This week, the Buzz has bad news on top of bad news if you haven’t made a reservation at Fuel yet: The Lisbon Street French restaurant is entirely booked up through Sept. 8, owner Eric Agren said Thursday.

Agren announced Tuesday that he was closing the popular spot after 11 years to spend more time with family and get a better work-life balance.

To dull that loss, let’s get to $8 million in new construction and the recent availability of bathroom-naming rights …

New developments

The Lewiston Planning Board on Monday unanimously green-lighted St. Mary’s new $4.65 million Oncology Center on Campus Street and Dirigo Federal Credit Union’s temporary site as it builds a $4 million facility on Main Street.

St. Mary’s 14,028-square-foot building will replace its Oncology Department, which will be renovated to serve adult psychiatric patients.

Dirigo plans to build on its site at 381 Main St., but to do that, it will first move customers to a temporary site at Holland and Oak streets that’s used for staff parking, according to a letter to the board from Walsh Engineering Associates.

Dirigo will build a 646-square-foot, $100,000 temporary drive-through-only facility staffed with two employees. Customers will be served for 12 to 14 months while the permanent credit union site is under construction.

New cafe 

Hannaford will officially reopen its Lewiston store Sept. 8 after a nearly $3 million renovation that began last winter. Part of the new and improved location, according to a news release:

• The addition of more than 600 new organic and natural products;
• A 20-plus-seat cafe near the bakery to sit and eat; and
• The addition of Hannaford To Go. Order groceries online, in advance, and staff will pick it for you and deliver it to your car for a flat fee of $3 for orders over $125 and $5 for orders under $125. Customers can try it for free on the first order, according to a spokesman.

The official grand reopening kicks off next Saturday at 7 a.m. with gift cards handed out to the first 200 people in line.

New concept

Side By Each Brewing Co., which announced in June it was coming to the former Hammond Tractor on Minot Avenue in Auburn later this year, is rolling out two programs as it gathers startup capital, one of which leads to the burning question:

What would you name its bathroom?

The new brewery, started by Ben Low and Matt Johannes, will sell shares for a community-supported brewing program — think CSAs for vegetables, except for beer. Shares start at a yearlong half-share for $425 that buys you one liter of beer a week along with other savings and perks.

Low said those shares will tentatively go on sale around December, when the brewery hopes to open with coffee and beer samples from its pilot brewing system.

The other program, Founders Community, offers a limited number of support levels (75 at $500, 50 at $1,000, 20 at $2,500 and 12 at $5,000) in exchange for lifetime discounts on CSB shares, party invites and other perks.

Sign up at the $2,500 level and receive: “the opportunity to name a small piece of equipment (like a shiny fermenter, our sexy espresso machine or a luxurious restroom stall).”

“We tried to have fun with it,” Low said. “We’ll stop selling the Founders Community shares once we have beer to sell.”

That’s tentatively around March.

And speaking of beer

The Twin Cities’ Baxter Brewing Co., Gritty McDuff’s Brewing Co. and Bear Bones Beer will be among the 65 breweries represented in the Maine Beer Box at the United Kingdom’s Leeds International Beer Festival next week.

The box is a 12-meter-long, refrigerated shipping container with 78 beer taps and a CO2 draft system, according to the Maine Brewers’ Guild.

Thanks in part to a guild grant lotteried off to help one brewery make the trip, Bear Bones’ Adam Tuuri and Eben Dingman will be there.

“I’ve been doing more work with international breweries over the past year,” Tuuri said. “The more we can do on the international scene, the better.”

Quick hits about business comings, goings and happenings. Have a Buzzable tip? Contact staff writer Kathryn Skelton at 207-689-2844 or kskelton@sunjournal.com.

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