LINCOLN – The welcome mat is being dusted off for the arrival of new paper mill owners today in Lincoln, but the brush strokes aren’t that aggressive or quick – and that’s something for which the people in this small community are apologetic.

Townspeople do want the mill to reopen. They are approaching today’s restart with the same kind of enthusiasm they would the unveiling of a brightly wrapped gift. They know the town needs the mill to survive. Tourism, although welcome, is not enough.

Yet there’s a reluctance to trust anyone after being financially and emotionally burned by the facility’s previous owners, Eastern Pulp and Paper Corp. Eastern bought the mill 35 years ago after it was shut down for almost a year.

This time the trepidation derives from six months of a mill shutdown that was preceded by more than three years of federal bankruptcy protection. Promises to pay bills, restart the mill or for new ownership to take over always fell short of the expectations they generated.

Even two weeks ago, the new owner, First Paper Holding LLC of South Norwalk, Conn., called off its $23.725 million purchase of Eastern Pulp for about a day. The deal was rejuvenated after a power struggle between numerous state agencies and the buyers. The sale was completed last Friday.

Eastern Pulp owned Lincoln Pulp and Paper Co., Eastern Fine Paper Co. in Brewer and corporate offices in Amherst, Mass. It employed 750 people when it shut down on Jan. 16.

First Paper plans to reopen only the Lincoln mill, calling it Lincoln Paper and Tissue Co., and employ 360 people, 140 less than in January.

“It’s the anticipation of not knowing what’s going to happen next,” said Joan Crocker, bookkeeper at J.K. Vose Fine Jewelers and Gift Shop in downtown Lincoln. “We always try to be optimistic, but it’s hard. It’s hard to think of the mill not being here. It’s always been here.”

These days, business people and millworkers just want to see promise and opportunity arise from the mill’s smokestacks. After losing jobs or not being paid millions of dollars for goods or services, they have no choice but to do business with the mill.

But they’re jaded.

“All we can do now is hope that this new mill is going to be a good venture,” Alan Smith, co-owner of Fastco Corp., a metal fabrication business in Lincoln, said recently. “We want to help make it a success, but it’s going to be with our eyes open.”

“I can certainly understand how they feel,” said Stanley Okoro, general manager and chief operating officer at Fisher International and a First Paper Holding partner. “They’ll have to judge us by what we do.”

Starting up

First Paper Holding had planned to start paper production today. But because of delays in closing the deal, the mill will not start producing tissue until Thursday.

The boiler – one of the key components to paper production – gets started today.

By mid-June, the company plans to have two tissue machines, one paper machine and the pulping system operational. All of the 360 workers hired should be on the job by mid-August.

First Paper Holding is owned by Okoro; John Wissmann, a strategic consultant with Fisher International of South Norwalk, Conn.; Rodney Fisher, owner of Fisher International; and Keith Van Scotter, a former mill manager at Fraser Paper in Madawaska who currently lives in Tacoma, Wash.

Van Scotter will be president of the Lincoln mill and will move to the area. He is the one who will be faced with the task of restoring confidence into a community that is cautiously optimistic.

Van Scotter and Wissmann will be at the mill at 6:30 a.m. today to welcome workers. Gov. John Baldacci, 2nd District U.S. Rep. Michael Michaud and other state officials will join them.

Robert Arnold, a laid-off millworker, will not be back. The 46-year-old doesn’t want to return.

“I had the opportunity to go back to school and that’s what I want to do,” said Arnold, who is taking plumbing and heating classes. “It’s just a personal decision my family and I made.”

Eastern Pulp officials blame a downturn in the economy and record-low prices for paper products as the reasons they went bankrupt. Arnold said he doesn’t want to go through that experience again, and the time was right for him to move on.

“I’ve talked to a lot of people, and a lot of them don’t want to go back,” Arnold said. “Some found other employment and some went back to school. Everything has changed, and they couldn’t sit around and wait too long.”

Fastco Corp.

Lately, Fastco workers have returned to the mill as contractors to help refurbish the boiler in anticipation of today’s start.

To Fastco’s owners, the decision to return to the mill was a difficult but necessary one.

In the last couple of years, the Smith brothers, Alan and Scott, who own Fastco, said their company has not been paid nearly $1 million for work its employees performed at Eastern Pulp, Great Northern Paper Inc. and Eastland Woolen Mills – all bankrupt companies. That work included replacing siding that ripped off a wall at the Lincoln mill in January. Fastco’s bill for that work was $35,000. A promise to be paid went unfulfilled.

“We’re just trying to make an honest living,” Scott Smith said recently. “What we found out is when you do, you get burned. Imagine this: We could have told our entire crew to take last summer off to go fishing, and we still would have come out ahead.”

Now any plans for expansion are on hold.

The Smith brothers will be watching to make sure the mill’s new owners pay their bills in full and on time. On the other hand, they’re enthusiastic about the prospect of being part of the crew that’s reopening the Lincoln mill. They hope the mill is open for a long time.

“It’s a new management team,” Scott Smith said. “They’re young. These guys are going to come in with new ideas. If they’re not profitable, nobody in town is going to make any money on that mill. Our jobs are to make it profitable.”

Retail ready to rev up

For J.K. Vose Fine Jewelers and Gift Shop, the mill’s shutdown meant the Main Street retailer was not going to be paid hundreds of dollars it was owed for engraved watches the owners handed out to retiring millworkers. Even with the financial hit, however, the retailer wants to be the source of commemorative gifts for the new owners.

“How can we not do business with the mill?” Crocker asked.

On Main Street, with the mill in clear view, retailers describe the last six months as “a long winter.” Millworkers receiving less than $267 a week in unemployment benefits could not splurge on birthday or other ceremonial gifts, and tourists generally do not start arriving in town until July.

“It hasn’t been awful, but it’s been slow,” said Brenda Smith, co-owner of Possibilities, a gift shop across the street from J.K. Vose. “I was talking to a friend, and her family hasn’t even been able to go out to dinner. It’s just nice to go out to dinner even if it’s fast food. I know what it is like to have $20 and it seems like a fortune and to have $20 to go out to dinner. I like the $20 to go out to dinner better.”

At J.K. Vose, the lack of spontaneous gift-buyers has been evident.

“Retail is hard,” Crocker said. “Small-town retail is even harder. Everyone runs to Bangor, and the mill, it’s our only industry in town.”

With 140 fewer people returning to the mill, Crocker is hopeful people will start shopping on Main Street again. The shutdown made it difficult to anticipate what people were going to buy – if anything at all.

“[The owner] didn’t know what to buy,” Crocker said. “People won’t come shop if there is nothing new in the store, but will they come buy if they’re out of a job?”

Crocker and Smith both said the only way for Lincoln to avoid another hit to its economy is to diversify its business base. Crocker said she would like to see an industrial park while Smith said she wants several companies that employ 50 or more people to locate in Lincoln.

“Just a couple of those industries,” she said, her thought ending there. “I have this little mug that I have out back. It says, ‘I’m OK. Really. I’m OK. Really. I’m OK … Really.’ I’m sure that’s how these people in town are feeling. Do we let our breath out?”

Penobscot Valley Hospital

The return of the mill should bring a return to medical care. According to U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe, who attended a town meeting in Lincoln on Thursday, only six of Eastern Pulp’s 750 workers opted to sign up for a state health insurance program. The rest found it too expensive.

Bonnie Deveau, spokeswoman for Penobscot Valley Hospital, said the health care facility experienced a decline in the number of people having elective surgeries or procedures during the last six months.

“They canceled physical therapies and they canceled mammograms,” she said.

But a few weeks ago the telephone rang, a signal that life was being breathed back into the mill and the community. Deveau said a First Paper Holding worker wanted the hospital to mobilize for a barrage of drug tests. All of the laid-off millworkers had to apply for their old jobs with the new company, and all had to be tested for illegal drug use.

The staff brought on extra workers for its laboratory. By last Thursday, 247 drug tests had been processed and sent to another lab for screening.

“We’ve done as many as 60 in one day,” Deveau said. “We usually book about 10 in one day.”

She said the hospital staff felt like it was part of the company’s “action plan.”

“We wanted to be supportive and get them up and running as soon as possible,” Deveau said. “We’re thrilled we were able to rise to the occasion. We have employees here whose family members worked there. That put a personal note on it.”

The millworkers didn’t mind being tested, she said. All results were sent to the mill, so the hospital did not know how many passed.

“When the mill goes down in the mill community where you work and where you live, it’s devastating,” Deveau said. “All the millworkers came in here so upbeat. They were happy to be here.”