OXFORD — MGA Cast Stone Inc. of New Gloucester has purchased the former Oxford Homes property on Route 26.

Gerry Hamann, owner of the architectural precast and cast stone products company, said Wednesday that he purchased the property from Bill Ryan Jr., owner of Oxford Plains Speedway, on Friday. Hamann said the property cost him less than $500,000 in what he termed “a really, really good deal.”

In a phone interview, Hamann said his firm, which currently employs 15 people, will probably hire another six to 12 people including production workers and form carpenters.

The purchase includes the main building, which is 45,000 square feet, and outbuildings, which come to a total of 64,000 square feet plus 14 acres of land, which are adjacent to the Oxford Plains Speedway.

Hamann said he looked into constructing a new building but it would have cost a million and a half just to get something that worked for his company. “We did OK,” he said of the purchase price of the Oxford Homes property. The property was last assessed in 2010 by the town of Oxford at a value of $1.2 million for the building and $128,000 for the land, according to town records.

Hamann said he intends to eventually lease the outbuildings but is not sure at the moment what the future plans will be for the land.

Hamann, who lives in New Gloucester, said he had looked in a 20-mile radius, particularly in the Lewiston/Auburn area, for a new building but had failed to find anything suitable except for a building in Lisbon that he unsuccessfully put a bid on.

When the former Oxford Homes building surfaced, it said it was a natural for his type of business.

“The function of this building works perfect for us,” said Hamann, who also purchased some of the furnishings that were left over from the Oxford Homes days in a separate price. Hamann said some of the same functions that the modular home business used adapts easily for his business.

Hamann said the company plans to move to Oxford by the end of June. MGA Cast Stone was started 11 years ago in Haman’s garage, where he worked alone making residential concrete planters and fountains. Today, with the help of his son Greg, MGA has grown to be one of the largest architectural concrete manufacturers in New England, supplying architectural precast for schools, hospitals and other commercial buildings, he said.

The company has done new construction and renovations across New England including Bates College in Lewiston, Wellesley College in Massachusetts, several medical buildings in Portland and Farmington, the L Street Bathhouse in Boston, an art museum at the University of Connecticut and other sites.

The once bustling Oxford Homes property has been vacant since 2008.

The assets of Oxford Homes were purchased by Eco Building Systems — a Boston-based limited liability company — in 2007 after creditors petitioned the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Portland to force the company into liquidation in order to recoup their losses. The petitioning creditors represented about 22 percent of the estimated $1.4 million in outstanding secured and unsecured loans.

Then in early 2008, Eco Building Systems laid off its 93 employees. The move came less than two months after another major manufacturing housing business in Oxford — Burlington Homes on Route 26 — went under, taking more than 70 jobs away from local workers. The property was taken over by Excel Homes, a Pennsylvania-based modular home building company that had sought to reopen the plant the next year to bring 50 to 70 hourly and salaried jobs to the area.

At the end of 2009, the president of Excel Homes said an unprecedented modular housing market slump had forced his company to change plans to re-open the former Oxford Homes on Route 26. The company let the option on the building run out. The building was then auctioned off.

ldixon@sunjournal.com

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