The city of Bangor wants repairs to the mall to be made much sooner than the owner’s requested deadline of June 20, it said in a legal brief filed Thursday.
That comes in response to a Feb. 7 filing from Bangor Mall owner Namdar Realty Group, in which it asked a judge to give it until June 20 to have contractors scheduled to fix a slew of repairs, claiming that the repairs need to happen seasonally.
Those deadlines should be much sooner than four months from now and have the requirement that the violations are fixed, the city of Bangor said in its latest brief.
The Bangor Mall has a leaking roof, large potholes, a dilapidated sign and the owner failed to fix a broken sewer pipe, all code violations that led the city to sue its owner, Namdar Realty Group. A judge ordered the city and Namdar file briefs after two days of testimony in Bangor District Court.
Bangor previously proposed fines of at least $2,069,460, which Namdar asked to not be assessed because they could use that money to make repairs.
Namdar’s lawyer has tried to portray the owner as actively working with contractors and making repairs but the evidence presented during the hearing “established that Namdar is an ‘absentee
property owner that is unwilling to make repairs,’” the city said.
When Namdar bought the property in April 2019, the sign was not missing letters, the roof was not leaking, the parking lot and driveways were not full of potholes, and sinkholes were not forming over stormwater pipes, the city said.
The city started sending Namdar notice of code violations five years after it bought the property, which means the issues were not inherited in the sale, contrary to Namdar’s claims, according to the city’s filing.
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.
There are ongoing issues around the 54-inch stormwater pipe and the possibility of the pipe breaking again and damaging the nearby public sewer main.
“Should that public sewer main be compromised, the result would be disastrous environmentally and economically for the businesses in and around the Bangor Mall which are serviced by that public sewer main,” the city said.
The judge will issue his decision on fines and repair deadlines in the coming weeks.
Namdar is facing nearly $1.8 million in fines for code violations at Regency Square Mall, another property it owns in Jacksonville, Florida. Those violations include a leaking roof, an unsanitary ceiling and damaged floor.
