BRUNSWICK

Becky Marcos and Wayne Bartlett are renovating a former storefront on Harpswell Road with intentions to reopen Sept. 8 as the Lighthouse Deli and Variety.

The previous business was called Brunswick Deli.

Bartlett also owns Rocky Hill Landscaping on River Road. Marcos recently moved from Massachusetts but has extensive family throughout Brunswick and Topsham.

Marcos said she and Bartlett have considered the store since its previous proprietors went out of business two months ago. When the pair decided to acquire the space and reopen, it largely was because of the location’s potential to serve a wider clientele, she said.

They are planning big changes: some substantive and others purely aesthetic. Among them is a window-side coffee and ice cream bar, a broader menu, wider selection of groceries and supplies, and access to adjacent Bowdoin College’s campus dining card system.

“That way Bowdoin students can come here and buy food or dinner using their college (dining) plan,” Marcos said.

They also plan a local version of a mural that was removed — to great hue and cry — from the state Department of Labor at Gov. Paul LePage’s orders.

The mural was a visual depiction of the evolution of Maine workers, but the governor decried it as biased against employers and had it taken down.

Marcos’s aunt, Anne Haley, will paint a rendition of the mural as a border above the coolers on the wall opposite the store’s main entrance.

“It’ll just be on that wall to start with,” Marcos said, “and if we have a good first year, maybe we’ll extend it to another wall.”

More recently accustomed to the nightmarish commute along Interstate 495 in Massachusetts, Marcos — who worked in the finance and billing offices at Phillips Andover Academy — said living within a few blocks of her workplace is the best part of the deal.

jtleonard@timesrecord.com