Mallory Drive becomes a road

Story and photo by Joshua Maloni
Lewiston Porter Sentinel, September 30, 2006

Pictured above are (front row, left to right): Wayne Pollow of the Porter Highway Department; residents Katie Jenosheck, Delores Smeal, Julie Kosikowski, Cindy Budge and Richard Ries; and Porter Supervisor Mert Wiepert. In the second row are (from left): Porter councilmen Norm Ault and Tom Baia; Town Engineer Dave Britton; and residents Bill Engelbrecht, Bill Budge and Bob Pedersen.

After 10 years of waiting, fighting and paying for maintenance, the residents living on Mallory Drive in Porter are finally receiving what they want: a town-operated road. Richard and Etta Mae Ries, owners of the land and two homes on the road, agreed to sell their makeshift driveway to Porter. They will receive $40,000 – which their 10 neighboring homeowners will pay back in taxes over 15 years – and the occupants of their four yet-to-be-built Victorian-style homes will receive a proper driving path.

“They’ve been asking me for years,” Richard Ries said. “So we finally did it.”

The Town Board, with the aid of engineer Dave Britton, facilitated the transfer.

“We’re benefiting 10 residents,” Porter Supervisor Mert Wiepert said. The town, aside from some happy homeowners, will also reap the benefit of four more homes on the tax rolls.

Leading the residents’ charge over the past 10 years was Julie Kosikowski.

“This is our way of getting to our homes,” she said. “We figured, we’ve got to do something.

Kosikowski and her neighbors walked the path last week alongside Porter Board members, all breathing a sigh of relief that their toil was not in vain.

The 20-foot-wide road will have stone shoulders and a blacktop finish. More importantly, with the town assuming control (repair, snow removal, maintenance), it will be properly looked after.

The four new, two-story homes will be right around 3,000 square feet. Richard Ries said he expects they’ll be completed by next spring.