BRIDGTON – Nothing is left of the old Magic Lantern Theater, including the soils that for many years sagged under the building’s weight.

The building’s owners have completed preparing the ground for the new theater. Construction will begin in about two weeks, Tom Watkins, the project manager said Thursday.

“Some areas were 18 feet deep of poor soils,” Watkins said. “We filled it with riprap.”

He said that workers also discovered the charred remains of a former building that had burned on the site, as well as an old horse manure pile that had been preserved underground.

“It was still kind of fresh after all these decades,” Watkins said.

DownEast Inc., owned by the Howell family of Bridgton, reopened the 76-year-old theater in 1990 after it had been closed for two years. They shut the popular venue last fall.

In 1929 when the downtown theater was built, no one bothered to do soil preparation or test the dirt before constructing the heavy cinder block building. Over the years the Magic Lantern sunk as much as 20 inches on 20 feet to 30 feet of peat and other organic material.

The new venue will cost about $1.5 million, not including the cost of seats and gear, Watkins said. It will also have four theaters instead of two, including a flat-floor cabaret room with couches, tables and chairs, where people can eat and drink.

At this year’s town meeting, residents voted to grant the theater a tax exemption, which will save it around $30,000 a year for the next 20 years, according to Watkins. The new theater, although it will be larger, will be taxed on the previous one’s value.

The old face of the Magic Lantern, which was built in an elegant Victorian style, will not be replicated. Instead, Watkins said, the Howells will build a theater in the cedar style of their DownEast building.

But inside the theater will look glitzy and old-fashioned, Watkins promised.