ST. JOHN PLANTATION – J.D. Irving Ltd., owner of a sawmill that burned here last March, said Tuesday the company will not rebuild the mill, which employed 60.

Irving spokeswoman Mary Keith said officials met with employees last week to tell them the mill would not be rebuilt. Keith said that 40 of the 60 employees working at the mill at the time of the fire have jobs elsewhere, about half of them in other Irving operations.

A March 16 fire destroyed the operation, and the company had said at the time that the mill would be rebuilt. The mill cut cedar logs for wholesale and lumber for use at another operation in Fort Kent

The multimillion-dollar fire destroyed the company’s 200-by-200-foot two-story structure in a matter of hours. Officials said the fire was caused by an electrical malfunction.

“Although we wanted to rebuild the operation, we have been running business models for a sawmill in St. John, and it is not looking viable, especially in the present economic climate,” Keith said Tuesday afternoon. “The decision has been made that we will not build in the near future.

“We regret that we will not be able to fulfill the promise to rebuild,” she said. “We are continuing to look at other viable operations in Maine.”

Along with the lost employment, the small community where the mill was located is going through a major setback. The mill and lumberyard were valued at $1,300,000 for property tax purposes. The town will lose nearly $20,000 in property taxes this year.

“We have picked up enough new valuations and used money from our reserves to make it up,” Fernald Jandreau, first assessor for the town, said. “It will not affect taxes this year.

“It’s a very big chunk of money for a small community like ours,” Jandreau said. “They were paying about 42 percent of our taxes.

“It was kind of scary for the community for a while, until we figured it out,” he said. “We came out of it.”

Jandreau said as many as 10 employees were from the small community of 282 people. He said most of them have found work elsewhere.

Keith said the company is looking to add a new planning operation at its Fort Kent plant, which could add 10 jobs. The Fort Kent operation, about 10 miles away, produces specialty items such as garden planters and fencing. That could happen by Oct. 1.

Keith said the company is in preliminary discussion with the Van Buren operation for a new wood manufacturing facility there. The value-added spruce finger-joint lumber operation would provide about 40 jobs, Keith said.

There has not been a final decision on the Van Buren operation.