By Carol Coultas,Business Writer
Building will be the new home of restaurant, wine bar

LEWISTON – Eric Agren hopes to bring a little uptown to downtown.

The son of the well-known family that owns an appliance business, Agren plans to open a restaurant and wine bar in a historic building on Lisbon Street.

“You could say I’ve really bought into the revitalizing the downtown,” Agren said.

The project has only just begun, so Agren is hesitant to share too many details. But he and his wife, Carrie, plan to open a 50-seat restaurant featuring American contemporary fare and a 50-seat wine bar in the old Lyseum Hall building.

“The building is fantastic,” said Agren of the hall, built in 1855. The couple bought it several months ago.

They plan to create the restaurant and wine bar on the first floor and renovate the second floor into their own apartment. The third and fourth floors might be renovated into other apartments sometime down the road.

But the first priority is getting the restaurant, dubbed “Fuel,” and the wine bar, named “Press,” off the ground. Agren hopes to be open within a year or so.

He also plans to be the restaurant’s chef, a profession he honed at an upscale restaurant in Chicago. Agren learned his way around a kitchen first working in his family’s appliance store on Minot Avenue, then became a consultant for the appliance industry and settled in Chicago.

But he missed home, and returned with his dream of opening his own restaurant. He looked extensively for the right place before finding the Lyseum Hall at 49 Lisbon St.

The building housed Loring Short & Harmon office supplies for many years.