photo/Chad Frisbie

My first tip came in: a “raging dump” near Scratch Baking Co. in South Portland’s Willard Square neighborhood.

“What’s the address?” I asked.

“You’ll know it when you see it,” the tipster told me with a smirk. And sure enough, on the corner of Willow and Preble streets I found a two-story duplex stripped to its thin, weathered, wooden walls. The slits revealed an empty interior.

Erected in 1790, this was once a charming two-family home with two bathrooms and six bedrooms. Now most of the mud-caked windows that aren’t boarded up have cracks and holes in the glass. Doors on the first and second floors that opened onto porches back in the day now lead to precipitous drops.

The front door faces Willow Street, and the number on the house is 408, but this is actually 408 Preble. Scratch Baking Co. owner Bob Johnson explained that two summers ago the structure was rotated 90 degrees and moved from its original footing along Preble to the back of the lot, facing Willow. The house slid slowly along a track all summer long — “like a snail,” Johnson said.

The property is owned by Lisa Foster, an Englishwoman whose grandmother, Ruth Forbes, lived here for almost 50 years. Foster summered at her grandmother’s place as a teenager, and her fond memories of the neighborhood inspired her to buy the house six years ago from her mother, who inherited it in 2001. Foster paid $200,000 for the third-of-an-acre parcel that’s assessed by the city at $181,800.

Communicating via e-mail while on holiday in France, Foster said she was originally going to bulldoze the duplex, “but as our plans evolved, we decided it was an interesting historic property.”

It’s taken years to get the proper permits and make all the other arrangements necessary to start bringing the house back to life. Johnson admitted he’s felt “slightly frustrated” by the property’s worsening condition over the past decade, but he respects that Foster has stuck with the project. She’s had to navigate “the peaks and valleys of planning and zoning,” he said, but “to her credit, she didn’t knock it down.”

Leddy Houser Associates, a South Portland contractor, is doing the renovation. The asbestos shingles and siding were stripped off last spring. Beneath the old floorboards, workers discovered a copy of the defunct tabloid Boston American, dated 1916, with sports coverage of Babe Ruth. Some of the house’s pine beams are over 26 inches wide, indicating that they came from monstrous 18th century conifers no longer common in Maine.

The renovation is expected to be complete this summer, at which time 408 Preble will be 96 and 98 Willow. Once the “new Marvin windows and gorgeous red cedar siding” are installed, “you’re going to want to live there,” contractor Paul Leddy said.

With the duplex done, Foster said she’ll have the “financial footing” to start the next phase of her plan: erecting a three-story building on the spot where the house once stood. The first floor will be a 32-seat café. (“We are still looking for someone to operate that space,” Foster wrote.) She envisions art studios or office space on the second floor. The third floor will have two apartments with “stunning views” of Casco Bay.

Meanwhile, between Foster’s lot and Scratch Baking, the old Bathras Market is being revived. It’s expected to reopen this spring and offer organic produce, wines, cheeses, specialty foods and deli sandwiches. Art studios, a café, fancy cheese… Before long, the neighborhood around this “raging dump” will be all the rage.

— Chad Frisbie

About this series…

That’s My Dump! is dedicated to investigating run-down and/or abandoned properties in the Portland area. Stumped by a dump in your neighborhood? E-mail dump hunter Chad Frisbie at chad@thebollard.com, and maybe he’ll poke around that one next.