There’s still time for you to rent and rehabilitate a historic Down East home.
The National Park Service has been looking for a qualified bidder to rehabilitate the McGlashan-Nickerson House in Calais since 2019, but to date no proposals have been accepted, according to Sean Bonnage, a spokesperson for Acadia National Park.
The 5,400-square-foot house was once used by the historic site as an administrative building until 2014, when a new, modern visitor center was built. Since then, the National Park Service has had no use for the building.
The park service considered demolishing the property, but abandoned that plan after the public objected. Instead, the park service decided to give people the chance to lease the building for up to 60 years, a condition of which is to rehabilitate and preserve the structure.
In 2019, the park service said it had spent $100,000 on the building’s upkeep and predicted it would cost more than $1 million to adequately preserve and rehab the structure. It has an assessed value of $198,400, including land and the building, according to the Calais assessor’s office.
The original deadline to submit a proposal was Dec. 10, 2019, but Bonnage said Monday that has been extended through the end of 2022. Proposals can be submitted to the regional National Park Service office in Philadelphia.
The house was one of seven places statewide that the nonprofit group Maine Preservation listed as the “most endangered” of 2018. The house was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1990.
The Italianate-style house was built in 1883 for Scottish immigrant George McGlashan, who helped establish the Maine Red Granite Co. in Calais, and later sold to Samuel Nickerson in 1887 after McGlashan died, according to Maine Preservation.
The park service site that abuts the residential property preserves St. Croix Island, which lies in the St. Croix River between Maine and the Canadian province of New Brunswick and was where French immigrants tried but failed to establish a colony in 1604-1605. Direct access to the island is not allowed, but the park service has an interpretive center and trail next to Route 1 that leads to an overlook where the island can be viewed from the river’s shore.
