BIDDEFORD—You can see it as you drive over the Saco River, from atop the hills surrounding downtown and reflecting sun beams from miles away. The iconic clock tower on Biddeford’s City Hall stands as a landmark of the community and a beacon to those from away.

Designed by famed Maine architect John Calvin Stevens in 1894, the current City Hall was constructed to replace the original 1860s building that was destroyed by fire the same year. But after years of wear and tear, the building’s clock tower has deteriorated to the point that city officials say renovations are critical in order to save the fixture.

“It’s sad to see it in disrepair,” said Mayor Alan Casavant, who called the tower, “a symbol of the greatness of Biddeford.”

“I think with all the development that’s going on, the tower should be a force of pride for the community. Because of its historical significance and that idea of pride, I absolutely believe it needs to be renovated,” he said.

A $1.5 million bond for repairs to the clock and bell tower failed to pass in 2007, after which the city was forced to spend $250,000 to stabilize the tower’s ceilings and face with plastic composites — giving the structure its now-characteristic, patchy-white appearance — due to rotting and falling wood debris and water damage.

Another $2.27 million bond to fund a restoration of the tower, which would have also paid for upgrades to the building’s windows and fire alarm and sprinkler systems, was also shot down by voters in 2015.

In July, the City Council voted 6-2 to allocate $235,000 into a reserve account for renovations to City Hall, including window replacement and upgrades to the fire suppression system. About $8,000 to $10,000 of that money went to fund staging for architects and engineers to evaluate the structure’s needs, City Manager Jim Bennett said Wednesday. 

“That’s designed to be able to give us more solid information about what needs to be done so we’ll have better budget numbers, and it’ll be the foundation for any bidding work that needs to be done. We’ve only had some rough estimates,” Bennett said. “That’s probably why the community wasn’t supportive of a bond issue — we had only good guesstimates about what we need to do.”

Phil Radding, the city’s facilities director, said the clock tower is in need of a new weathervane and copper cladding on its dome, which is starting to leak. He also said the bell needs a new cradle, and the white wood off the outer parts of the building — where the white, plastic composite is visible — needs to be replaced.

Radding also said the tower’s Howard clock, which was electrified and has had several of its part thrown out over the years, stopped working several years ago.

“It quit,” Radding said.

The clock needs a “total restoration,” including new hands and faces, by a professional clockmaker, he said.

He said the brick tower and its timber supports are generally in decent shape, but do need upgrades and several decorative assets, including plaster casts and stain glass windows, also need updates and restoration.

Radding said the architect has been working on designs to bring before the city, although he declined to name the architect because the designer has not yet been approved by the city’s Finance Committee.

He’s also working with the city’s historic preservation commission to update information about the tower, and said employing the engineers and architects was necessary to properly evaluate the potential costs to taxpayers should restoration again go before voters in the form a bond referendum.

“Each time we looked for a bond we threw a guestimate at it, but with construction costs as high as they are now we wanted someone to go through and look at the whole thing, get what the needs are and get an accurate estimate of the costs.”

Radding said he’s hopeful that, should another restoration bond go before voters, residents would support the project. He said he hopes they would, in part because he’s in love with old buildings, but also in part because City Hall — which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places — is a defining landmark of Biddeford.

“Beside just my own personal thing, the clock tower, the whole City Hall is really our brand,” Radding said. “We’re having all this development in the downtown and we have to build this building up to par if we want to grow.”

The clock tower is also listed as an “endangered building” by Maine Preservation, being included on the organization’s 2014 list of “Maine’s Most Endangered Historic Places.”

But, regardless of cost, Radding said the clock tower is worth saving.

“I’ve had people actually say to me, ‘Just take the tower down. It doesn’t mean anything. Just take it down,’” he said. “I say, ‘It’ll cost half a million dollars just to take it down.’”

Casavant said the tower is important to preserving Biddeford’s history, and tearing it down would ultimately be a loss for the city.

“That would be the worst thing,” Casavant said. “It’d be a sad commentary that we just knock it down for expediency instead of looking at it as something special. Cities right now are tyring to exhibit their unique positives, and the tower is part of what makes Biddeford special.” 

— Staff Writer Alan Bennett can be contacted at 282-1535, ext. 329 or abennett@journaltribune.com.