Piece Of History Discovered At Well Known Central Maine Store

Over the last few weeks, we have been talking a lot about how the old Damon's Beverage location in Augusta would be closing its doors to make the move to their brand new, much larger, building.  Their last day in the old store will be Sunday, July 10th.  The hope is that they will be able to open in the new location the last week of July.

In anticipation of that move, which will require the destruction of the old building to create a much larger parking lot, cleanup has already been started on the old building.

While poking inside the walls of the current building, workers made an interesting discovery.  They found a piece of wood that seems to tell part of the story of the building.

Before it was Damon's Beverage, the Bangor Street store was Lou's Beverage.  Until it was sold in 2009, the business was owned and operated by Lou Boucher and his family.  However, this was not the first business that Lou operated at this location.

Back in 1982, there were two business at that location.  Lou owned a small store (we hear it was a gas station, too) and a small restaurant called Doc's Lunch.  As the story goes, not wanting to continue to operate two businesses, Lou decided chose a day to test the businesses.  Whichever business did better would be kept.  Clearly, the store did better that day.

After the decision was made, they reportedly built a connector between the two buildings, which is why the Damon's building is a rectangle.  They also did some renovations.

Part of those renovations, it appears, was turning the old restaurant dining room into a wine room for the beverage store.  Within the walls of that wine room, workers found the below piece of board.  The board, now framed, notes that construction on that room was started on March 1st of 1982.

In a ceremony in the new Damon's Beverage building on Saturday, Lou was presented with the famed piece of board.  In the follow photo are (left to right): Donald Damon, Missi Brochu, Lou Boucher, Kirk Cooper, and Linda Levesque.

We look forward to the opening of the new Damon's building later this month.  In the meantime, you can stop by their locations in Waterville, Skowhegan, and Bangor.