LEWISTON – VIP Auto Discount Center will move its outer Lisbon Street store a half-mile down the road and into the downtown next April.

The Lewiston-based auto parts retailer and service center will build its flagship store on 2 acres at the front of the city’s southern gateway, across from the Oxford Networks headquarters and behind The Public Theatre.

Plans also call for building a 6,000-square-foot restaurant or small retail store behind the theater.

City officials and company managers said the project is another positive step in the revitalization of lower Lisbon Street.

“Five months ago, we announced the first part of our efforts to redevelop this southern gateway,” City Administrator Jim Bennett said. The city, Oxford Networks and Northeast Bank partnered to redevelop a block of building surrounded by Lisbon, Canal and Maple streets. Bennett said those projects made this one possible.

“We have been trying to find a buyer for this parcel for months,” Bennett said Monday. “It wasn’t until we announced the Oxford Networks plan that it happened. So we’d all like to say, this is what you can expect from the kind of investment we’ve made downtown.”

The company plans to demolish the gray building along Lisbon Street. The larger building, once a Maine Department of Motor Vehicles office, will be redeveloped for the store. The interior has already been gutted, according to VIP President and CEO John Quirk.

“We are on track for an April 1st opening,” Quirk said. “We’re moving very quickly on it, and we’ve already gotten a lot of the work on the site completed.”

The facility will be about 18,000 square feet, Quirk said. It will have room for 12 service bays and 9,000 feet of retail space. There will be only two doors for cars into the service area, an entrance on the north side and an exit on the south side, onto Adams Avenue.

Greg Mitchell, assistant city administrator, said the 45-foot-wide space between the building and Lisbon Street will be landscaped.

“That landscaping is going to have a huge impact on the look of the building,” Mitchell said. “It’s going to make it look much nicer than it does currently.”

The building will have 100 parking spaces, which will be shared with a building backing up The Public Theatre. Quirk said he hopes to lease that space to a retail store or a restaurant.

Restaurant traffic

Real estate broker Dan Hourihan said he is negotiating with a restaurant to fill the 6,000-square-foot building planned for that site.

“The city is developing quite an economic base downtown,” Hourihan said. “The development projects they’ve announced and the traffic that Lisbon Street normally sees, we think it’s a natural site for a restaurant or a retail store.”

The city and developer Stanley Sklar of the Franklin Property Trust and businesses Oxford Networks and Northeast Bank are redeveloping the block of buildings surrounded by Lisbon, Maple and Canal streets. Plans call for three new office buildings, new sidewalks, buried utilities and a parking garage on the block.

The buildings on either side of the food bank warehouse were torn down last summer and work has started on the Oxford Networks office building. Oxford Networks also built a switching station for a fiber-optic cable network just north of the site and installed a 28-foot-wide satellite dish on top of the Pontiac Building.

Portland-based business school Andover College announced its plans to move into the area two weeks ago. The college will take over the former Good Shepherd Food-Bank warehouse on Lisbon Street, next to the Oxford Networks.

staylor@sunjournal.com

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