LEWISTON — A plan to relocate the Internal Revenue Service office from Main Street to Lisbon Street is a victim of federal budget cuts, according to building owner Jason Levesque.

The office is closing and employees will be relocated to the South Portland or Augusta offices, an IRS spokesman said.

Levesque said the Wednesday morning announcement by the IRS is a blow to him and the community.

“They had a signed, executed lease and we were about one week away from starting the building fit-out,” he said. “And suddenly, they had to get out of the lease. That’s one side. The second side of this is that for Lewiston, this sucks. Business owners in the second largest city in the state need to have IRS representation. It harks back to when they closed rural post offices around Maine.”

According to a news release from IRS spokesman Michael Dobzinski, all local taxpayer questions should be referred to the Augusta office at 68 Sewall St. beginning Sept. 10.

“It’s part of our continuing effort to make the most efficient use of space, as well as containing rent costs,” Dobzinski said. “It was a business decision to close that office. At the present time, 78 percent of the space in that office is vacant so there is a large amount of unused space. We made the decision to close it, relocate the employees there to either the South Portland or the Augusta offices.”

Levesque signed the lease to relocate the IRS office in renovated space at 64 Lisbon St., one of two street-front offices he renovated in the old McRory’s building. It would move from the T.D. Bank Building at 217 Main St. and would have shared space with his Argo Marketing headquarters and call center.

Levesque said he’s known about the IRS’ decision to halt the move since June, when the representatives from the General Services Administration contacted him and bought out his lease. Levesque would not say how much he was paid, but said the lease was settled.

“I was just told that it was budget cuts,” he said. “I worked primarily with the GSA, and they seemed taken aback by this. I asked ‘What is the protocol here?’ And they said they didn’t know. They don’t normally do this.”

Representatives from the GSA could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

Levesque and Argo Marketing purchased the building in 2013 and began renovations in July of that year. The company opened the 12,000-square-foot call center on the first floor there in January 2014, along with second-floor offices and training rooms.

He’s been looking for tenants for the three storefronts since the call center opened. A deal with a potential restaurant fell through last spring, so Levesque said he still has three spaces to rent — a 1,400-square-foot restaurant-cafe that borders Dufresne Plaza and two 1,500-square-foot Lisbon Street-level office suites.

staylor@sunjournal.com