He’s just not ready to lose his business over it.

“I understand it’s needed, and if they tell us we have to leave we will — but we don’t want to go,” Tong said. “And we need to be compensated properly.”

“It” is the Christian Brook Sewer Separation Project, part of the city’s ongoing 20-year, $300 million combined sewer overflow program, a massive undertaking that involves digging up streets and replacing single-pipe structures with two separated systems for sewage and stormwater.

The city needs to take four parcels by eminent domain to make way for a key part of the project. One of those is 124 Queen City Ave., the home of Eighty Eight Coffee.

City officials say the work is necessary, and the largest civil engineering project in Manchester since the Millyard canals were constructed two centuries ago.

The mandated upgrades to the city’s 385-mile network of sewer lines are expected to reduce overflow discharges by 74%, according to a 2020 agreement announced by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Justice Department.

The “centerpiece” of the work is the Cemetery Brook Drain Tunnel, a 2¼-mile tunnel measuring 12.5 feet in diameter running 30 to 80 feet underground starting just south of the Queen City Bridge, then going about 2½ miles northeast and surfacing on Mammoth Road at the old CVS, across from the new CVS at 271 Mammoth Road.

For most of its route, the tunnel will follow an abandoned railroad bed on which the city has obtained a right of way. But along the route there are four parcels of land, nine permanent easements, and 10 subterranean easements that need to be acquired.

In January 2023, Tong and Lee learned their property, formerly home to the Local Moose and the Golden Bowl, is one of the four parcels the city needs to make way for the project.

Aldermen voted last spring to give the city’s Environmental Protection Division (EPD) the ability to negotiate and execute any eminent domain takings.

The brothers received a letter from the city last month, offering them $455,000 for the property. Tong said he and his brother hired Colliers to appraise the site, and said their number came in about $100,000 higher.

The letter gave Lee and Tong until Oct. 18 to accept the offer, or the eminent domain process will begin.

According to Merriam-Webster, eminent domain is “a right of a government to take private property for public use by virtue of the superior dominion of the sovereign power over all lands within its jurisdiction.”

The law firm of Bernstein Shur has been retained to review and approve all property transactions. Funding for the land acquisitions, easements, or takings are included in EPD’s current $220 million bonding program for the project.

Not enough

Lee said offers by the city’s Economic Development Office to help get them a lease elsewhere in Manchester — one location mentioned is near the Harpoon Brewery in the Queen City Center site at 215 Canal St., Tong said — are appreciated, but not enough.

“A lot of people we get don’t want to go downtown, it’s too busy,” Tong said. “It’s people who come in, park, get coffee and they’re out the door. They don’t have to deal with paying a meter five blocks away, without getting into everything else that goes on downtown.”

“To move our business, get another building, to get the kitchen ready and up and running costs a lot,” Lee said. “What they’re offering isn’t enough, and there’s no guarantee our customers will follow.”

Lee said his parents have owned the building for decades, and many longtime customers are like family to him.

Customers like Kate Richardson. On Friday, the Manchester resident showed shop co-owner and operator Natalia Umpierrez-Tong, Bo’s wife, pictures of her recent wedding as she waited for her order.

She said she can’t believe the city might 86 the Eighty Eight.

“It’s devastating,” Richardson said. “If they were to close, this place means a lot to me and my wife. I don’t agree with what the city is trying to do, it would be horrible if we lost this place.”

Public reaction

The inboxes of city aldermen have been inundated with emails supporting the Eighty Eight in recent weeks.

“I’m writing to you all to say forcing Eighty Eight out of their building for your sewer plan is not okay,” wrote Aric Leighton. “If you really feel that this sewer plan is the absolute necessity you think it is, give them a fair amount to relocate their business, whatever they say that is. Forcing a small business out of their land under eminent domain is disgusting.”

Manchester resident Jonathan Gott wrote that the Eighty Eight is one of the “quintessential places that makes Manchester so wonderful.”

“The seizure of this property, albeit possibly well intentioned, feels (like) an assault on the family and the community,” Gott wrote. “I can’t accept that there isn’t a creative solution to be found to keep this place even if it costs us in Manchester more.”

Gott wrote that he won’t vote in the next city election for aldermen who don’t back the Eighty Eight.

Optimal path

An online effort dubbed “Let’s Save the 88” is asking people to speak out during Tuesday’s meeting of the Board of Mayor and Aldermen at City Hall.

In response to a request for comment, Manchester Mayor Jay Ruais said the city has roughly 400 miles of sewer pipe in the city, “100 miles of which are 100 years or older.”

“It’s archaic, and when weather emergencies occur, we continue to have serious problems with flooding and sewage discharge into the Merrimack River, our streets, and even into the homes of some of our 115,000 residents,” Ruais said. “In designing this project, the city considered, and its engineers extensively evaluated, the project location.

“Ultimately, the current path and configuration of the project was identified as optimal from an engineering and overall impact perspective.”

Ruais said the project will benefit the “entire city” as well as communities downstream along the Merrimack River for drinking water.

The Eighty Eight is located in Manchester’s Ward 9 neighborhood, represented by Alderman Jim Burkush. He said he had several conversations with the owners about the situation “before both sides got attorneys.”

“We’re still working to resolve the situation in an amicable way for both sides,” Burkush said.

No leases

Tong said customers love the Eighty Eight because it’s “different.”

“We tell them the origin of the roast, how we roast it, why we roast it, this, this way or that way — we break it down for you,” Tong said. “And a lot of people are interested — try to get that at Dunkins.”

“They say it’s for the good of the city,” Lee said. “They look at it, but they’re looking at a map and dollar numbers, really. There was a lot of this talk about, ‘hey, you know, you guys are gonna be taken care of,’ but then you get slapped with that offer and it’s not being taken care of. We’re not agreeable to going somewhere on a lease.

“Going from owning a home to renting a home, what situation would you rather be in?”

Natalia Umpierrez-Tong remembers sitting down with her husband and brother-in-law almost 10 years ago to weigh the pros and cons of operating a small, local cafe.

“Losing your business to eminent domain never crosses your mind,” she said. “It’s a bummer.”

pfeely@unionleader.com