BREWER – Massachusetts entrepreneur Joe Muner admits that his decision last fall to buy the Agway store on outer Wilson Street made no sense.

“This purchase defied logic,” the Grafton, Mass., businessman said during a recent interview. “I had no business buying a store four-and-a-half hours from my house.”

Muner had already acquired the Agway store in his hometown and another in Holden, Mass., when he learned from Agway’s regional manager Steve LaJoie that the Brewer store was on the skids and on the verge of closure.

“He spoke of this store like it was an appendage. He touched a soft spot,” Muner said of the conversation with LaJoie that convinced him to take the ailing garden center under his wing.

Early last fall, Muner bought the Brewer Agway Store within days of its planned closure date, saving at least nine full-time jobs and about 50 more seasonal positions here.

According to Drew Sachs, economic development director for the city of Brewer, the Agway store and its predecessors have been part of the community’s business mix for some 70 years, since the now-defunct Eastern States Cooperative opened a farm supply store at the site near the top of Whiting Hill.

As a result of his decision, Muner now is sitting on roughly 10 acres of Brewer real estate that many expect will soon grow in value. Within a few months of Muner’s purchase, Eastern Maine Healthcare announced plans to develop a more-than-70-acre health care campus almost directly across the street.

“I didn’t know about it until I read it in the paper,” Muner said with a chuckle. The EMH campus is expected to spur development in a part of Brewer that has largely been ignored for decades.

“I’m a developer by nature. I buy assets,” said Muner. Unlike his other Agway purchases, which soon will include the Agway store in Topsham, the Brewer business came with an unusual wrinkle.

One day not long after the acquisition, Muner was having lunch at the counter of the Coach House, a Wilson Street diner popular with locals, when he overheard two men talking about the store, saying it was going to close.

“It’s a perception that a number of people still have, and they were right for a long, long time,” he said. There had been talk of the store’s closing since the beginning of last year, he said, rumors that continue to persist.

As a consequence, Muner said, “People have gotten out of the habit [of coming to Agway. That’s really what we’re fighting against. But we’re still here and we’re operating.”

As part of his plans to restore the business to profitability, Muner plans to make some changes.

“This has been kind of a flagship store for Maine,” Muner said. “I’d like to bring it back to more of a traditional garden center. We’ve restocked the store.” The former management had allowed merchandise to dwindle bare last year when it appeared the store’s days were numbered.

The new owner also plans to redo the driveways and improve signs and is working on plans to further develop the site.

Though the 44-year-old father of three is self-taught – he decided to forego a college education – Muner has more than a few business successes under his belt. He is what is called a “workout” man whose specialty is taking over “dysfunctional” businesses and bringing them back to good financial health.

Not a typical businessman in the traditional sense of the word – he says he hasn’t worn a suit in years and mostly works out of his home – Muner says he learned business from the bottom up.

Muner’s first job was cleaning bathrooms as a high school student. He says he learned some of what he knows from his grandfather, who also turned ailing businesses around, and was able to start wheeling and dealing on his own despite his young age and lack of business experience because his father was a banker.

“I have no horror stories,” he said. Some of the business ventures he has rescued from bankruptcy, often at the requests of banks, include Annie’s Book Stop Inc., a national franchise trading mostly in used paperback books, as well as a commercial gas company and a national costume jewelry chain.

The jewelry chain’s owners owed the bank about $1 million and were on the verge of foreclosure when Muner was asked to step in. He admits he raised some eyebrows when he asked to borrow $400,000 more.

He used the money to rent mall space and a fleet of cheap cash registers just in time for the holiday shopping season. The mall kiosks did such brisk trade that Muner had to hire armored cars to escort clerks during their daily bank runs.

Now he has set his sights on making the Brewer store profitable again.

“We’re about people you know and products you can trust,” he said, adding, “The greenhouse is phenomenal.” The greenhouse recently was named one of the best in the region by People, Places and Plants, a growing Maine-based gardening magazine.

Muner said he’s kept a “hands off” approach to the business, putting his faith in the local staff. Muner admits that he’s still learning about the Brewer store.