The fate of one of Epsom’s most revered historic structures is drawing near, as voters will decide on Tuesday, Feb. 13, whether to move the old Bible Church building before it’s demolished in favor of a gas station and convenience store.

“We’re relatively optimistic,” said resident Harvey Harkness, a member of a committee that’s been raising funds for more than a year to move the 1861 building.

“We feel a growing sense of community spirit around the project. Of course, we won’t know until the vote.”

The vote, the second leg of a special town meeting, will determine whether townspeople support moving the building about a quarter mile east on Route 4 to the site of the town’s new library and old town hall.

Cumberland Farms gave the town a March 1 deadline for moving the building before the company moves forward with plans to build a six-pump gas station and convenience store on the site.

Large underground fuel tanks are already sitting next to the old white church building. The building’s move is contingent upon the Friends of the Historic Epsom Meetinghouse Committee’s ability to privately raise the $75,000 estimated for the move.

Harkness aimed to dispel rumors that the committee has fallen short of its goal. He said the committee hasat least $88,000 in cash and pledges of services to move the building and put it on a frost wall at the new site. Some site work, volunteered by some local companies, has already begun at the site, Harkness said.

“I don’t know why people are getting the idea that we don’t have the money,” said Harkness. “We do.”

Proponents of the move have said the building, which includes a large open hall that’s been both a town meeting space and a church sanctuary in previous decades, could be incorporated into a new town office structure next to the new library.

At the deliberative session of the special meeting, a building committee issued an extensive report estimating that working the structure into a new office structure would cost about $75,000 more than solely building new.

The spokesman for that group, Keith Cota, said the cost comparisons were very preliminary, and actual costs to update the sanctuary for town use would depend on the condition of the building.

The committee, which was established by selectmen independent of the Friends Committee, recommended some type of new town office building, since the town currently rents Blackhall Road office space at a charge of more than $20,000 annually.

Harkness said the Friends committee has been working with building preservation and rehabilitation experts who contend the cost of refurbishing the historic structure, as opposed to building all new, would actually save the town money.

Representatives from several nonprofit preservation groups also spoke passionately at the first leg of the special Town Meeting about protecting the building, and said it could be a priority for several sources of grant money.

Some residents have questioned saving the building, which they say could commit the town to building town offices. Others have questioned the condition of the historic structure. Harkness said protecting the building, which has drawn attention from preservationists across the nation, could affect Epsom residents for generations to come.

“We’d be restoring and building, in a sense, the fact that we are a community,” he said.