WINDHAM – About a month after the landmark North Windham restaurant Charlie Beiggs closed its doors, a new restaurateur, with deep local connections, is gutting, repainting and cleaning every square inch of the former Beiggs restaurant in preparation for an early April opening of a new steakhouse.

Standish resident Dana Mains, owner of the Windham Butcher Shop located on Varney Mill Road and Windham Butcher Shop Trucking on Falmouth Road, is excited about his new venture, Rustler’s Steak House, which is the longtime butcher’s first foray into the restaurant business.

Mains said he expects to hire 25 to 30 employees and will rely on about a dozen previous Charlie Beiggs employees to bring their expertise of the operation to the new venture. Well-known past employees – executive chef Stewart Purinton and bartender/manager Julie Kesson – will help with the day-to-day management.

“I am so excited to have a steakhouse in this area,” Kesson said while taking a break from painting the upstairs dining room on Monday. Purinton added, “I’m pretty happy to have them open here as well.”

Mains, who will continue to run his two other businesses and process the beef used in the restaurant himself, said he will use local beef, which he says, will help keep prices to a minimum while ensuring top quality. The meat will come from Peppermint Fields in Fryeburg, Sherman Farms in Conway, N.H. and Windham-based Windy Hill Farm on River Road.

“Even more than the price, I’m going to have more control over the quality,” Mains said. “When a lot of restaurants buy a box of beef, there might be six pieces in there, five are beautiful but that other one is not, but they still have to use it. But if I don’t have something up to standard, I’ll grind it up into hamburg. And we’re going to be very, very fussy about our quality and consistency.”

Mains and his girlfriend, Tracy Flint, have been interested in opening a restaurant for seven to eight years now and were originally targeting the western side of Sebago Lake, which is mostly devoid of full-scale dining options.

“It would be a beautiful opportunity up there, but we frequently stopped into Charlie Beiggs to eat and when we started to hear it may be closing, our wheels started turning faster,” Mains said. “We have another home up in Jackman and we were up there for a weekend and talking and we said, ‘Let’s do it.'”

Rustler’s Steak House has no connection to the chain that was taken over by Sizzler Steakhouse in the mid-1980s. Flint said the couple brainstormed possible names and came up with Rustler’s.

“We were trying to find a Midwestern name and we liked the word ‘Rustler,'” she said.

In 1994, Mains bought the Windham Butcher Shop and has grown it into the largest USDA-approved slaughterhouse in Maine. Mains comes from a long line of butchers. His son, Dana Mains Jr., also works with him, “and he makes the sixth generation of butchers.” Mains’ 12-year-old grandson, Cody Mains, “is also pretty good with a knife” and helps out when he can.

The butcher shop mainly processes beef for local farmers. Sherman Farms and Windy Hill Farms on River Road make up the shop’s two largest customers, and Mains plans to expand those relationships, a relationship that Windy Hill’s Ron Winship Sr. eagerly anticipates.

Winship, who maintains a herd of about 35 grass-fed Black Angus cattle on his 120-acre farm near the Westbrook line, is hopeful a local restaurant selling his beef will boost sales.

“It’s always good to have more business,” Winship said. “If people like it in the restaurant, they can come into our market here on River Road and buy it. Hopefully it’ll work out well for everybody.”

Winship, who’s taken his cattle to Mains for the last 15 years, also owns the Windy Hill Farm Market, which sells beef and other local products year-round. Winship expects to sell vegetables grown on the farm to Mains for use in the restaurant, as well.

The new restaurant is a “positive” for North Windham business prospects, said Barbara Clark, executive director of the Sebago Lakes Region Chamber of Commerce.

“We’re glad to hear the economic news,” Clark said. “A local steakhouse is something we haven’t had, and will help with the diversity of restaurants, especially for tourists who are looking for local restaurants rather than chains. I think that’s really important and will be a real benefit.”

And Tom Bartell, Windham’s economic development director, is likewise excited about the new business coming to town.

“It is always a pleasure to see local entrepreneurs take that step into putting their dreams into action and start that business,” Bartell said Tuesday. “Anytime a Windham business, as with the new Rustler’s Steak House in North Windham, uses locally produced ingredients, more of the economic benefits of that new business stay in the local area to help spur further economic activity. I am looking forward to enjoying a great meal, knowing that most of the food has been grown locally.”

Rustler’s