A new hotel could be good for Rumford, but locating it near the bottom of a hill with a corner on a three-way highway intersection might be a nightmare.

Accidents have happened when vehicles stopped on the corner on the bottom of Falls Hill to let people cross the street by the information booth, or wait for traffic to pass before turning left onto Spruce Street or the convenience store. A traffic light might clog traffic coming from another intersection nearby, and it wouldn’t prevent rear-enders.

Downhill traffic includes fully-loaded, flatbed logging trucks downshifting to negotiate that corner. Going the other way, trucks speeding up to make it up the hill have taken the corner too wide and smashed into the corner of a small building a number of times.

A possible solution for the investors would be to buy the nearby, burned down Linnell Motel, alleviating its owners of the cost and responsibility of cleaning up that burned-out shell that has been sitting there virtually untouched for more than a year. That would leave a level lot for a hotel, complete with high visibility and a turning lane to and from a wide-open, flat, straight stretch of highway, which connects to an access road that quickly leads to the hotel entrance. It would also be near a shopping center and other businesses with a restaurant in Rumford Center and downtown Rumford just a quick hop away in either direction.

David Theriault, Rumford