ROCKLAND, Maine - This is a place that takes smells seriously. Twenty years ago, residents rebelled against the almost unbearable stench of a plant that processed fish waste on its waterfront.
The plant shut down, the city enacted rules against foul odors, and Rockland underwent a transformation, from blue-collar backwater to vibrant, upscale arts mecca.
Lately, another smell has sparked complaints to the city's overseers of malodorous emanations. Only this time, the offending aroma is the smell of roasting coffee.
The business under fire, Rock City Coffee Roasters, is widely credited with having kindled a downtown renaissance when it opened its first store in 1992, back when Rockland's Main Street, now studded with galleries, was still checkered with boarded-up storefronts.
Now, the city's three-member odor committee has found the small, gourmet coffee roasting operation in violation of the local odor ordinance and ordered it to come up with a solution by today or risk fines of up to $2,500 per day.
The threat has angered merchants and residents in this city of 8,000 people, where the cozy cafe is a beloved meeting place.
Thomas O'Donovan, who moved his Harbor Square Gallery from nearby Camden to Rockland in 1995, said the uproar is "like something from an absurd play."
"They were pioneers; they moved into Rockland when Rockland was a joke," O'Donovan said of the coffee shop's owners. "The idea of them being harassed over foul odors is one of the funniest things I've ever heard, because Rockland was one of the foulest-smelling places in the country. Instead of harassing them, the city should give them a medal."
The coffee roaster's troubles began last summer, when a new next-door neighbor, Steve Lee, lodged complaints with the city about the smell of the roasting and the hull fragments he had found scattered on his property. In an interview, Lee said that the roasting smelled like "a coffee pot left on for two days" and that he feared that the pieces of hull could be harmful if inhaled. Three or four other neighbors also called in complaints, and the odor committee was sent to investigate.
Rockland's odor ordinance dates to 1988, when townspeople set out to squash the stench from Seapro Inc., the fish parts processing plant.
At the time, the city was defined by its reek: "Camden by the sea; Rockland by the smell" was a common jab along the coast, where Rockland played the ugly stepsister to prettier villages nearby.
The smell was a serious problem, recalled Harold Simmons, a native of the city and president of the Rockland Historical Society.
"It was sickening, it was putrid, and it engulfed the whole city," he said. "I remember one night, I said to my wife, it's like going to bed in a bait barrel."
Abhorred by residents and losing money, the Seapro plant closed in 1988. Bitter memories of its olfactory horrors linger, however, and locals who defend Rock City say it is ridiculous to complain about the roaster's benign aroma.
But to Lee, the neighbor who complained about the smell, the town's fishy history is a red herring. Just because Rockland once smelled worse, he said, does not mean that today's odors should be tolerated.
He said the city should enforce the ordinance, which prohibits "the emission of odorous air contaminants" resulting in "objectionable odors at the lot line of the source" and does not distinguish between the stench of rotting fish and the smell of coffee.
"People say I should have been here when the fish rendering was here, but to me that's irrelevant," said Lee, who moved to Rockland from Denver in 2000. "We don't solve problems by ignoring them."
Rockland is not the first place to face such complaints. In 2002, a code officer in New York City fined a 167-year-old coffee roasting business $400 for giving off offensive odors, after a neighbor complained. (The roaster battled the city in court for years, but recently surrendered.)
The city of Portland investigates offensive odors after it receives 10 confirmed complaints, to weed out subjective sniffing from genuine nuisances. Jeanie Bourke, director of inspections, said there have been complaints about coffee roasting, but no fines.
Patrick Reilley, co-owner of the Rockland coffee business, compared the smell of the roasting to burned toast and acknowledged that it may not be pleasing to everyone. But he said he worries that no matter what he does to address the complaints, he will continue to do business at the whim of the city's "totally subjective, capricious standards," enforced by "three guys sitting in a park sniffing."
"Rockland has become gentrified to an extent, and now we have the problems that go along with that," he said. "People come in, and they want it to be like wherever they came from."
Reilley and his wife, Susanne Ward, moved to Rockland from California in 1991, drawn, he said, to a place that felt like "a real town, warts and all, and wasn't precious." The couple saw potential in the rough downtown, and while some locals scoffed, they started a used bookstore and coffee shop, then called Second Read Books & Coffee, in 1992.
The business took off, and in 1999 started roasting coffee in a tidy brick building nearby, on the edge of downtown, which houses the roasting operation and a second small coffee shop.
Roasting is done three days a week, for five hours a day, when small batches of raw, green beans are heated to 450 to 500 degrees, Reilley said. Because the business sells some beans to wholesale customers, city officials say it does not qualify for a restaurant exemption to the odor ordinance.
The dispute has spurred some city councilors to scrutinize the ordinance and may lead to "refinements," City Manager Tom Hall said. "No one at City Hall wants to see them go out of business."
Reilley has proposed raising his smokestack 15 feet, at a cost of $5,000, to elevate it above surrounding roof lines. But he cannot be certain it will work, he said, and "the city can't guarantee they won't come after me again."
He has not lost his sense of humor, collecting 1,200 signatures on a "Save Our Smell" petition and posting pertinent quotations on Rock City's website. Says one by philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau: "Ah, that is a perfume in which I delight; when they roast coffee near my house, I hasten to open the door and take in all the aroma."
The neighbor who complained the most about the smell no longer lives nearby. Lee still owns the house next door to the coffee roaster, but said he has moved to neighboring Thomaston, partly because of the smell.
Jenna Russell can be reached at jrussell@globe.com.
