Aug. 5, 1987

At around the time an oil cooler tube sprang a leak that started a big fire at S.D. Warren on Wednesday, workers from an outside contractor were reportedly running cleaning brushes through the tubes of a cooler for the oil that lubricates the mill biomass boiler’s stream turbine electrical generator. The leak sprayed an oil mist onto an uncovered part of a900-degree steam pipe, and it vaporized and burst into flame. That was the start of a major fire in the building that ran to three alarms and drew fire apparatus from five towns. Three men spent a worried hour and 10 minutes cut off atop the roof of the biomass boiler while the fire raged.

Four Portland boys stole a Corvette in Gorham and flew it off Spring Street in Westbrook Saturday during a 90-mile-an-hour police chase. They killed one of City Clerk William Clarke’s best Holsteins and injured at least on other cow and badly damaged the car, but escaped injury themselves.

Westbrook alderman decided in committee to put back on the market the downtown land between Maine Hardware and John Hay, after City Solicitor Michael Cooper pulled out of a plan to build on it. Cooper said he has left the corporation, 801 Main St. Associates, that proposed to build. Cooper’s law firm was to have been a principal tenant.

Stroudwater Locks may have lost its grandfathered rights. Developers of the proposed $3.27 million housing project next to Westbrook High School may have missed a deadline for filing plans. The Westbrook Planning Board voted 5-1 this week to hold up the project while a lawyer studies whether the projects clustering still is grandfathered. The proposal is for 68 apartments in 27 buildings on 20.4 acres of R-4 land. They would be clustered condominiums with selling prices of $90,000 and up. Clustering was restricted in Westbrook after Stroudwater Locks was announced, and Stroudwater Locks played a big part in the changes. The plans met immediate opposition from neighbors, especially from some of those on Stroudwater Place, a dead-end residential street just to the south.

Jennifer McLaughlin, 85 Brackett St., Little Falls, was official observer for a national record flight at Portland International Jetport. As a participant in the Youth and Education Programs of the Experimental Aircraft Association, headquartered in Wisconsin, Jennifer certified that pilots Mike Hance and Milton Mersky landed their turbo-charged Mooney 252 and recorded the time in the plan’s log book. The plane is attempting the first consecutive take-off and landing in all 50 states.

This weekend it’s Dollar Days in Westbrook, with most merchants offering special sales. Day’s Jewelers and Appliance Stores is offering RCE televisions, including a 26-inche remote color TV for $479. Portable AC-DC radios are $15.99, regularly $25.98. Hub Furniture is advertising a 4-pice maple bedroom set at $399, and The Men’s Shop complete line of spring and summer stock of ladies’ slacks, skirts, jerseys, shorts and swimwear are half off.

Gorham residents traveling this summer include Virginia Hill, Fort Hill Road, who spent a week at Fredericton, N.B.; and Mr. and Mrs. Henry Quinn, South Street, who spend nearly two weeks at Machias and Lubec.

Aug. 6, 1997

A petition carrying 136 names was delivered to Mayor Kenneth Lefebvre’s office Monday calling for a crackdown on offensive behavior in the Frenchtown neighborhood on Brown Street in Westbrook. It backs up a letter sent to the mayor tow weeks earlier by Robert Moore, 194 Brown St., calling for action. Moore said he got no reply. His letter was sent in the period when the City Council was considering renewal of the license of Andy’s Tavern and says that Andy’s is not the major problem. The license was renewed. Moore’s letter says police drive by and do not “even stop to question what they’re doing out” at 1 a.m., despite noise and obscene language that disturb the neighborhood. “I bet you,” Moore told a reporter, “if it were some of the nicest streets in Westbrook, and there were 26 kinds in front raising hell, they’d be arrested. And it wouldn’t take 50 calls to the police.”

Monday was the final day to apply for a new Westbrook city job – planner and economic development specialist. The budget provides $35,000 for the position.

The problem of how to get pedestrians across William Clarke Drive was a major concern of the first meeting of a committee to seek a new birth of prosperity in downtown Westbrook. Mayor Kenneth Lefebvre said the answer may be another traffic light, this one at Central Street. One more shouldn’t make too much difference, he said. There are lights now at Stroudwater, Spring and Saco streets. Walkers from the well-populated residential area in the city’s center used to be a strength of the downtown business community, but few people want to take their chances now.

After developer Susan Duchaine got a preliminary thumbs down on a 16-lot cluster subdivision plan on Dingley Spring Road in Gorham last month, she took the plan back to the drawing board had came back with a 25-lot plan. Then she fired off a letter to town councilors about her disappointment in the Planning Board’s review of her original plan. Her new plan was filed with the town planner Friday, but she also asked the board one more time for preliminary approval of her original plan. That plan called for eight shared driveways to the 16 lots, with 31 acres of open space to be owned by the homeowners’ association.

Florence Partridge, North Gorham Road, Gorham, enjoyed a two-week vacation trip with her sisters-in-law, Mrs. Nellie Bennett, Windham, and Mrs. Ruth Douglass, Gorham, and Mr. and Mrs. Hazen Spearin, in the Spearins’ motor home. They went to Knowlton Camp Grounds, Perry, on the ocean. Mornings and evenings were nice and cool; days were warm, but not like our heat wave.

Full dentures, $395, at Standish Denture Clinic, Route 35A.

A new youth group will start at the Westbrook United Methodist Church, 755 Main St., for junior high, senior high and college students. The group will feature praise, worship, hymns and pizza.

The Valentine Street School was built in 1850 on Main Street, near the site of the old high school, which has been converted into the Presumpscot Commons housing complex. The building served as a grammar school for 23 years and as a high school fro 13 years before being moved to East Valentine Street in 1886 to make way for a new high school on Main Street. It continued as the high school until the new one opened in 1887. Then in returned to being a grammar school, serving as such until the late 1960s. It’s now an apartment house.