The Wiscasset couple looking to build a family entertainment complex on Route 27 is looking for investors. Vincent Thibeault said he and wife Sally Thibeault have verbal commitments from two locals he declined to name, toward a goal of up to $820,000 to leverage the rest of the project’s $5.4 million cost.

He and his wife are strictly confident the project will happen, Thibeault said.

Seeking investors should be taken as a positive sign, he said. “Sally and I have taken all of the necessary steps to progress forward.  Met with all of the right folks including local and state officials, industry experts, attorneys, etc.  Because we have surrounded ourselves with the right people, we are positioned well to succeed and make this project a reality.”

Both of the verbal commitments are for small investments, one short-term and the other long-term, with the person wanting to be a part-owner, Thibeault said in a phone interview Monday night.

A press release Thibeault sent the Wiscasset Newspaper announces plans to seek “a limited consortium of local partners” for capital and equity investment. If they aren’t all Wiscasset-area, the hope would be to find others in the central Maine and Midcoast regions, he said.

Keeping the consortium as local as possible would aid in the community element he and his wife want the center to have, such as through after-school programs and sports camps that could help boost participation in school baseball and other sports, Thibeault said.

In the interview, the release and an email exchange, he gave an update on plans for the project eyed for a parcel opposite Wiscasset Middle High School. A $17,000, market feasibility study the couple hired out to Amusement Entertainment Management determined that the complex would bring more than 112,000 people a year to town, according to Thibeault.

He said the two verbal commitments and other early prospects have stemmed from networking, but now the couple is casting the net wider, going public with their pursuit of investors.

The Bath Iron Works employee said, in the year since the couple first approached Wiscasset’s planning board, they have learned a lot about what it will take to build the complex with bowling, miniature golf, batting cages, gaming, an athletic field, go carts and bumper cars, a rope course, bistro, a lit winter ice-skating trail through the woods and other features over three phases of the project.

Asked if they would have preferred to be the complex’s sole owners, he said: “I believe any entrepreneur would prefer to be sole owner of a business they worked very hard to develop. We also recognize the limitations and obstacles accompanying a project of this scope and magnitude.”

He estimates needing up to 15 percent on the project’s costs covered before they could get loans from one or more banks and the federal government, through the Small Business Administration or U.S. Department of Agriculture.

When the Indian Road resident drives past the site four or five times a week, he looks to the trees and pictures a V & S Factory sign and a driveway to a huge, beautiful complex. “I can’t help it,” Thibeault said.

Not having all the answers as they work to see it through has been the toughest part of the process, he wrote in response to an email question.

“However it has also been a good thing as it has required us to conduct a lot (of) additional research on topics we have not had a great deal of knowledge or experience with. This has contributed to us making better informed decisions throughout the process.”