NORWAY — Pigeon droppings cover the wooden floorboards of the Odd Fellows Hall on Main Street. The large glass and wooden front doors of the three-story, brick building are locked.

Town officials and others interested in revitalizing the Downtown Historic District say their efforts are stymied by the lack of communication from the rarely-seen owner of the building, Sam Patel.

“The committee continues to be frustrated by the lack of communication with the owner, and because it is a key property and now creates a chasm between upper and lower Main Street,” Andrea Burns, chairwoman of the Economic Growth and Support Committee and president of Norway Downtown.

The Odd Fellows Hall at 380 Main St. is next to the Norway Opera House, the anchor of the Downtown Historic District, and The Crane Block, an unoccupied 19th century professional building.

In 2013, Maine Preservation added the Odd Fellows Hall to its 16th annual list of Maine’s Most Endangered Historic Resources.

With the resurgence of the Norway Opera House’s first floor retail space, the vacancy of the Odd Fellows Hall and other nearby buildings has created a gap in the town’s attempt to create a cohesive downtown shopping neighborhood.

No one seems to know what its current owner will do with it, not even Patel.

“When I decide what the plan is I’ll let you know,” Patel told the Advertiser Democrat in a recent telephone interview. The words mimicked his response to the same question three years ago when he purchased the building.

Patel, a retailer in southern Maine who owns Sam’s Smoke & Novelties in Windham and a similar retail store at Five Corners on Route 26 in Poland, bought the shell of a building under the business name of Jasim LLC in December 2012 from TD Bank.

Within a year, holes appeared in its upper two-floor windows and posed a hazard to pedestrians.

Code Enforcement Officer Joelle Corey-Whitman threatened to take Patel to court, after sending three letters and emails that went unheeded. She was about to declare it a nuisance and dangerous building when Patel finally boarded the windows.

He has paid a total of $6,489.86 in taxes over the past three years, according to Deputy Tax Collector and Town Clerk Shirley Boyce.

Revitalization of the Odd Fellows Hall has not been an easy task after a century of ownership by the trustees of Norway Lodge Number 16. The Lodge brought the lot after the Great Fire of 1894 and built the first floor in 1894 and the two top floors in 1911. For many years it was a hub of activity with retail stores, the district court, a jail and businesses.

By 2001, the Norway Lodge was down to 46 members who agreed to sell the building to Western Maine Development for $60,000. Western Maine Development, the real estate arm of Enterprise Maine, a group of the community-based, nonprofit organization dedicated to creating economic opportunity in western Maine.

In 2002, The Growth Council of Oxford Hills bought the building, but by 2006 abandoned its plans to refurbish it and fill it with tenants. It had a $500,000 loan and had invested another $135,000 in removing hazardous wiring and other items. Believing it needed another $1.5 million to complete the job, it put the building on the market.

Several potential buyers backed out before Dawn and Harvey Solomon of New Horizons Capital Investment purchased the property in 2008 for $63,500. Harvey Solomon told town officials they planned to renovate the building and reopen storefronts on the first floor.

Although the couple secured the back wall and cleared the interior of debris, renovation stopped unexpectedly in 2010 just before Dawn Solomon was arrested and charged with bilking the state’s MaineCare system out of more than $4 million. Dawn Solomon remains in probation in Florida and Harvey Solomon, who wasn’t charged, left the state of Maine.

In 2011, TD Bank bought the hall at a foreclosure auction for $89,000.

A study of the Odd Fellows Hall by Resurgence Engineering and Preservation Inc. of Portland indicated it would take more than $800,000 to fully renovate the building.

Finally, Patel reached an agreement with TD Bank to purchase the building.

Burns said she and the committee have had little communication with Patel.

Barbara Deschenes of The Maine Real Estate Network said she has been allowed to show the building to prospective buyers several times but she has never met the owner and has no idea if he really wants to sell it.

Some say they have seen Patel go in and out of the building on occasion, but local officials and residents interested in sparking the economic redevelopment of downtown say they are disappointed in the inability to get something going on the building.

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