LEWISTON — After 71 years in Lewiston’s downtown, H. Fortier & Sons Locksmith is moving out.

“We’ve outgrown the space,” said Maurice “Mo” Robichaud, who has spent a 34-year career in the little Chestnut Street basement shop with its to-the-ceiling key racks and elbow-to-elbow work spaces.

However, he is spending the next few weeks spreading out.

On Aug. 27, he plans to open his new shop at 1220 Lisbon St. The space is bright and open, with enough room to consolidate all his office and storage space under one roof.

It’s ideal, Robichaud said. And it has been a long time coming.

He first planned to ease the squeeze five years ago, even buying a building on Lincoln Street where he hoped to relocate. It proved too small. And when he looked at expanding the building, the cost was prohibitive.

“Our lease (on Chestnut Street) was coming up,” Robichaud said. “I said, ‘Well, let’s stay here another five years and see what happens.’ “

Finally, as the current lease neared an end, Robichaud looked at the former Champion Glass building with its truck bays, storage space and office areas.

It fit. The company will occupy 7,000-square feet.

“If we’re going to keep up with the change of times — the electronic access control, the gun safes — we need to be able display them,” he said. The Chestnut Street shop never had the room. “People like to touch and feel and look. It’s hard to do it out of a small location like that.”

The old shop worked well for much of its life, though.

H. Fortier & Sons Locksmith’s began on Spruce Street in 1921 and moved to Chestnut two decades later, when gas was 12 cents per gallon and the United States had not entered World War II.

Robichaud heard the stories of the old days, when the shop sold fishing supplies and live bait, repaired typewriters, camp stoves and baby carriages.

People could even rent rifles and bullets, he said. For every unused bullet that was returned, the shop returned a 50-cent deposit to the customer, he said.

By the time Robichaud went to work there in 1975, locks, keys and safes were the main business.

“It was fun. It was good. It did well,” he said. But the city was different, and so were shoppers’ habits. “There was much more walk-in traffic back then.”

The era has sentimental value for Robichaud.

“It’s where I learned the trade,” he said. “It’s where I was mentored by Mr. Fortier. We created a great friendship.”

In 1988, Robichaud bought the business. His wife, Lucille, spent years there. His daughter, Carrie Hinkley, began when she was 15. Eighteen years later, she still works with her dad.

The business has six full-time employees and five part-timers. The work takes them across Maine. One benefit of the new location on outer Lisbon Street will be its quick access to the Maine Turnpike, he said.

Plans call for the Chestnut Street location to remain open until Friday, Aug. 24. The new shop will open on the following Monday.

Customers should expect traditional service when they stop in, Robichaud said.

“We want to provide people with the same type of service,” he said. “From making the little old skeleton key to selling a big safe, a vault door or an access control.”

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