BATH

Jennifer Greene is a woman with a mission, and she wastes no time.

“I got permission to do the job on Tuesday,” she said, “and it starts Friday.”

Greene purchased the Winnegance Store, located on High Street at the Phippsburg town line.

Though she lives and works in Santa Cruz, California, she said the old building called to her.

“The stars aligned in just the right way at the right time,” she said. “There was a sign in front of the store when I was here, saying, ‘For sale, $35,000 or best offer.’ So I put in an offer.”

She didn’t get it, because another buyer had already made an offer that was accepted. So Greene’s daughter, Joanna Wade, worked with the new owner to purchase the property. “It was considerably more than $35,000,” Greene said. “But I was determined.”

Maine Preservation — a statewide historic conservation group — placed Winnegance Store on its list of Maine’s most endangered historic properties in Maine in 2013.

Its general-store folksy quality, even in its later years, was remembered by old-timers, newcomers, fishermen buying sandwiches and bait, and tourists passing through on their way to Popham Beach.

It needs a lot of work before it will be ready for prime time. Greene said she was inspired by a story on the property’s endangered status that appeared in The Times Record a month ago.

On Oct. 1, the Planning Board approved Greene’s site plan and forwarded Greene’s request for zoning changes so the store could be operated as a general store and café.

Winnegance Store will be on the agenda at the Oct. 16 and Nov. 6 City Council meetings.

But given the general sentiment, Greene thinks she’ll probably get the zoning changes she needs to open the building as a business.

Historians are thrilled, because Greene is planning to restore the old building to look and feel like it did in local memory. “I’m aiming for a 1902 ‘feel’,” Greene said.

Greene had spent a good number of weeks working with neighbors to purchase enough land for a real driveway and parking lot, including a handicap-accessible spot.

She’ll be adding a ramp, an Americans with Disabilities Act-compliant rest room inside, and a 10-foot wide covered front porch.

She’s also stripped the interior down to the beadboard walls, removed the suspended ceiling, taken out the trappings of Winnegance’s later commercial years — a whole wall of beer and soda coolers — and stripped the walls of many colors of paint.

The original wood floor probably won’t be able to be salvaged — it and the joists beneath it are too damaged — but Greene is determined to replace it with a floor that works with the 1902 feel.

The first and most important correction will be putting in a new foundation.

The building was struck by a car in 2008. Although the damage done was minimal at the time, it revealed significant problems with the foundation.

The building is leaning, and when Greene removed the crumbling chimneys and the attached shed, it shifted alarmingly.

“That was a little creepy,” she said.

So the building superstructure will begin to be moved to the field next door beginning today (it should be completely moved by Friday), while the new foundation is poured and new timbers put into place.

Greene suspects that process will be fairly “icky.”

“I went down there and took a look around,” she said. “There were broken pieces of foundation, just lying where they fell, like fallen soldiers. There was a little rot, too.”

She’s not sure what might be found as the work commences, but she’s ready for it. The whole foundation will be removed and replaced, and should be done by the end of October.

On one side, plans call for the building to be cut a bit so a stepped foundation can be put in place. On the other side, earth will be graded away from the foundation.

Otherwise, people would have to walk up 7 feet of stairs just to get into the store. “That would have been a little repelling,” she said. “Nobody wants to go to a store or a café and have to walk up almost a whole story before you can get to the front door. That’s a little harder than I want people to have to work.”

She’s also moving the building back on the lot by 9 feet. Right now, part of it is on city land.

She’ll do that by shortening the shed. “But it will give us room for a porch where people can sit outside, on benches or maybe at tables,” she said. “That was my one non-historical wish.”

As she was stripping four generations of paint from the walls and doors, getting rid of coolers and removing dropped ceilings, she found the original door.

“It has a transom,” she said dreamily.

That door will be the new main entrance. She was also impressed by the huge double hung windows, which will be removed to be restored soon. And there were some wooden columns, now stripped down, that were quite lovely.

Greene won’t run the store and café.

“I’m just the landlady,” she said.

She said she’d rather invest in Bath than in the stock market.

“Everyone I talk to remembers Winnegance so fondly,” she said. “When I talk to them, I hear warmth and nostalgia.”

She is already chatting with a young couple who would love to live at Winnegance and run a general store and café.

“I told them they would have to have a penny candy counter,” she laughed. “But they agreed to it immediately.”

If it works out, the young couple would live upstairs. “But I’ll have to do something with the kitchen in the apartment first,” she said.

“I see this as a good deed that’s also a lot of fun,” she said. “I have a knack for it. And I think this would be a great way to fund my retirement.”

ghamilton@timesrecord.com