BELFAST, Maine — If you’ve always dreamed of owning a 19th century building that has been used as both a railroad freight house and a theater, now is your chance.
The city of Belfast is looking for the next owner of the long wooden red building on the waterfront that most recently has been home to the Belfast Maskers. All you have to do is pick it up and haul it away, according to Belfast Economic Development Director Thomas Kittredge, adding that an estimate to relocate the entire building recently came in at a quarter of a million dollars.
“We’re going to see if there’s someone out there who could make this happen in a short amount of time,” Kittredge said. “Someone who has a passion for historic preservation or the railroad. We’d like to know within 30 days if there’s viable interest in relocating the building.”
If no one steps forward to haul away the building, it’s destined to be demolished, Kittredge said. It has to go in part because the city has identified contaminants in the soil around it and needs to clean up the site. Belfast has received a $200,000 grant through the Environmental Protection Agency to clean up the 2.79 acre site, he said, and plans to develop it in a different way after the contaminants are gone. In addition to the former Maskers’ building, the city is considering what to do with a small, concrete-block storage building on the property.
“It is highly likely these buildings would not stay on the property in the final development,” Kittredge said.
The history of the Maskers’ building stretches back to 1870, when the Belfast & Moosehead Lake Railroad developed the parcel next to the Passagassawakeag River. The locomotive house, the freight house, the railway turntable, loading docks, passenger station and other railroad-related structures all were built on flat land created with fill. Most of the railway buildings were demolished by 1985, with the site unused for nearly a decade until the community Maskers’ theater troupe moved in to the freight house structure. They put on events there until 2011, when the city insurance policy stopped covering the building.
Kittredge said that although the parcel is adjacent to the Front Street Shipyard, the council in the past has not expressed interest in selling it to that company.
“We’re going to look at all options. We have to see what type of projects are out there,” he said.
A memo from Ransom Consulting detailed the estimated costs of various demolition and relocation scenarios. To demolish the entire building would cost $55,000, whereas relocating the two-story portion of the building and demolishing the one-story portion would cost about $160,000.
Kittredge said if no group steps forward to relocate the whole building, the city will commence a process to preserve elements of it.
“There may be interest in preserving architectural elements,” he said. “If the buildings do get demolished, we are required to do a full historical record of the building, so it is still preserved, at least in records, if not as a structure on the ground.”