The owner of the Bangor Mall is violating city code and must create plans to fix its leaking roof, crumbling parking lot and sign, and lingering sewage, a judge ordered Friday.
Bangor proved all ongoing violations related to the roof, parking lot and sign, Judge Bruce Mallonee said in his order. He will give the mall owner until the end of May to come up with a plan to get in compliance.
Civil penalties and fines will be assessed after a two-day hearing May 29 and 30. The city has requested more than $2 million in fines. Mallonee will also set timelines for fixing the issues after the hearing.
The judge’s order is the first time the mall’s owner, Namdar Realty Group, has been found legally responsible for the conditions at the decaying Bangor Mall. The city of Bangor filed two lawsuits against the mall and Namdar, which sparked a two-day hearing in January where the city outlined the ongoing violations with the parking lot, roof, sign and sewage spills.
Namdar did not immediately provide a comment. The city of Bangor did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In August, a sinkhole opened around a 54-inch stormwater pipe, causing a break in a 10-inch sewer line and 18-inch stormwater pipe. Sewage flowed out of a broken pipe on mall property into the Penjajawoc Stream. A contractor for the mall set up a bypass — which captures the sewage and then deposits it back into the pipes after the break — that was operational by the second day of the broken pipe.
Namdar then told the contractor to stop the bypass and that it would not pay the contractor because there was no traditional bidding process and there was not enough time for Namdar to find a different contractor.
The city repaired the broken sewer line at a cost of just under $39,000, which Namdar has not repaid.
While it is plausible that remediating the sewage in winter is difficult, the city ordinance does not allow for “temporary impossibility,” and Mallonee said he will not add in an exception.
“Every day that untreated sewage lies in the detention ponds, waiting to be released into the Penjajawoc Stream by warming weather, constitutes a new violation of [the ordinance],” the order said.
Namdar’s representative, Daniel Giannini, who testified in January, was a good witness, Mallonee said. But that “cannot be reconciled with the corporate calculations” that resulted in the mall ownership pulling the temporary sewage fix, allowing sewage to spill again, the order said.
The mall owner deciding to “unleash a new gusher of sewage into the environment” is not allowed under the ordinance, the order said.
The court also cannot manage the “relationship between a frustrated City and a property owner holding an apparently bad investment,” the order said.
