The town of Gorham has filed a complaint in superior court, demanding that a local development company build a sidewalk along South Street from the Heartwood subdivision to Weeks Road.

Gorham Town Manager David Cole said last week the town has asked a judge to force SoLD Inc. to construct the sidewalk, fulfilling a Planning Board condition of approval for the development.

Susan Duchaine, a partner in SoLD Inc., said the town doesn’t have sufficient land to build the sidewalk. She hopes the matter can be resolved this week before going to court.

“Hopefully, we can resolve it soon,” she said. “We haven’t seen the lawsuit, but I think it’s a misunderstanding.”

Cole said the Town Council would discuss the situation in executive session at 4 p.m. today, Wednesday, July 20, in his office at town hall.

The Gorham Planning Board granted approval of Heartwood in the fall of 2000. The Gorham Planning Board allowed Duchaine to eliminate one of the two sidewalks on each of the interior and access roads at the 82-lot development in exchange for a sidewalk about 1,000 feet long within the public right of way on the westerly side of South Street.

The sidewalk the Planning Board approved included granite curbing and an esplanade.

The court complaint Gorham filed against SoLD Inc. said the Planning Board approved a subsequent request by the developer to build parts of the sidewalk outside the public right of way “to reduce the cost of construction.”

Duchaine said she didn’t feel there was enough room in the public right of way to build a sidewalk. She said she wanted the town to take land by eminent domain and said the town planner was talking with land owners about acquiring property.

However, the Planning Board didn’t agree to acquire easements for the sidewalk, according to the court complaint filed by the town. In a letter Cole wrote to Duchaine last year, he said the town staff could assist with the project, but the developer would still be responsible for completing the sidewalk, including land acquisition.

The area along the westerly side of South Street between Quincy Drive, which is the entrance into Heartwood, and Weeks Road is mostly wooded, and a sidewalk would likely require taking down trees if easements were obtained.

An existing town sidewalk extends along the westerly side of South Street from the village to Weeks Road. The town declined her offer to locate the sidewalk on the easterly side of South Street, Duchaine said. The town said the sidewalk on the westerly side of South Street to the Heartwood development should have been built in 2002.

In the court complaint, the town alleges residents of the Heartwood subdivision need the sidewalk to walk to the high school, Robie Park, Baxter Memorial Library and shops and restaurants in Gorham Village. The town square is about one mile from the entrance into Heartwood.

Duchaine said kids going to the new Middle School, which is located on Weeks Road, can use a sidewalk built by the School Department from the school to the back of Heartwood. She said she offered to reimburse the town for that sidewalk.

The town is holding $125,000 cash from a performance bond that SoLD Inc. posted to ensure the work would be done. But the town said an engineering study shows that it wouldn’t cover costs of construction.

If the town takes the performance bond, it would have to build the sidewalk, Duchaine said. But she said that SoLD Inc. had offered to release the town to spend the $125,000 for another purpose. “It doesn’t appear that the council was aware of an offer we made a couple of months ago to resolve it,” she said about the dispute.

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