CHINA — For what seemed like the 10th time, Michael Calvino stood up, raising an orange index card in his right hand.

“Again, it boils down to my question, being: Who owns the land?” he asked China town attorney Amanda Meader.

Some of the 90 residents in the standing room-only crowd at the Town Office groaned. Calvino had started the hourlong special town meeting by asking the same question about the driveway of The Landing, a seasonal restaurant on the shore of China Lake. He got shorter answers each time he asked.

“The Landing,” Meader said.

“Who cares?” another resident, Richard Sjogren, hollered. Sjogren argued that whatever the circumstances, it was beneficial for the town to give up the claim on the driveway.

In the end, most voters agreed. With a final tally of 76-12, China voters discontinued the town’s public easement on the driveway of The Landing.

Another vote, tallied at 73-13, allowed the town to issue a quitclaim deed — a deed relinquishing any claim the town had on the land, whether it ever owned the road or not.

Monday’s vote may allow that financing to go through and for the longtime seasonal restaurant to open again next spring.

The town, Meader explained the first time Calvino asked, only ever owned an easement interest on the strip — a right to use the land as a pass-through. When a state highway was built on the east side of The Landing in 1972, the value of that easement disappeared, because drivers and walkers could travel about 100 feet on a straight, paved road, rather than the gravel driveway.

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 voted Monday at a special town meeting to give up rights to the public easement that remains there. (Anna Chadwick/Staff Photographer)

Meader said giving it up, though, would be of great benefit to China residents.

“It’s not insignificant that this keeps coming up because I have plenty of other things to do than have y’all spend your money on this,” she said. “Really and truly, really and truly. It’s money, it’s legal fees that you don’t need to pay again. And if this waits another 10 or 15 years, then it’s going to start all over because you’ve lost that institutional memory. It’s just a waste of money.”

Some residents had also expressed concerns that the state may have some claim to the road, given that China Lake is a great pond; under state law, great ponds are owned by the state of Maine. But Meader, in a memo posted on the town’s website before Monday’s meeting, said that argument was irrelevant — the easement was given by landowners, not the state, and therefore the easement would return to those landowners, she said.

The owners of The Landing, Tory and Kim Stark, need financing to improve the business’ septic system and renovate the building, which Tory Stark called “three Home Depot sheds and an overcoat pretending to be a restaurant.” Without clarity on the public easement and the land’s ownership, Stark said the restaurant cannot secure financing and may not be able to open next summer.

Sjogren said those improvements would allow the business to improve itself, and would increase tax income for the town.

The Starks began paying taxes on the easement land about three years ago, which increased their annual bill by about $1,500. Tory Stark also said last week that The Landing plans to keep the driveway open for public access; it is economically advantageous to the restaurant to use the stretch for parking, picnic tables and access to the restaurant’s dock on China Lake.

“If you keep the land if you do own it, you get nothing from (The Landing), and you have no use for it,” Sjogren said. “So it seems to me it would be pretty stupid to keep the land, and a lot smarter to give it away.”

China Deputy Clerk Julie Finley steps through a crowded row of residents at a special town meeting Monday at the China Town Office, holding out a plastic bin to collect votes on discontinuing a public easement at The Landing. Residents overwhelmingly approved the discontinuance, allowing the seasonal restaurant to secure financing. (Ethan Horton/Staff Writer)

The discontinuance order did not cost the town any money, beyond Meader’s legal fees.

The road in question was initially laid out in 1810, starting in the now-extinct town of Harlem and running along the east side of China Lake into what was then the town of Albion.

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 1810 layout document was the only record Meader could find of the road until 1972, when the Maine Department of Transportation built U.S. Route 202, or Lakeview Drive, on the other side of The Landing. That move essentially formed a 200-foot shortcut between Causeway Road and Lakeview Drive — The Landing’s driveway. The state gave the easement on the old wagon road back to the town of China.

The Starks, the owners of The Landing, were unable to secure a loan earlier this year to repair a 1950s-era septic system because of the unclear status of the road, putting the future of the restaurant in doubt.

“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 last week. “That’s when I started bugging Becky (Hapgood), the town manager.”