It has been almost two years since the construction project currently underway on the corner of Highway 28 and County Road in Rochester was approved.

Construction finally started “within the last couple weeks” Town Planner Mary Crain said at Tuesday night's Planning Board Meeting, but it hasn’t come without its issues.

“It’s a struggle up there right now,” Planning Board Chair Arnie Johnson said.

The site, which is going to be a Shell gas station, Seasons convenience store and Marylou’s Coffee drive-thru, was found to be operating in violation of the agreement made with the Planning Board.

The first issue with the site, owned by Colbea Enterprises, was that there was no pre-construction meeting, part of the company's agreement with the board.

“They were in violation of one of our conditions, and once they were made aware of that they quickly got together with the various boards,” Johnson said. “Then, it got brought out that they are working on the site with unsigned plans, so technically we really don’t know if they’re building what we approved.”

After some back and forth, Johnson said the board gave the company three options: They could get the signed copy of the plans to the site as soon as possible, they could stop work immediately, or, Field Engineering could send a representative to the site with a copy of the plans to ensure the work matches what that Planning Board approved.

They have since gotten the signed plans on site, so they’re good to continue construction “for today,” Johnson said.

Johnson also said this is often the case with big corporations — they make an agreement and then do what they want.

“That might work in other towns,” he said, “but that’s not going to work in this town.”

He mentioned that Crain is working hard to resolve the problems with the site, and that it would be talked more about at the next meeting on Aug. 23.