It's impossible to replace Jim Mitchell, owner of MainStreet BookEnds in Warner and a larger-than-life character in a small town. The greeter, the event organizer, the media relations director. He was the public face and voice of the store and, in many ways, of the town.

Mitchell died suddenly of a heart attack June 4. But the store is moving forward. Eight people have been hired part time to do the work he did, said his sister and partner in the business, Katharine Nevins.

"It's kind of a jigsaw puzzle," she said. "We're piecing it together."

One big task that Mitchell had undertaken before his death is on its way to being realized. Mitchell had been dreaming up ways to turn the woodsy area between the store and the town library into a public park and amphitheater.

The store will host a groundbreaking for the project Saturday at 11 a.m. It will take place during the Warner Fall Foliage Festival, an event that Mitchell helped organize.

Mitchell and George Pellettieri, a friend and landscape architect, had been plotting the park for about two years. They had created several designs. Some were more elaborate and involved building an extension onto the store to be a community theater, a cafe or a greenhouse.

Pellettieri and Nevins are focusing now on a smaller-scale plan that involves realigning the parking lot at the bookstore and adding a patio and garden between the store's attached barn and the town library. The steep hill behind the barn would be graded and turned into a grassy slope with a 20-by-30-foot stage at the bottom.

Mitchell was integral in making the store's barn a place for artists, authors, speakers and community groups to use. It's become home to yoga classes and presidential campaign events. The idea is to move some of the store's many events outside and to make the space available to more people.

"Even small groups have a sense of place there (at the store)," Pellettieri said. "All this would do is provide for an expansion of that on the exterior."

Mitchell worked in radio before moving to Warner 10 years ago. While running the store with his sister, he continued working as the weekend news anchor for WBZ NewsRadio 1030 in Boston.

Nevins said her brother died of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, which is often associated with young athletes but is hereditary. He was 58.

The store is celebrating its 10th year in business.

"It's a big anniversary and particularly tough to not have Jim," she said.

Fundraising for the project will be done through Main Street Warner Inc., a nonprofit started by Mitchell, Katharine Nevins and her husband, Neil Nevins, in 2002 to support cultural and educational activities in town. The group has supported a reading program at Simonds Elementary School, community theater projects and the historical society's recent documentary about life in Warner before the turn of the 20th century.

Neil Nevins said there has been an outpouring of support for the park project. Donations have come in from all over the country.

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