By Nate Jones

Staff Writer 

Last week, South Portland City Manager Jim Gailey sat at Theodore Wainwright’s kitchen table and put an end to a lawsuit City Councilor Tom Blake said “has been festering the [South Portland] community for a long time.”

“We’re very happy with what we’re bringing forward,” Gailey said. “A dark cloud over this facility has been lifted.”

The lawsuit originated in 2005 when a construction crew working for Maietta Construction, Inc., removed loam from the Wainwright Athletic Field, violating an agreement Wainwright initiated with the city that no loam be removed from the athletic fields after he gifted the property to the city. Vincent Maietta’s attorney, Tom McKeon, said Maietta Construction, Inc., immediately acknowledged the removal of the loam and replaced everything that had been disturbed. Despite this, McKeon said, Wainwright filed a lawsuit against the city on the basis that a larger amount of loam had been removed from the fields and remained missing following the work of Maietta’s employees.

A week before the lawsuit was scheduled to go to trial, Wainwright and Gailey began discussing “an agreement to be settled outside a court of law,” Gailey said. Maietta said he believed Wainwright would not go to court due to a lack of evidence.

“That lawsuit’s been falling down around him,” Maietta said.

Despite McKeon’s insistence that Wainwright failed to prove any loam was missing from the property, according to the lawsuit settlement agreement, the city “acknowledges Mr. Wainwright was correct when he claimed loam had been removed from the fields,” and has agreed to reimburse him $80,000 “as payment of costs and fees” associated with the lawsuit. Maietta Construction, Inc.’s insurance company, Acadia Insurance Co., will help subsidize the reimbursement by providing the city with $22,500 “in exchange for a full release” from the lawsuit, Gailey wrote in a statement to the council.

On the other side of the coin, Wainwright has agreed to gift the city an 80-foot by 300-foot parcel of land and lift restrictions on another piece of property that could allow the city to construct a connector road between Route 1 and Highland Avenue, Gailey said. Should a connector road ever be constructed, however, it must be named the “Ted Wainwright Farm Drive,” per the settlement.

At Monday’s workshop, council members said they saw the agreement as a “win-win situation” for both parties. 

“I’m amazed at how inter-connected everything is,” Councilor Linda Boudreau said. “There’s been any number of people who have gone to [Wainwright] to get him to help us with a connector road, and none have been able to get it to come together.”

While Wainwright said he’s not selling the city any property, some councilors viewed the $80,000 reimbursement as a purchase price for the property.

“[Gailey] has kept the door open and we are to receive a strategic portion of property on the cheap,” councilor Claude Morgan said.

According to the city assessor’s office, the parcel to be gifted to the city has not yet been subdivided or assessed, however similarly sized properties along Highland Avenue are valued at more than $100,000. 

“The land has a lot of physical value,” Councilor Maxine Beecher said. “The truth is, you try to buy a piece of land in South Portland 80 by 300 [feet], you’d better bring a big wallet.”

Gailey said the city does not have any current plans to begin construction on a connector road, but will use the parcel as a new access road for the athletic fields and a sign for the facility will be erected on Highland Avenue.

“This is something we’ve been looking at for quite some time, as there is not current sign,” he said. “We’ve really never pulled the trigger because of the lawsuit.”