Look for a meeting this fall to explore how downtown Wiscasset might once again become a neighborhood where people can buy their groceries.

Local business owner Lucia Droby and Lincoln County Regional Planning Commission’s economic and community development director Mary Ellen Barnes said they have been hearing for years that people want to be able to get groceries in the village, and give the downtown another draw for visitors.

By the end of this year’s series of art walks that Droby again helped organize, she said she was hearing the groceries idea so much that she felt something needed to be done to take the conversation further.

“It really became clear that there was this theme running through the village. There was just this really under-the-surface interest to try to bring groceries into the village, and it kept coming up over and over again.

“So why not take it to the next step, to pull people together to talk about it and see if anything would come of the idea,” Droby, owner of Carriage House Gardens on Pleasant Street, said.

Barnes has offered to facilitate the meeting. In an email Oct. 1, Droby writes: “As with the early Wiscasset Art Walk planning, we’ll come together to share and to listen (to) ideas, suggestions, and models.  All ideas welcome, all possibilities entertained. Please pass the word and let friends and neighbors know this is coming up. It could be an interesting conversation or it could become a really big community-wide project!”

Alna businessman and restoration expert Les Fossel said he may be willing to help make a project happen, involving a local foods market and a pharmacy, which he described as another glaring need.

In telephone interviews and an email, Fossel confirmed that one of his businesses, Fossel Preservation Partners, has been in contact with Coastal Enterprises (CEI) and The First Bank about a potential project involving one or more of the Water Street buildings CEI has for sale as it moves to Brunswick.

“We tentatively planned ... to tour all the buildings to see the possibilities of both a local food market in the Haggett Building and a pharmacy ... somewhere in (the) complex,” Fossel writes in an Oct. 2 email. “We are thinking that what we are doing with the Hathorn Building in Richmond applies to these buildings in Wiscasset.”

The Haggett building is a former garage.

Fossel said he was friends with Harry Haggett, and bought a truck from the garage 30 years ago.

Fossel explained that the Richmond project is reusing a historic building for apartments and commercial use. He anticipated that his business would buy the Richmond property later in the week of Oct. 5. That project has been keeping him busy, but would not preclude him from having a role in a Wiscasset project, he said.

“If that means buying it, that’s fine, as long as I can make the numbers work and it benefits the community,” he said about a Wiscasset project. He would need to work with lenders and partners on the project to avoid it becoming a white elephant for Wiscasset, he said.

Droby’s email notes the former garage as a site that has come up, but she and Barnes later said that they want to hear all ideas people have, on a location and everything else.

“That’s really the brilliance of this movement, approaching it with an open mind,” Droby said.

At this point, the prospect of a grocery store or local foods market is really more a germ of an idea than an idea, Barnes said. She and Droby emphasized that they have no plans in motion, other than to have the meeting. They expect to gather ideas and possible topics to research such as the feasibility of such a business, they said.

Factors to consider in creating a business model would include demographics and whether the business would conflict with any existing ones, Barnes said.

The meeting was not yet scheduled. Barnes has been working on the LCRPC office’s move into a Route 1 building that Lincoln County just bought. She hopes to be able to set the meeting for early November.

Paul Mrozinski won’t be there. He’ll be away, but is very interested in seeing what develops. The owner of Marston House at the corner of Main and Middle streets said people should be able to walk, not have to drive, to get a head of lettuce.

The closing of Pendleton’s Market nearly two decades ago left a hole in the village, Mrozinski said.

“It’s a hole that needs to be filled.”