NORWAY — The owner of the Gingerbread House on Main Street warned task force members Friday that time is running out to raise the $100,000 necessary to move the building.

"Time is not infinite," Ed Snook, chief financial officer for C's Inc., owner of the building, told the Gingerbread House Task Force members.

The Gingerbread House Task Force sent out 250 letters in September soliciting donations to save the 160-year-old house on Main Street by Nov. 15. So far, about $7,000 has been raised, said task force member Pat Shearman. A $20,000 commitment has also come from the Davis Family Foundation if another $150,000 can be raised in cash and pledges in the next two years.

The major fundraising effort is the first phase of a three-phase plan to save the 1851 building, which is known historically as the Evans-Cummings House and locally as the Gingerbread House. It stands on upper Main Street.

Last year, C's Inc., a holding company for the Sun Media newspaper group that publishes the Sun Journal and Advertiser-Democrat, agreed to hold off on plans to demolish the home if the Historical Society or town wanted to move it off site. Town officials have stressed they cannot afford to participate financially in the effort.

Snook reaffirmed Friday that the company has no intentions of leaving the building on its present site behind the Sun Journal and Advertiser-Democrat building on Main Street.

"It's not going to happen," Snook said. "The house is going to move."

Snook said after the meeting that he will reassess the Nov. 15 fundraising deadline set by task force members to raise $100,000 shortly after that date. He also agreed to give the task force a 60- to 90-day warning if the decision has to be made by C's Inc. to tear down the building.

The plans by the Sun Media Group for the Gingerbread House lot are not firm yet, Snook said. The company owns several other lots and buildings within the triangle of land that marks the western entrance into the National Historic District.

Ferg Lea, planning division director for the Androscoggin Valley Council of Governments, told the task force that it is time to go after the larger donors and to make sure the public is aware that plans are to use the building, at least in part, for a public purpose.

The proposed new site of the building is a nearby lot on Main Street opposite the entrance to Pleasant Street by Bob Butters Park.

Preservation experts say the building appears to be solid except for the entrance and rear ell.

ldixon@sunjournal.com