AUGUSTA — After a two-decade search, Kennebec County officials have finally found a permanent home for the Registry of Deeds.
County officials closed on the purchase of 77 Winthrop St. on Thursday, and the office that keeps records of deeds and plans for Kennebec County properties dating to the 1700s will move into its new home in June.
“It’s actually going to save us money,” Kennebec County Administrator Robert Devlin said Thursday.
The sale price was $575,000, and the county paid in cash thanks to capital improvement funds that had been identified for a new building.
“Now that means the taxpayers will be paying no interest,” said Beverly Bustin-Hatheway, Kennebec County Register of Deeds.
At 8,000 square feet, the building nearly doubles the space the registry currently occupies, and it will accommodate appropriate storage of the county’s historic maps and documents.
The registry has been working on preserving the older maps and documents, Bustin-Hatheway said. After the move to Winthrop Street, she plans to display the copies on the wall, and there will be ample space to store the originals in archival boxes.
While most people can research deeds online, she said, the historic documents still draw researchers.
“This really is an ideal opportunity to get that building,” she said.
The Registry of Deeds has been renting space on the second floor of One Weston Center at an annual cost of $70,000. It outgrew its space on the ground floor of the Kennebec County Courthouse.
Devlin said the county’s auditors and others had suggested the county would be better off investing money in property rather than paying a lease. They considered the former Pomerleau building on State Street, the former Cony High School building and the former YMCA among others. They also had plans drawn up to build an office on a sliver of property next to the County Government Center, but that project didn’t get off the ground.
Until recently, the apparent new home for the Registry of Deeds was going to be the former Augusta District Court building on State Street, left vacant when the court’s operations moved north to the Capital Judicial Center.
“We actually had a resolve with the Legislature,” Devlin said. The 2015 document gave county officials the first option on the property for six months before it was listed with private real estate brokers.
But last fall, the deal fell through.
Not long after, both Devlin and Bustin-Hatheway saw a real estate listing for the building that houses the Augusta office of the law firm Pierce Atwood at 77 Winthrop St.
“It’s in pristine condition, and it had a significantly lower price than the state wanted for the district court building,” he said.
Jessica Lowell can be contacted at 621-5632 or at:
jlowell@centralmaine.com
Twitter: @JLowellKJ
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