AUBURN — The last time Gerald Vincent spent any significant  time in the old bottling plant bearing his name he was 5 -years old and World War II had just ended.

“It was VJ Day, and I sat in one of these second-floor windows watching the parade go by on Main Street,” he said. “It was one of the longest parades I’d ever seen.”

Vincent and some of his relatives were among the crowd on hand for the official opening of the Vincent Square Apartments in New Auburn.

Work on the 17-unit  senior housing development wrapped up this week, and tenants should begin moving in Monday or Tuesday, according to Auburn Housing Authority Executive Director Richard Whiting.

Vincent said he’s not interested in moving in, but just wanted to see what had become of the building. His father Dominique worked in the plant for a number of years.

“And I think he’d be really surprised to see what it had become,” he said.

The building first opened as the Vincent Bottling Co. in 1927, bottling soft drinks like Nehi and ginger ale for sale in Maine. It’s in the center of New Auburn, at the intersection of Mill, Main and South Main streets. 

Family member Marie Vincent-Steele said she was there for the same reason. Her grandfather Louis ran the plant, and Vincent-Steele said she had donated many of the bottles and some old photographs that decorate the community room.

There are a lot of memories, she said.

“If you went up on the third floor when they were making strawberry soda, whoa,” she said. “It was something else.”

Today, the building smells like fresh paint and carpeting. Housing authority crews began renovating the building in May, creating 17 one- and two-bedroom units, including four
handicap-accessible apartments in the mostly open-floor space.

“It was a very rugged building to begin with, just brick and masonry,” Whiting said

The project was paid for using proceeds from $2.6 million in Maine
housing tax credits, which are being sold through the Northern New
England Housing Fund. Bangor Savings Bank loaned another $2.5 million for the project.

That meant the building had to meet high energy efficiency standards, with extra insulation in all the walls and in the ceilings and floors of all the units.

“The side benefit to building such a green, energy-efficient building, is that it’s also very quiet,” Whiting said. “All of the insulation really cuts down on all the street noise. So even where they are, in the middle of New Auburn, they should be very quiet rooms.”

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Anita Fournier of Auburn tours the kitchen area of the new Vincent Square housing complex in Auburn during an open house on Wednesday. The project is the newly renovated Vincent Bottling Co. building with 17 units for seniors.

The Vincent Square senior housing complex held an open house on Wednesday. The 17-unit complex is the newly renovated Vincent Bottling Co. building in Auburn.