BANGOR, Maine — The auction of Manna Ministries’ former headquarters will have to wait another month.
A handful of prospective bidders showed up to the Wednesday morning auction, only to be told it had been postponed. Other potential buyers were reached by phone earlier in the morning.
The auction has been rescheduled for 10:30 a.m. Thursday, Oct. 6, at the historic 629 Main St. property.
“We were very excited about this sale, and will still be excited on Oct. 6,” said Mike Carey, senior vice president at Tranzon, the national auction company handling the proceedings.
Attorneys for Machias Savings Bank, which took ownership of the property after foreclosure, asked for the last-minute delay early Wednesday. Carey and Joe Tuell, the bank’s vice president of asset management, declined to get into the details of what caused the postponement, but said delays like this, prompted by legal wrangling, aren’t unusual.
An attorney representing the bank didn’t immediately return a message requesting comment Wednesday.
The 35,000-square-foot brick structure is the former home of Manna Ministries, a faith-based nonprofit that operates a soup kitchen and food pantry. The organization has since relocated its offices to 100 Center St. in Bangor.
The bank took over the building after Manna, facing significant financial struggles, defaulted on a pair of mortgages. Manna had been trying unsuccessfully to sell the building for years, saying it was too large for its purposes.
The organization issued a plea for support from the public in April, one of several in recent years, seeking financial contributions from the community to keep its doors open. The state said Manna owed the Department of Health and Human Services $1.3 million stemming from a mismanaged clinic the nonprofit ran in Medway. In addition, the city holds several liens against the property for unpaid sewer and stormwater charges.
The bank could work the payment of those debts into a future purchase agreement for the site.
Manna ultimately closed its Bangor addiction treatment programs and laid off the bulk of its staff,
citing negative media coverage and declining public support. Manna continues to operate a soup kitchen and food pantry — currently out of the Union Street Brick Church — for needy Bangor-area residents, according to Manna’s website.
Anyone interested in taking part in next month’s auction must bring a $25,000 deposit. Bidders who don’t cast a winning bid will see their deposit returned. No minimum bid has been set.
The property has an assessed value of $680,500 — $388,500 for the building, $292,000 for the land — according to city records.
The property has a rich history dating back to the 1820s. Prior to Manna’s purchase of the building, it belonged to Beal College.
Early on, the property served as an almshouse and city-run farm to help feed the community’s poor. The almshouse doubled as a home for people suffering from mental illness and disabilities. Some were housed in wooden cells in the attics. More cells enclosed with iron doors still exist in the basement, possibly from the era when the building was used as a debtor’s prison.
Over the years, several wings were added to the original structure, creating a confusing maze of corridors, staircases and unlinked attics.
As the nation’s views regarding treatment of the mentally ill evolved, so did the use of the building. Reformers like Dorothea Dix helped push for improved conditions, and the patients were transferred to Bangor Mental Health Institute in 1880. That facility would ultimately take on Dix’s name.
The 629 Main St. property became a business college, and later a hospital, until Beal College purchased it in 1970. Today, the bulk of the building consists of small dormitory rooms, offices and former classrooms.
Follow Nick McCrea on Twitter at @nmccrea213.