On the evening of Monday, March 25, over 350 people from all over the Portland area gathered at the Shaw Gymnasium in Gorham for an informational meeting on the proposed Gorham Connector roadway, hosted by Maine Turnpike Authority staff and consultants. Before the 6p.m. beginning of the formal presentations, there was a 90 minute period for informal discussions between members of the public, Turnpike staff, and several Turnpike engineering and environmental consultants. These took place near several large maps which had been placed on both sides of the room. These maps depicted the proposed route of the roadway in detail; one map showed the area of the controversial crossing of the Smiling Hill Farm area in even greater detail.
During the lengthy period for public comments and questions, it appeared that anti-Connector opinions were prevalent. As an illustration of that, between 6:15 and 7:30 p.m. above twenty people spoke against the project and only two or three spoke in favor of it.
The first to comment was Warren Knight, a member of the family that owns Smiling Hill Farm. He said that the present version of the proposed route is completely unacceptable to his family.
Some reasons that people gave for opposing the construction were that it would harm wildlife in the area, especially brook trout, and that it would exacerbate suburban sprawl, which is known to have a negative effect on the factors driving climate change.
Other commenters said that the money could be better spent by the state government in coming up with ways to reduce the total number of people traveling through the area each day, rather than simply shifting the traffic from existing roads (like State Routes 114 and 22) to a new road. Some said that even though traffic in the area is admittedly bad, this attempt at a cure for current traffic woes would make things even worse.
The turnpike staff and the engineering consultants kept insisting that the new road would pass no closer than a third of a mile from Smiling Hill’s core area (which includes the cow barn, ice cream shop, and popular Barnyard), and that the proposed taking of 42 acres of woodlands and five acres of fields could well be offset through possible land swaps, or even a tunnel being built under one section of the roadway. They also pointed out that the suggestion to move the road a half mile further west to avoid Smiling Hill would have a very negative effect on many businesses and homes near the intersection of County Road and Beech Ridge Road, and could force them to build the road right through the Wassamki Springs area.
By a large margin, the public commenters overwhelmingly felt that all the proposed mitigation measures would be unacceptable to them as well. A frequent comment was that the experience of visiting Smiling Hill would be adversely affected by the sight of so many cars and trucks going by on a four lane highway with a two level interchange, in addition to the increased air pollution and noise pollution.