Permit issues prevent new PI event center from opening in time for wedding

PRESQUE ISLE, Maine — State and local officials prevented a wedding from being held July 21 inside the former Crow’s Nest restaurant because not all permits for the new event center and daycare facility had been issued yet.

Presque Isle Code Enforcement Officer George Howe said he became aware on July 19 that a wedding was scheduled to take place the next Saturday at Hillpointe Crossing, the new event center, daycare and educational center owned by Dana Cassidy and managed by Jackie Hughes. But the city had not yet issued a building permit for the space.

“Without approval from the fire marshal’s office, I cannot do a public safety inspection and issue a permit,” Howe said on July 26. “I could not allow the public to enter the building for those reasons.”

Howe confirmed, however, that the Fire Marshal’s Office has since approved the building plans, which means the inspection process can officially move forward.

“If everything goes smoothly with the inspections then I’ll be able to issue a permit,” he said.

In March, Hughes announced that she and Cassidy had plans to turn the former Crow’s Nest Restaurant and Event Center, which closed in 2013 after three years of operation, into Hillpointe Crossing.

From the space, Hughes will operate the Stone Ridge Event Center, which will host large private events such as weddings, proms and community gatherings, and she will oversee the Planet Recess Educational Center, which will include daycare, after-school and summer programming for children ages 6 months to elementary school age. Hughes also is behind Dreams Come True Event Planning.

Cassidy expressed disappointment that city and state officials notified him and Hughes of the permitting issues only two days prior to the previously scheduled July 21 wedding, which was set to bring in 200 family members and guests. Although the wedding was still held under a large tent outside the Hillpointe Crossing center without major issues, he said the situation was one he had hoped to avoid.

“The engineered building plans were stamped and sent to the state fire marshal’s office on April 30 and we were given verbal permission to begin construction the following week,” Cassidy said. “We’ve put thousands of dollars into this project and I feel that this is the best building north of Bangor for the type of business we want to provide.”

But State Fire Marshal Assistant Richard McCarthy said Friday that his office did not give Cassidy and Hughes verbal permission to move forward with construction this past spring. Although there are no official rules that ban the beginning of construction projects without final design plans, he said that officials from the agency’s plans review division often advise building owners not to embark on such projects without building permits.

“The plans review division will communicate with architects and review the list of changes that have to be made to ensure that they meet code standards,” McCarthy said on July 27. “We received the final design plans for Hillpointe Crossing yesterday and we completed our inspection of the building today and have issued the electrical and plumbing permits.”

“We cannot give any construction project verbal approval, but we tell people that if they decide to begin that work then they are doing so at their own risk,” he continued.

Among the renovations necessary to transform the former restaurant area into a daycare facility was a fire-rated wall between the daycare and the event center.

McCarthey explained that a fire-rated wall is a structurally stable wall that is certified to prevent fire from spreading from one side of a building to another, in this case giving caregivers more time to help children exit safely.

Much of the renovations at the facility involved repairing an estimated $200,000 in damage done to the building in October 2016 when vandals broke interior glass and chandeliers, and damaged walls and other parts of the building.

The Maine Department of Health and Human Services has its own set of requirements for issuing daycare licenses, McCarthy said. He said he saw no major electrical, plumbing or structural issues with the former Crow’s Nest building and is awaiting the final inspection report that will allow him to issue Hillpointe Crossing a license for the event center.

“Right now I can’t imagine any issues that would keep the licensing process from moving forward,” McCarthy said.

He advises folks who are taking on similar business projects to have a fully thought-out plan for the fire marshal’s office to consider at the start of the process. But the time frames for specific projects often vary depending on the nature of the design plans and how renovations fit into the end goal.

“It’s a complex process to take a section of a building that was used for one purpose and turn it into a space that has another purpose,” McCarthey said, referring to the transformation of the restaurant into a daycare. “We go back and forth with the architects many times before arriving at the final plans.”

Since 2013, Cassidy has owned the Crow’s Nest building, which first opened in 2004 as Slopes Northern Maine Restaurant and Brewing Co., and tried to market the space for potential use. Hughes said that she and Cassidy had scheduled the wedding six months prior and had planned on opening all aspects of Hillpointe Crossing before local schools began summer vacation.

Though she claims that she and Cassidy followed all guidelines set forth by the state fire marshal’s office to convert the former restaurant space into the daycare facility, they believed that less changes would be required for the event center, which was already in place when the building operated as the Crow’s Nest.

“When we first began this process six months ago, we did not anticipate it would take this long, but we’ve complied with all changes that were necessary,” Hughes said. “We’ve changed the sprinkler system on all three levels — the attic, main floor and basement — installed more exit signs and put extra lighting outside the building. All we thought was left to do on the event side was paint the walls.”

Despite the recent setbacks, Hughes is hoping to begin the building inspection process within the next week and officially opening the event center and daycare at Hillpointe Crossing in the near future. She said that an official opening date has not been set at this time but that another private wedding has been scheduled for Aug. 10.

“There are 67 families signed up for daycare and 14 hired staff members who have been waiting patiently throughout this process and we hope that they continue to wait with us,” Hughes said. “Our hope is to provide a safe place for children to play and learn and a center where people can have the large-scale events that they’ve always wanted.”