By RANDY SEAVER

NOTE | This piece was originally published in February 2012, and its headline came from a rather long-winded 2007 letter to the editor that was written in the voice of the Lincoln Mill clock tower in Biddeford.

The clock tower’s 2007 letter was actually written by Greg Bennett, but it was never submitted for publication.

Bennett’s letter, written from the clock tower’s perspective, was intended as a response to another letter that was published in the Journal Tribune about the clock tower and its removal from atop the Lincoln Mill building.

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A Cry For Help

Bennett’s five-page, single-spaced, typewritten letter to the editor about the Lincoln Mill Clock Tower drips with irony, anger and sadness.

It tells the story of the Lincoln Mill Clock Tower’s removal and gutting. It chastises the community for not stepping up to save it. It ponders the injustice of the tower’s fate and paints a complicated portrait of apathy, political impotence and despair.

Bennett has some serious skin in this particular game.  He and his business partner, Chris Betjemann, purchased the former Lincoln Mill building just days after its clock tower was removed from a perch that overlooks the city’s downtown.

Perhaps no one is more upset about the clock’s removal than these two men who agreed to pay more than a million dollars for the property and then spent several weeks in York County Superior Court and a lot more money fighting to prevent the clock tower’s dismantling.

“It made us sick,” Bennett recalled during a recent interview. “Too many people make assumptions about the tower. Too many people have no idea about what really happened or about what we intend to do with the clock tower’s remains.”

Betjemann, who unsuccessfully sought an at-large seat on the Biddeford City Council in November, says most people would be shocked if they “knew the truth” about the clock tower’s removal.

“I’ve had people accuse me of ruining the city’s skyline,” Betjemann said. “That’s so far from the truth that I don’t even know where to begin. We are the ones who want to put the tower back up. It would be easier and a lot less costly for us to just scrap the remains, but that’s not what we want to do.”

In fact, Bennett and Betjemann recently had a meeting with Mayor Alan Casavant to discuss the clock tower and their plans to restore the structure.

THE ORIGINAL CLOCKWORKS | More photos by Randy Seaver here

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A Bit of History | A New Owner

Bennett, a principal of Odyssey Properties, says he and Betjemann still have big plans for the five-story building they purchased nearly five years ago from Gordon McDonald and Michael Scott.

But Bennett also says it’s important for the community to understand a bit of local history in order to appreciate the new owners’ vision for the iconic downtown building.

For starters, most people don’t know that the clock tower was actually a transplant. The clock tower was originally placed atop another downtown building before it was moved to the Lincoln Mill building. The clock tower’s former home is today nothing more than a faded memory, long since gone from the city’s landscape.

More recently, in 2000, the building’s former owners announced that they needed to remove the clock tower because of “structural concerns and potential liability issues.”

That announcement sent an emotional shockwave through the community and served as the catalyst for the formation of Friends of the Clock Tower, a non-profit group that intended to raise money for the tower’s repair and preservation.

Disclosure notice: I served as vice president of Friends of the Clock Tower.

McDonald and Scott agreed to allow the new group some time to raise money. If the new group could raise the money, the building’s owners said they would sign a conservation easement that would guarantee the clock tower’s preservation for public access and historical appreciation.

For the next two years, the Friends of the Clock Tower attempted to raise the estimated $200,000 needed to make the repairs and needed improvements.

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The group held a series of meetings and established itself as a 501(c)3 corporation. A fundraising telethon was conducted and televised on the city’s public access television station from the rooftop of nearby Biddeford City Hall.

Rob Tillotson, principal of Oak Point Associates, volunteered his services to the group. Tillotson said the tower was structurally sound and only needed some minor repairs.

The building’s former owners, however, held their ground and continued expressing concerns about the tower’s condition and potential liability.

Recognizing that the building was private property, the Friends of the Clock Tower briefly considered purchasing a liability insurance policy but soon learned it would be a tricky proposition for a non-profit group to insure a piece of privately owned property.

So, the group continued its fundraising campaign and applied for state and federal historic preservation grants.

But the larger community seemed generally apathetic, and the Friends of the Clock Tower fell far short of its fundraising goal.The non-profit group was eventually disbanded, and the money raised was returned to donors with the balance given to the Biddeford Historical Society.

The community failed and the clock tower’s fate seemed doomed.

CLOCKTOWER HEYDAY | This photo — on display at Biddeford City Hall — shows a view of the former Lincoln Mill, a 250,000-square-foot building that once produced textile products. Today, the clocktower has been removed and the downtown building has been converted into a luxury hotel with a rooftop swimming pool and a high-end cocktail lounge and distillery in the basement.