NORWAY — Plans by a local businessman to purchase the Odd Fellows Building on Main Street are still on hold.
“We’re still working on it,” Norway businessman John Miller said of the 19th century, three-story, brick building at 380 Main St. “I can’t say any more.”
Miller is attempting to purchase the building from TD Bank, which bought the building at a foreclosure auction for $89,000 in March after a high bid of $30,000 from a local developer was rejected.
Shortly after, Miller was apparently in the process of purchasing it from the bank and told a local newspaper that he planned to renovate the building and reopen it with businesses. But six months later the deal has failed to materialize.
While it is unclear what the holdup is, Miller said in April title issues were initially stalling the process.
The building was previously owned by Dawn and Harvey Solomon of New Horizons Capital Investment, who purchased the property in July 2008 for $63,500 and told town officials they planned to renovate the building and reopen storefronts on the first floor.
Although the couple secured the back wall and cleared the interior of debris, renovation stopped unexpectedly last year just before Dawn Solomon was arrested and charged with bilking the state’s MaineCare system out of more than $4 million. She is currently incarcerated for the crime and nearly a dozen of the Solomon’s properties have been auctioned off.
A study of the building by Resurgence Engineering and Preservation Inc. of Portland several years ago indicated it would take more than $800,000 to fully renovate the building.
The building is one of three historic vacant downtown buildings that have been the subject of discussion by local and state officials for the past several years. A private, nonprofit organization has taken over one of the three, the Gingerbread House, and moved it up the street for renovations.
The town has successfully taken another, the Opera House, by eminent domain and is in the process of applying for a $400,000 state grant to renovate the building and reopen the storefronts, after transferring it to a nonprofit organization.
The basement and first floor of the Odd Fellows Building were built in 1894, and the other two floors were added in 1911. The brick structure is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is part of the historic downtown district, but the interior, which once housed the district court, a jail and other businesses, has been gutted.
ldixon@sunjournal.com
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