People call it Waterman’s. They always have. They always will. But officially, the name of the new building at the center of this island town is North Haven Arts and Enrichment at Waterman’s Community Center. It sits on the footprint of the old Waterman & Co. Inc., a general store built in the late 1800s and known not only for its supplies but for its role as the community stoop. In 1993, the store was closed and the building was eventually boarded up. As the ferry from Rockland approached the town terminal, Waterman’s was among the first sights to be seen, and it was an eyesore.

“When I was a kid, it was THE store,” said Nancy Hopkins Davisson, who grew up on North Haven and has raised her own children here, too. “At Christmastime, there were dolls and boots and decorations in the windows. It had a lot of doors, plus the energy of the ferry. So there was a criss-crossing of activity. People congregated there. But then it closed. It was empty and no one sat there any more. It was like this big ghost in town.”

No matter what you call Waterman’s now, it is no longer a civic albatross haunted by emptiness, dereliction and hopelessness. It was torn down last year and rebuilt in the architectural spirit of the original store, and now is a pert and busy activity center with a day care, EMT training courses, senior groups, Ping-Pong competitions, art exhibitions, office space and Friday night movies. It also houses the island’s first and only automated cash machine.

Waterman’s reopened for public activities in January. But another gala event will take place later this week with the inaugural community production of “Little Women,” a musical adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s coming-of-age novel. The show, which will play Thursday through Sunday, was written for Broadway by the creative team of Kim Oler (composer), Sean Hartley (writer), Allison Hubbard (lyricist) and Ann Roth (costumer), but was never produced in New York. Now it is being mounted at Waterman’s state-of-the-art theater, a proscenium stage with dressing rooms, wing space, professional lights, excellent acoustics and ample storage area.

While many of the citizens of North Haven have rallied around the reconstruction of Waterman’s, the muscle work was done by a handful of activist islanders and longtime summer residents who wanted to inject new life and restore historic meaning to the modest downtown area. In July of 2000, the group purchased the building for $225,000 with the goal of reviving not only its original appearance but its place in the community.

Although they were coached by professional fund-raisers who spend summers on the island, many of those who collected the $3 million in private money for this project – none of the money came from the town or the state – were first-timers in the fund-raising field. They traveled to New York City, to Greenwich, Conn., and to the local MBNA to ask for assistance. (MBNA in Camden made the largest single donation, at $1 million.)

“I was in a panic staying up late at night,” said Davisson, president of the executive committee. “But there was just a basic belief and faith that this would work. I thought I was just a hick from the sticks. But I knew what we did have was our authenticity. We were fighting for the longevity of our town. This is our future. People did not want a fund-raiser to come to their town. They wanted us.”

Closer to home, islanders had less to give from their bank accounts. But they donated time, labor, materials and moral support.

Some on North Haven found the project frivolous and argued that culture and arts are meaningless investments, according to several of the Waterman’s organizers. Yankee concerns of practicality were raised: Why waste time and money on something that wasn’t useful and necessary to survival? And what about the $3.5 million initiative to build a new school?

But they would have to look only as far as the island’s resident all-around arts guru for the answer.

John Wulp, who is directing “Little Women,” is a producer, director, designer and playwright who made his mark in New York City and left there more than a decade ago to live as a painter across the channel on Vinalhaven, the other island in the Fox Island archipelago 12 miles out in Penobscot Bay. In 1995, Wulp began teaching theater arts in the North Haven Community School and developed a reputation for applying his city talents and professional standards to community and student productions, which typically premiere during the school year and have revivals in the summer when the island’s year-round population of 300 increases to as many as 2,000.

Wulp has frequently employed the talents of his colleagues from the industry to enhance the shows: best-selling writers Susan Minot and John Guare; artists Eric Hopkins and the late Edward Gorey; film stars Linda Hunt and Oliver Platt; nationally recognized design consultant Roger Morgan. For “Little Women,” costumer Annie Brown, a Portland-born New Yorker, is following the original sketches of Broadway costumer Ann Roth, whose other recent projects include “Cold Mountain” and HBO’s “Angels in America.”

In 2001, shortly after the tragedies of Sept. 11, Wulp arranged for his multi-aged theater troupe from North Haven to perform “Islands,” an original musical which he co-wrote, at the New Victory Theater in Manhattan for a one-night performance on Broadway. The proceeds from that event, as with many of Wulp’s projects, went directly to rebuilding Waterman’s.

In addition to the production of “Little Women,” Wulp is planning other activities for the debut season of Waterman’s, lectures and presentations that bolster his sense of the island’s place in American history.

“The whole idea is an American community,” Wulp said of the summer events, which are still in the process of being arranged. “What America is now bothers me so much when I contrast it to what it was or at least what it could become. All you can do is try to affect the community in which you live and affect it for the good.”

Michael Quinn, an architect who, in consultation with Roger Morgan, designed the new structure, saw the same potential in the clapboard building. The goal of his company, Quinn Evans/Architects, which has offices in Michigan and Washington, D.C., is to preserve cultural heritage. He learned about the North Haven project while working on another site in Blue Hill and was instantly drawn in.

“To be able to put a theater right in the center of that village with a year-round population of 300 was a great statement about the place of culture in community life today,” said Quinn, who had never been to North Haven previous to his work at Waterman’s. “Theater is the one thing, as Wulp has proven, that can be done and shared by all age groups. I am totally in love with the idea of what it can or will mean to the community.”

In addition to Quinn’s work, the architect Henry Cobb, a partner in I.M. Pei’s firm and lead consultant on the expansion of the Portland Museum of Art, as well as a longtime summer resident here, made last-minute design tweaks that further underscore the building’s prominence downtown.

Originally, Wulp’s intention was to convert Waterman’s solely into a theater, which would allow him to move his productions out of the school gym with its bouncy acoustics, uncomfortable bleachers and inadequate dressing rooms. Others on the organizing board felt that a theater alone would be too narrow a focus to sustain the building’s place in the community.

“We can’t have just a theater and pretend it’s New York,” said Davisson. “We needed something that could run year-round, something when there’s not a major play going. You have to give John his due. His quality productions and what he is trying to do helped us raise money. But if it was just a theater? None of this would have happened. It has to be a multiuse, flexible space.”

During an academic exchange over the winter, North Haven’s school hosted 10 students from France. Without regular activities at Waterman’s, said one of the teachers at the school, there would have been very little to offer the young visitors.

“It’s all we dreamed of,” said Barney Hallowell, a member of Waterman’s executive committee and principal at the prekindergarten through 12th grade school, where the enrollment is 63 this year and a projected 59 next year. “It’s a chance for us to showcase the work of our students, and we hope in the process that it is saving taxpayers money.”

For years, Hallowell has been a leader in efforts to make the island a place of opportunity for the schoolchildren here. But he knows, as do many who grew up on this island, that boredom is an issue for young people, especially in a small town that is an hour’s ferry ride from the mainland.

“People, including myself, feel that if there isn’t something like this to provide entertainment or something for young people to do, they’ll gradually move away,” said David Cooper, the mail carrier on the island.

Cooper’s grandchildren are the 11th generation of his family on North Haven, but he understands the drive to move on. As a teenager, he, too, “grumped and groaned about getting off this rock.” Yet the only time he hasn’t lived on the island was during military service after World War II.

“I think it’s going to be part of something that will entice young people to come back and to bring their children,” especially, Cooper added, if the new school is built and low-cost housing is erected for island families. “These are things people would like to have where they live.”

“For me the whole point was the sustainability of this island for my daughter,” said Heather Shields. Shields, who is 31, also left North Haven for a while to go to school, but returned, as many native islanders do, to marry and raise a family.

“It was the place I wanted to be,” said Shields, mother of 4-year-old Eliza Brown. “There is a draw when you grow up here. It’s the community, the fabric, the closeness, the caring, the beauty, the school. It’s a good place to raise children. When I grew up here, we didn’t have anything. I want her to have some place to be. That’s what it is about for me. That’s the vision.”

Last weekend, Eliza celebrated her birthday with a screening of the film “Madeline” at Waterman’s. The hope is that in another 20 years, if Eliza decides to have children and wants to take them to the movies, she will be able to do so right in her own town.

For information about events sponsored by North Haven Arts and Enrichment at Waterman’s Community Center, call 867-2100.