergo major road reconstruction that will change the shape of how traffic flows to and from Mount Desert Island. Along with the proposed stoplight changes on Ellsworth’s High Street, city and MDOT officials plan to convert a two-way section of Route 3 into two one-way roads. They say these changes are necessary to make heavily congested traffic patterns on High Street safer and smoother.

But local smart-growth advocates and some business leaders charge the proposed infrastructure changes will do little to relieve traffic congestion. Instead, they say, the traffic patterns are designed primarily to channel traffic through the city’s proposed big-box store district while restricting access to local businesses.

Harmon would agree with that assessment.

“They’re taking away from me to give to somebody else,” he said.

Public Funds for Big-Box Benefit

Ellsworth already has several big-box stores, but a proposed mall with a rumored Super Wal-Mart and a soon-to-be-constructed Lowe’s Superstore soon could greatly increase national chain store activity in the area. This accelerating rate of development worries Todd Little-Siebold, spokesperson for a local group called Wise Planning for Ellsworth.

“The national chains have grasped the fact that the town has become a national service center,” Little-Siebold said.

He believes the planned reconstruction of Route 3 and High Street unfairly favors retail chain stores while restricting access to smaller businesses. For example, the proposed stoplight changes for Harmon’s Tires will restrict access at the same time a Super Wal-Mart tire service center may open. Little-Siebold said public money intended to improve Ellsworth’s roads is being used to help big-box stores crush local competition.

“You’re creating winners and losers simply by the kind of investment you’re making in public infrastructure,” he said.

MDOT is contributing $600,000 ear-marked for Route 3 road improvements to the one-way conversion construction costs. City Planner Michelle Gagnon has said the city also might use a $150,000 MDOT grant to help cover costs of the stoplight change in front of Harmon’s Tires. Other construction costs will be covered by municipal bond.

Benefit to All

But some city officials, like Mayor Gary Fortier, have long contended that big-box expansion will be a financial boon to everyone in Ellsworth, expanding the local tax base and reducing individual property tax burdens. Fortier said continued retail expansion is healthy for Ellsworth’s economy.

“I hope we keep expanding,” Fortier said.

Fortier said the proposed road changes have less to do with big-box expansion than improving road safety and traffic flow in and around Ellsworth. He said people take their lives in their hands when they try to turn left on High Street now.

MDOT assistant state traffic engineer Stephen Landry agreed, saying the proposed stoplight change in front of Harmon’s Tires will result in a “net gain of total safety.”

But Fortier also said the new road built for Walgreens would help begin opening up land behind High Street for development and secondary roads.

“The next tier of property is accessible through this,” he said.

Some of that property would include a MDOT depot slated to be shut down and eventually sold.

Fortier believes the road changes and the new development ultimately will benefit all land owners along Route 3.

“[It] makes a lot of that property worth more,” Fortier said.

Dissenting Vote

But not everyone in the city government agrees. Steve Joy is a realtor and an Ellsworth planning board member who owns or manages several properties along Route 3. Joy said planned road renovations have already hurt his business before construction starts.

Joy had been negotiating to place a Starbuck’s Coffee branch at his hotel on Route 3, but a Starbuck’s representative broke off negotiations after hearing of the one-way Route 3 plans. The representative said the one-way road wouldn’t meet the chain’s traffic count standards.

“Once you make Route 3 one-way, the numbers just drop right down,” Joy said.

Joy also contests the idea that traffic will run smoother under the new plan. He said the computer simulations used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the one-way sections of Route 3 were based on traffic counts from the 30th busiest day of the year. Joy said that makes the road ineffective the 29 busier days annually.

“You’ve built in obsolescence,” Joy said.

Like Harmon, Joy believes the primary function of the new road designs is to make big-box retailers happy.

“It was to give them the traffic numbers,” Joy said. “We got traded in for the new big-box.”

Little-Siebold said Wise Planning for Ellsworth will be active this year trying to push for changes to the city’s land use ordinances and helping to elect smart-growth candidates to the city council.