WINDHAM – Although many residents of River Road in Windham believe that the upcoming road-widening construction project is more or less necessary, they will be sorry to see the trees in front of their houses removed.

Despite the fact that he will lose a dozen cedar, hemlock and maple trees, some of which are 150 years old, Ernest Valente, a resident of 509 River Road, supports the $8.4 million project.

“I don’t really like it because of the way it’s affecting me personally, but it really needs to be done,” Valente said. “The road’s a dangerous road. There are accidents here all the time. The sightlines aren’t very good. The ditches are not good. The road’s crowned, and this road’s an old road.”

River Road, which follows the Presumpscot River and is known for its twists and hills, is a major commuter byway linking North Windham with Westbrook. The section soon to be rebuilt extends 5.9 miles from Route 202 in South Windham to Page Road in North Windham. Officials say the road repair should begin after bids are advertised and a contractor is chosen.

On Dec. 6, the Maine Department of Transportation condemned a variety of temporary and permanent rights on 180 parcels along the 5.9-mile stretch of River Road, according to Luther Yonce, who oversees the department’s property acquisitions in southern Maine. Because the department plans to add 5-foot shoulders on each side of the road, in order to meet highway design standards, it has used the eminent domain process to secure a variety of easements and fee ownership rights along the road.

Beginning in early October, department officials began offering compensation packages to affected property owners, Yonce said. According to Cheryl Page, who lives on Cardinal Lane, just off the River Road, the officials had trouble meeting with property owners.

“Half of the people wouldn’t even open up the door because they thought they were (distributing religious tracts),” said Page. She served on an advisory committee made up of residents and town officials who consulted on the project with the state. “It’s terrible. They spent weeks and weeks and weeks,” Page said.

As of early February, more than half of the property owners have accepted the compensation, Yonce said.

“We will make an offer, and there are basically some people who feel, ‘Hey, I have no problem with this, where do I sign?’” Yonce said. “There are people who feel, ‘I don’t want to sign until I see it completed.’”

The department continues to negotiate with all unsettled parties, Yonce said.

“If we cannot come to terms, then there is legal recourse for them,” he said.

According to Judy Quimby, a resident of 565 River Road who co-owns Thayer’s Store near the Gambo Road intersection, there hasn’t been too much commotion about the state’s use of eminent domain to secure rights to land abutting the road.

“We’ve talked to some people,” Quimby said. “Some people are OK with it; other people are disgusted with the amount of money they’re getting. There hasn’t been a lot of turmoil, though. There are sections of the River Road that are really, really bad and need to be tended to.”

Quimby lives along a section of River Road near Maynard Road known as “Dead Man’s Curve.”

“A guy crashed on my lawn in the ’80s, and he died, so I have been trying to have it be a safer road,” Quimby said. “It really upset us to see a young guy like that lose his life.”

Still, Quimby said, the construction will not be enough, on its own. Law enforcement will have to enforce the speed limit.

Quimby is also sad to see the tree buffer on her front lawn removed, as part of the widening process.

“We’re losing some of the trees on our front lawn,” Quimby said. “We waited 40 years for the trees to grow, (but) I guess it’s progress, you know. We’re outnumbered. We have to go with it. The state’s going to do it whether we like it or not.

“I do think it’s too bad to take out front lawns, but they have a certain amount that they can go in there anyway, and we shouldn’t have planted our trees so close to the road, I guess,” Quimby said.

Nancy Spear, a resident of 537 River Road, said that she’s waiting to see how her front yard looks after the construction.

“The people I’ve talked to have been very nice, but overall I really can’t tell you anything until it’s done,” Spear said.

Spear said that on her nephew’s property next door, an old garage built by her grandfather, Slim McCready, is set to be demolished. The garage, which stands close to the road, has a lot of “sentimental value,” Spear said.

“After we looked it over, it really does need to come down,” Spear said. “It was built in 1966. But it was sentimental.”

Spear lives with her husband and son just south of the narrow bridge that crosses the Pleasant River near Dead Man’s Curve. She said she doesn’t understand why the department is widening the road, but not the bridge.

“We live by the bridge,” Spear said. “If they’re not changing the bridge, it doesn’t make sense to widen the road after the bridge. They’re taking the land to make shoulders for the road and to make ditches.”

Citing a lack of road reconstruction and bridge repair funds, state officials have said in the past that the bridge repair would significantly increase the cost of the project. Yet Spear thinks there are worthy parts of the construction project for her area.

“They’re going to try to straighten out the curve and that’s a good thing,” she said.

Jon Miele, a resident of Down Home Road, whose property partly abuts River Road, said that his land would not be particularly devastated by the project.

“Our property isn’t going to be affected that much,” he said. “We’re going to be losing some trees along the road, but other than that I think we’re going to be relatively unscathed. It is dangerous, and I support the reconstruction.”

Ernie Martin, the River Road project manager for the department, said that by the end of March, the state will begin designing the next River Road construction project, which will extend three miles from the Depot and Chute roads intersection to the Westbrook line. The Legislature has provided funding for reconstruction of the northerly section of the road, but the lower section of the roadway has received funding for redesign only.

“It will just be a continuing construction site right on River Road,” Martin said. “It will be busy, but once this project’s done I think it will be a huge asset to the town of Windham.”

The department will also advertise for bids on the current, 5.9-mile project in March, said Martin, who projects that the construction will be finished sometime in 2016.

A roadside garage owned by Nancy Spear is set for demolition as part of the state’s reconstruction of River Road. Multiple properties along the roadway have been secured by the state using eminent domain.