Norm Richardson and his family have lived on the same Gorham property for three generations, and if he didn’t want to operate a paintball business there, he could play the sport as often as he wanted with whomever he wanted.
But Richardson, 43, is growing increasingly frustrated now that approval for the outdoor paintball field he wants to open as a business is taking longer than the Shaw Brothers asphalt plant took – 20 months – to win town approval. The plant abuts Richardson’s property, and he first went to the Planning Board about the same time as the Shaw project, which was approved last month.
“I can’t wait to put the sign up and advertise,” said Richardson.
But that moment is not coming this month. Richardson’s plan could be up for final approval in July, but he’s still got more paperwork to do.
“I have learned a lot of patience,” Richardson said last week, ahead of a Planning Board site walk this past Monday.
Gorham Town Manager David Cole said it has taken the town a long time to approve Richardson’s business because the zoning needed to be amended to accommodate it. He said amending zoning simply takes time. The town has to be sure changes will not adversely affect neighboring properties.
Richardson’s property is zoned residential, but the zoning allows for some commercial uses, such as small offices and repair services. It did not, until changes were made, allow for an outdoor commercial use like Richardson’s paintball field.
When three Planning Board members and Assistant Town Planner Thomas Poirier visited for the site walk, their concerns focused on setbacks, rights of way, screening, retail regulations and paving – bureaucratic stumbling blocks to Richardson, who is not a developer. He says he just wants to be able to charge a few bucks to recoup the costs of operating the field.
That night, he posted on his Web site, Field51.com, his summation of the site walk: a Peanuts cartoon of Lucy pulling the football away as Charlie is swinging his foot to kick it.
The paintball field is a business Richardson would operate on weekends only. He’s got a “real job” during the week at L.L. Bean. He has been letting people from around Maine and out of state come to his land and shoot hundreds of paint-filled balls at each other for the past two years, but he refuses to play even with just a few friends without insurance, and wants to be able to regulate the type of paintballs people are using on the field. He could turn a profit, but mostly he just wants to have fun.
It’s not the Planning Board or the town officials, but lists of rules in zoning ordinances, legal documents that require Richardson meet a number of standards to operate as a legitimate business, such as adequate parking that is screened from the public’s view, that rankle him. There are 85 pages in the first of seven Land Use Ordinance chapters that Richardson has to comply with, the language of which sometimes requires a lawyer to interpret.
For Richardson, they all add up to a lot of rules, most of which he had never heard of, and many of which he simply doesn’t agree with. He can have friends park wherever they please on his property now, so he wonders why would there be restrictions on parking if he started to charge money for people to play on the field. He also questions why he has to screen the parking with trees so people driving down Mosher Road at 50 mph don’t see the cars, when he’s bordered on one side by Central Maine Power high wires, and by Shaw Brothers on the other.
Poirier, the assistant planner, said the standards simply have to be met, and the standards were set by the Planning Board and Town Council to, in their perspective, enhance the character of Gorham. The screened parking, for instance, is so Gorham roads don’t become lined with exposed lot after exposed lot.
With the site walk completed this week, Richardson is waiting to get on the Planning Board’s agenda for next month where, if there are no unmet requirements or unforeseen public concerns, he could get approval.
“All I want to do is put up a sign and charge for my services,” he wrote on his Web site after Monday’s site walk. “But try and start a business, and slam!”
Send questions/comments to the editors.
