PARIS — The Cornwall Shopping Center has taken steps toward installing a fence between its 179 Main St. property and its next-door neighbor, the Four Seasons Function Center, to limit liability for parking.

Kimball Stanwood, an employee of M H Parsons & Sons Lumber in York, said the Four Seasons Function Center, owned by Paris Selectman Scott Buffington, has had a lease agreement with the shopping center.

According to the Paris Town Office, M H Parsons & Sons Lumber is the owner of the Cornwall Shopping Center. Stanwood’s father, Hal, and John Parsons are the treasurer and president of M H Parsons & Sons Lumber, respectively.

Kimball Stanwood said that the Cornwall Shopping Center “had an agreement with the Four Seasons for a while where they would pay us rent, and we would let them use the (parking) spaces.”

“The lease is up, and we decided that it would be too much of a liability for us to have customers from a bar crossing our parking lot,” Stanwood said.

He said that if somebody slipped and fell while walking from Four Seasons to their car in the parking lot, Cornwall Shopping Center could be held liable.

“We decided to put up a fence to help protect us against anybody being injured on our property,” Stanwood said. “Once the fence is up, people won’t be able to get from our parking lot to the Four Seasons.”

While the fence has yet to be built, two fluorescent paint lines stretch from the Main Street sidewalk to behind the shopping center. The paint lines mark where the fence will be built.

Buffington, owner of Four Seasons Function Center and Crazy 8’s pool hall and pub at 187 Main St., said there have been liability and insurance concerns over the parking lot.

“There is a liability issue with how the cars cut across the parking lot and there’s been some concerns, with too many points of access with that parking lot,” Buffington said. “It is more like an insurance liability thing. They come from Family Dollar (and) Save a Lot. There is a lot of foot traffic.”

Family Dollar is on the south side of Four Seasons; the Save a Lot grocery store is on the north side in the Cornwall Shopping Center.

Buffington said he wanted to “limit some of the safety issues we have between the two properties.”

He recently built a patio on his property. The paint lines for the new fence stand roughly 15 feet from the patio.

“I am well within my property,” Buffington said.

HE said he is negotiating the parking lot issue.

Asked for clarification about the lease agreement, Hal Stanwood declined to comment Wednesday.

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