Owners of The Landing at 1830 Lakeview Drive in China, seen here Thursday, are seeking clear title to a strip of land where an old wagon road used to run along China Lake to secure financing to improve the property. Town residents will vote Monday at a special town meeting whether to give up rights to the public easement that remains there. (Anna Chadwick/Staff Photographer)

China voters will decide Monday in a special town meeting whether to abandon public access rights to the driveway of The Landing, a popular summer “dock-and-dine” restaurant on the shores of China Lake.

The driveway was once a wagon road along the lake’s edge. A town vote in 1994 discontinued the road but retained public access to the 200-foot strip. Now, the owners of The Landing have petitioned town leaders to give up that public easement so they can replace their septic system and secure financing to renovate the restaurant.

Some residents say there’s no good reason for the town to give up the land and that town officials should consider selling the easement rights to The Landing. China resident Cathy Bourque, who has led an effort against The Landing’s claims to the easement, said there’s too much doubt over the ownership to give up the strip now.

“It just costs money, and they always come up with the same thing,” Bourque said. “They really don’t know who owns that land.”

Town leaders want to stop spending thousands of dollars hiring lawyers every time the issue comes up — and it has come up often over the past 50 years.

“If we can have a public vote and we’re just giving up an easement that we really don’t even need, to keep a business that’s been a big part of this community and a taxpayer in this community for more than 50 years, that’s what we’re looking at doing,” Select Board chairperson Wayne Chadwick said during an Aug. 11 public hearing.

The future of The Landing hangs in the balance.

If voters don’t approve the warrant article and give up the public easement, The Landing’s owners may not have the funds to re-open the seasonal restaurant next spring.

“To have this kind of situation just eat all of our profit and then eat up into our savings that we save to open The Landing next year, is just devastating,” owner Tory Stark said.

BEFORE CHINA

The earliest records of the road in question were created 215 years ago in 1810 — eight years before China became a town and 10 years before Maine became a state.

The records describe a path for a new road along the east side of what is now known as China Lake. Starting at the northern boundary of the now-extinct town of Harlem, the road was to run northward about 2,000 feet into the now-extinct town of Fairfax.

Topographical maps and archival photos show the old road hugged the shoreline closely. Aerial imagery from 1956 shows buildings lining the old wagon road, including where The Landing sits now. The Landing itself opened in 1975, but the site has hosted a seasonal restaurant since the 1950s.

The old road was the main drag along China Lake until 1972, when the Maine Department of Transportation acquired land for a new state highway, known now as U.S. Route 202 or Lakeside Drive.

State crews created a new four-way intersection just north of The Landing, and the state transportation department gave up its interest in the small curve between the restaurant and China Lake, which essentially formed a 200-foot shortcut between Causeway Road and Lakeview Drive.

Now, that strip is The Landing’s driveway and parking lot.

“I can drive out to the stop sign and take a right onto Lakeview Drive, and I don’t have to drive through a dirt parking lot,” Town Manager Becky Hapgood said. “The access to this easement in the winter is not necessarily kept open by the owner of the property. So I mean, as a resident, great, it allows you to walk or to drive from point A to point B. Other than that, it has no value to the town.”

The marsh area along China Lake in China, seen Thursday, was once part of an old wagon road that the town of China voted to discontinue in 1994. (Anna Chadwick/Staff Photographer)

Stark, who paid a surveyor to determine where exactly the old road was, said the transportation department placed a guardrail blocking part of the public easement and dug out a marsh area in the 1970s to help drain the new road.

“It’s not passable by vehicle,” Stark said. “I guess you could walk through there, but you’re going to get into EPA issues if you make a walking path through there. And you’re going to get your feet wet.”

After the state built the new highway, responsibility for the remaining portion of the old wagon road reverted to its original status and shifted to the town of China. Town voters chose to discontinue the road altogether in 1994, leaving a public easement behind.

But a crucial piece of the puzzle remains unclear, thanks to a lack of old records: whether the land for the road was bought outright from landowners in 1810, or just acquired as an easement.

Town Attorney Amanda Meader said during an Aug. 11 public hearing that her extensive research shows the town only ever had an easement on the land. The 1994 discontinuation of the road didn’t make a difference because the town never owned the land underneath the easement, she said.

Roberta Manter, an expert on Maine’s abandoned and discontinued roads who runs the advocacy organization Maine ROADWays, said these old roads were mostly laid out as easements. A lawyer for the Department of Transportation also told the China town manager in 1985 that these roads were acquired initially as easements “99% of the time.”

If the “original status” is a public easement — a right for the public to access the road with no responsibility for the town to maintain it — then Monday’s vote to give up the public easement would end the decadeslong saga.

But if some record turns up that shows the town owned the land, Manter said, the town would likely have to sell or transfer the land to The Landing.

That outcome is incredibly unlikely, Meader said at the Aug. 11 hearing.

‘NOBODY OWNS THIS LAND’

Stark and his wife Kim bought The Landing in 2022 from longtime owners Tom and Nancy Bona.

Immediately, they recognized improvements totaling about $250,000 needed to be made.

“Before 1950 is when the septic was put in,” Stark said. “That’s something we’ve hit on, one of the reasons we hired this surveyor to see if we could get a septic in at all with the size of the lot we have. And then the building — I lovingly call it three Home Depot sheds and an overcoat pretending to be a restaurant.”

The kitchen, originally designed for burgers and fries, now produces a menu of seafood, ice cream, chicken and pizza in addition to the original offerings, cramping the space. With essentially no insulation, Stark said the kitchen is incredibly difficult to cool in the summer, where on the hottest days this year, temperatures have reached well above 100 degrees.

Customers line up Thursday to order food at the Landing, at the head of China Lake. The restaurant’s owners are seeking clear title to an old wagon road that used to run along China Lake in order to secure financing to make improvements to the restaurant building, including cooling the kitchen where temperatures can reach 100 degrees on the hottest summer days. (Anna Chadwick/Staff Photographer)

The Starks needed financing to complete those improvements, though. Some of that money came as a loan from the Bonas. They also applied to Bangor Savings Bank in March for additional money to replace the septic system and renovate the building.

But the bank denied them a loan, citing the unclear status of the old wagon road through their property.

“I’ve never had this interaction with someone from a bank, but he’s like: ‘I have never seen this before — nobody owns this land. This has to be sorted. You’re going to need to get this figured out before we can extend financing,’” Stark recounted. “That’s when I started bugging Becky (Hapgood), the town manager.”

The Bonas, Stark said, then changed their loan terms, saying The Landing couldn’t afford the original terms after being denied a bank loan. Now, instead of paying $3,600 per month in interest, the Starks pay $6,000.

“It went from, ‘Hey, Becky, we need to start working on this,’ to, ‘Hey, Becky, this is an immediate problem that threatens the economic prospects of this property,’” Stark said. “I mean, $6,000 a month. I don’t care who you are, that’s a significant outlay.”

That increased cost came after the Starks became the first owners of The Landing to pay taxes on the easement land.

Stark said China officials came to the conclusion recently that the old road belonged to The Landing, citing a state law that reverts ownership of a discontinued road to the abutters on either side. Taxes on the lot went up by about $1,500 annually, Stark said.

Stark said he acknowledges the land is valuable and his business has long used the strip for economic gain. Even beyond the permitted uses of the public easement — which include walking and driving — the owners of The Landing have long allowed customers to park there and sit on picnic tables near China Lake. It makes sense that China would tax The Landing for the land, Stark said.

The Starks have started allowing unfettered public use of their dock on China Lake, too. The fisherman who use the dock are some of The Landing’s best customers, he said.

But that economic gain would be moot if the restaurant can’t afford to open its doors next spring.

THE VOTE

Monday’s special town meeting comes after years of debate and confusion on the public easement, and thousands of dollars in legal fees.

Regardless, Bourque, the resident leading an opposition effort to The Landing’s claims, said the vote is too hasty.

“The town of China doesn’t even freaking have town meetings or do the votes (in-person) because they stopped that, but now they just want to have a special town meeting to slide it through and just give it to (Stark),” Bourque said.

China uses a secret ballot vote for its annual town meeting rather than the traditional open meeting format. This special town meeting, though, will be in-person and will be followed by a regular select board meeting.

Bourque said she has not been convinced by any evidence that The Landing owns the land under the public easement, and for the town to give it up without compensation would be wrong.

She brought up that idea during the Aug. 11 public hearing, asking elected officials and the town attorney why the town couldn’t simply sell the public easement to The Landing.

“I proposed, I said, ‘Well, let’s sell it to them.’ ‘No,’” Bourque said. “Basically, they cut you off after your three minutes, and you don’t get educated. But when we went outside, three of us, the lawyer (Meader) followed us out and tried to explain more. And yet, we’re coming back to the same thing. Why are we doing this? We’re doing it because they don’t want it to come back and haunt them again.”

Hapgood said the town of China has spent tens of thousands of dollars over the decades paying attorneys over this stretch of land. If voters shoot down Monday’s warrant articles, she said that total could easily double.

The Starks have already reached out to an attorney to fight the case in court, in case Monday’s vote goes against them.

“The only reason I can see for them fighting is for them to fight,” Stark said. “They want to have a back and forth. They want to argue about this. And there’s literally no value in it, there’s no value for the town and there’s no value for them as citizens. I know, myself, as a taxpayer, I don’t want the town to have to go to court and pay to defend this easement that we don’t even want.”

Editor’s note: This story was updated to correct the spelling of Cathy Bourque’s name.