photo/Sarah Bouchard

You know the phrase, “If these walls could talk…” Well, what if entire buildings could speak? My guess is that, like people, they’d do a fair amount of gossiping.

“Have you seen Vera? Poor thing, she lost another shingle in the storm last night and her porch is really starting to sag.”

The buildings within sight of 1 India St. would be making similar remarks about this forlorn structure fronting acres of fenced-in rubble and situated next to a squat, concrete, sewage-treatment facility.

Located at the corner of India, Commercial and Thames streets, it’s the last remaining piece of what was once one of the grandest edifices in Maine: Grand Trunk Station. Built in 1903 and (mostly) demolished in 1966 to make way for a parking lot, the station was a transfer point for steamship and rail passengers. Its high ceilings, tall clock tower and gently sloping cupolas made it quite a sight to behold.

The blocky, three-story building left standing, which formerly housed steamship offices, gives no hint of this area’s former glory. And in the five or six years since its been vacant, things have only gotten worse.

“Poor thing, another window’s been smashed.”

“I know, and have you seen how rusty her metal fire escape door is getting? And the wooden trim above the windows — the paint is faded and peeling something terrible!”

Squatters broke into the building a few years ago, and now there are signs on the doors announcing this is private property and threatening prosecution. Nice touch.

What the hell happened here? In a nutshell, speculation, followed by recession, followed by litigation that’s apparently dragged on for nearly four years now. This building was supposed to be part of Riverwalk, a $100 million project that was planned to include 122 luxury condos, offices, retail space, a restaurant, and a parking garage nearby across Fore Street.

The garage was built as part of an agreement with the city, which gave the developers a $5 million tax break to facilitate its construction. But the financing got shaky even before it was finished (make that mostly finished; yet another vacant lot, this one between the garage and India Street, was also supposed to be developed). The original developers, Shipyard Brewing Company president Fred Forsely and his longtime pal Drew Swenson, a real estate guy, partnered with a development company in Boston called Intercontinental Real Estate Corp. in a bid to keep the project afloat. Obviously, it sank. Then the lawyers swarmed.

The last time I drove up to the Business and Consumer Court in West Bath to look at the case, which was probably 2008, the file was already thick with all sorts of he said/he said accusations and denials. Forsely said in March that he can’t comment on the building due to ongoing litigation. Swenson didn’t return a call seeking comment, and neither did Intercontinental, which owns one of the two units in the property.

The other unit belongs to Gorham Savings Bank, which inherited it when the bank acquired Turner Barker Insurance, a former office tenant there. The good folks at Gorham (Bollard Publishing’s bank) also declined to comment.

One former tenant said the building was in rough shape even before it was vacated. The pointing between the bricks was so porous that when the wind blew, papers on a conference table inside would blow off the table. The cost of re-pointing the historic structure was said to be a seven-figure sum.

Hugh Nazor of the India Street Neighborhood Association said his group has been more focused on other developments in the area lately, like the second phase of the project planned for the former Jordan’s Meats site. The association was able to get the city to persuade Intercontinental to remove the green screening it had put on the chain-link fence around its vacant acres, “so it doesn’t have the effect of saying to all the people who come off the cruise boats, ‘Go away, this part of the city is walled off,’” Nazor said.

“There’s been some clean up in the lot, but no further effort for beautification,” said Nazor. “Their excuse is they’ll finish when there’s a customer [for the property]. The way things are now, there’s not likely to be a customer.”

— Chris Busby