CUMBERLAND— A Maine town is asking a court to throw out a lawsuit so it can create its first public beach in one of a handful of legal battles over public access playing out in the state.
Cumberland voters decided in November to borrow $3 million to pay for the project, which includes a half-mile long beach and a 220-foot pier. A development group led by Bateman Partners of Portland bought 104 acres of an estate and immediately sold 25 of the acres to the town as part of the deal. The creation of a public beach would be a first for the town, which was founded in 1821.
But the estate’s heirs ”“ the Payson family ”“ sued the town and a local land trust, saying both are ignoring a conservation easement authored by their grandmother in the 1990s. The heirs say the easement prevents road, parking and bathroom improvements necessitated by the beach project.
The town filed its motion to dismiss the complaint in Cumberland County Superior Court last week. The suit says the heirs “cannot bring an action concerning proposed uses” of the land.
Both sides are digging in for a potentially lengthy legal fight. Cumberland town manager Bill Shane said the town “expects to be in litigation for the first half of the year and perhaps longer,” while an attorney for the heirs said his clients are adamant that the beach project would violate their grandmother’s wishes.
“The family knew exactly what she intended by this, and the town’s proposal is absolutely not allowed,” attorney Scott Anderson said. “What they are proposing, they can’t do it.”
Maine courts have also wrangled with beach access cases in Harpswell and Kennebunkport in the past year. In Harpswell, a Superior Court justice ruled that the public earned the right to use a private beach access road because of decades of public use. The road’s owner is appealing the decision to the state’s highest court.
The Kennebunkport case went to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, which vacated a lower court’s ruling that the public had the right to use Goose Rocks Beach. The high court ruling gave 29 beachfront property owners the right to decide who uses the property. Sydney Thaxter, an attorney for the owners, said they will still issue permission to use the beach, but “if the owners want to kick people off, they can.”
The developer in the Cumberland case plans to build seven homes on the remaining acreage, a spokesman for the developer, Mark Robinson, said Wednesday.
“The town is going to get access down to the shore,” he said. “Assuming it all goes well.”
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