Quimby buys old church Portland edifice sold for $255,000

PORTLAND – Roxanne Quimby’s best-known land purchases have been in northern Maine, where she has bought tens of thousands of acres to further her land conservation goals.

But Quimby, whose sale of the cosmetics business Burt’s Bees has enabled her to purchase large tracts of land, also has been engaged in a smaller preservation effort in Portland.

Quimby plans to buy the old St. Angars Church and convert the century-old structure into an artist studio, residence and gallery space. Quimby said that when the sale is closed early next month, it will be the fifth historic building she has bought in the city.

“I am a member of the Preservation Society and have a lifelong love of old buildings,” Quimby wrote in an e-mail to the newspaper. “As an artist, I enjoy preserving and enhancing them to keep them relevant and functioning in the modern world.”

Quimby is buying the Mayo Street property on the east side of the downtown peninsula from the People’s Regional Opportunity Program, a social service agency.

PROP put the building up for sale last fall with an asking price of $350,000. The best offer came from Quimby, who bid $255,000.

The property is the former St. Angars Church, which was built in 1897 and served the Danish Lutheran community around the turn of the 20th century, said Earle Shettleworth Jr., director of the Maine Historic Preservation Commission.

The building’s current tenant is the children’s theater program, A Company of Girls. Quimby has agreed to let the program stay in the building as a paying tenant until July 15, at which time it will have to move.

Quimby did not specify in the e-mail what other buildings she has purchased.

Hillary Bassett, executive director of Greater Portland Landmarks, said she believes Quimby’s other properties are in the West End and in the historic district.

“She has a strong commitment to historic preservation,” Bassett said.

Quimby is a former back-to-the-lander who, in 1984, co-founded Burt’s Bees, which grew into one of the country’s most successful natural personal-care product lines.

She sold 80 percent of Burt’s Bees to an equity company in 2003. In the years since, she has become one of the state’s biggest property owners, buying vast parcels of woodlands while advocating for the creation of a national park in northern Maine.