BANGOR, Maine — After eight years of studies, meetings, gatherings, complaints, and disagreements, the decision is in.
The Bangor City Council decided Monday night that the community connector bus hub will remain at Pickering Square, where it sits today.
With a four-to-five vote last night, the busses will continue to make Bangor's Pickering Square their home base.
Darcy Cooke works to promote a strong bus service in and around Bangor.
"I look forward to putting this behind us and getting to the business of making the bus system much much better," Cooke said.
After eight years of study and debate, some still disagree with the decision that was made by city councilors.
"Honestly, I was hoping that It would get moved..we have customers weekly if not daily that decide not to use the parking garage because of the congestion between here and there," Aaron James, the owner of the jewelry store Designs by Aaron said.
By congestion, James means people not feeling comfortable walking from the city-owned parking garage overlooking Pickering Square to his store across the street even in broad daylight.
For customers or residents, Bangor business people have concerns about the Square.
"I've lost a lot of tenants because of some of the activities that go down there..that is completely unrelated to the bus," Louie Morrison, a downtown Bangor investor said.
Morrison points out the problem being the city and the studies made not looking closely at other options.
"They spent their time seeing why Pickering would work instead of spending a little bit of time where else would work better," Morrison said.
But despite all, both Morrison and James are looking forward to the renovations to come.
"They have a plan in place to make it more of a green space and so forth.. it would be interesting to see...when that comes to fruition," James said.
The bus hub plan expected to take just more than a year to complete.