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The renewal of a liquor license for an Old Town bar has been delayed as a result of code violations. Number Ten North Main, also known as The Wel-Com-Inn, will face closure if the violations, including a urinal trough in the men’s bathroom, are not remedied by a Feb. 2 city council meeting.
At a council meeting on Thursday, Jan. 22, Fire Inspector Lt. Steve O’Malley recommended that the establishment, owned and operated by Robert “R.J.” and Tonya Modery of Old Town, not be given the renewal due to noncompliance with safety regulations, including a sprinkler system and furnace that did not carry up-to-date inspection stickers.
“All of these issues added up. It was just a multitude of issues,” O’Malley said. “We started the inspection on or around Dec. 22 and they still weren’t in compliance by the time they were up for renewal. I can’t sign in good conscience saying they’re in compliance when they’re not.”
Safety codes in the state of Maine are based on and adopted from regulations set by the National Fire Protection Association and are designed to ensure that in the event of a fire at a place where large crowds assemble, people can get out safely.
“My whole job as fire inspector is to make sure we don’t have a repeat of Rhode Island,” said O’Malley, referring to a nightclub inferno in West Warwick, R.I. that killed 97 people last year. The points of inspection include working exits, properly lighted exit signs, stair rails and functioning sprinkler systems.
“The checklist is quite long that they have to conform to,” O’Malley said.
O’Malley also stressed the importance of patrons being informed of fire safety and how to survive should a public place catch fire while they are there. Most important, said O’Malley, is knowing where alternate exits are located.
“People take for granted that when they go places they’ll get out,” O’Malley said. “That’s what happened in Rhode Island. People want to go out the same way they came in. There were four other exits people didn’t know were there.”
O’Malley said most establishments comply with regulations 99.9 percent of the time, but this is not the first time Number Ten has been cited for non-compliance. Modery said he’s never been cited for the current violations since opening at his present location in 1995.
Modery also said he doesn’t foresee being shut down for any period of time before his second city council hearing on Feb. 2.
Another issue at Number Ten that must be remedied before a renewal license is issued is the state of the first-floor men’s restroom. The facilities were determined unacceptable following an inspection by Charlie Heinonen, code enforcement officer for the city of Old Town.
“We told [Modery] to fix a lot of things,” Heinonen said. “We told him to take the large urinal out. Even though it was functional, it wasn’t up to code.”
The urinal “trough” in the men’s room was substandard due to an insufficient amount of water running in the trough. Codes for such urinals require one-and-a-half gallons of water to be continuously flowing through every two feet of the basin. The trough at Number Ten was nearly 12 feet long and would have required a substantial amount of water to maintain it, Modery said.
“It’s just not very water friendly, not very earth friendly,” Modery said. “Our water bill would have been through the roof.”
Instead of changing the current urinal to bring it up to code, Modery opted to install five individual urinals at a much lower cost. But what Modery didn’t anticipate was a delay with the plumber, forcing him to seek an alternative for his men’s room.
“The plumbing guy was there and took the trough down but couldn’t get back to it because of freeze-ups,” Modery said. “He had a lot of other work to do and we had no way to hook the trough back up. We weren’t allowed to hook it back up. There was no way to finish the work on time,” he said, for Thursday, Number Ten’s busiest night, which is often frequented by University of Maine students.
Rather than close the first-floor men’s bathroom, management at Number Ten opted to keep it open with temporary facilities. Modery said his father brainstormed the unique answer to their lacking facilities: five five-gallon buckets suspended from large nails on the wall where the trough once stood.
“When the students come, they come in droves, 300 people at a time,” Modery said. “We had to get ready for them.”
Modery said he was not happy with his father’s makeshift urinals, but defended the solution, saying it probably would have been worse without them.
“[Before the buckets went in] people were actually peeing in the corners of the bar,” he said. “Instead of waiting in line people would go to the far corners and pee. It was reeking like a stray cat in here.”
But good intentions led to some complaints from his patrons, partly because of the general disgust of having to urinate in a bucket, and partly because of the image that appeared on all five of the buckets.
An American flag was printed on the side of each bucket, which were purchased at Aubuchon Hardware in Old Town.
“We tried to turn them around so you couldn’t see the flag,” Modery said. “There was just no way to hide them. We got a lot of complaints about that. It was bad … people were pissed off, very pissed off.”
But it wasn’t the image of an American flag that upset many people who were repulsed with the situation.
“I thought it was a joke at first,” said Keith Mccullough, a UMaine student. “Every single one was overflowing with piss, cigarette butts and beer bottles. I thought it was pretty disgusting. I didn’t go in after that.”
Women also had to put up with the offensive smell and inevitable overflow of stagnant urine outside the men’s bathroom.
“I could smell urine when I first walked in the door,” said Melissa Elliott, a Number Ten patron. “I had been drinking and I’m a smoker and I could still smell it,” she said.
“It just smelled unclean, like stale beer and urine,” said another female patron, UMaine student Miranda Marzilli.
Mccullough also remembered seeing footprints on the carpet outside the restrooms.
“Pretty much you could see footprints when you left [the men's room],” he said. “You actually had to wipe your feet when you left the bathroom.”
Many felt the situation was “unacceptable” and “unsanitary” and that women patrons would not have tolerated it in the female restroom,
“We just wouldn’t put up with it,” Marzilli said. “Guys have the equipment to put up with it.”
“Guys are more tolerant, their bodies don’t have to come in contact with anything,” Elliott said. “I’d be appalled. I’d rather piss on the sidewalk.
Bangor Daily News