The clock faces have already been removed from the clock tower atop Athol's Town Hall as work to replace the decaying cupola gets under way. For the Athol Daily News/Greg Vine

Athol Public Works Director Dick Kilhart points out damage resulting from the deterioration of the Town Hall clock tower while discussing the work to be done to replace the structure with a new, prefabricated cupola. For the Athol Daily News/Greg Vine

Athol Public Works Director Dick Kilhart points out damage resulting from the deterioration of the Town Hall clock tower while discussing the work to be done to replace the structure with a new, prefabricated cupola. For the Athol Daily News/Greg Vine

ATHOL — Work has begun in earnest on the decaying clock tower/cupola atop Athol’s Town Hall. In September 2020, voters at the Annual Town Meeting — delayed due the COVID-19 pandemic — approved an $825,000 Proposition 2½ debt exclusion to fund the rebuild of the cupola and to repair the Town Hall roof. The debt exclusion had previously received support at the Annual Town Election in June.

Now, however, the clock tower is not so much being rebuilt as it is being replaced. Initial discussions between the Memorial Hall Committee and officials of the Department of Public Works called for the structure to be rebuilt and repainted.

“We had gone to the Memorial Hall Committee,” Public Works Director Dick Kilhart told the Athol Daily News, “to talk about rebuilding it and repainting it. Then, of course, every three to five years repainting it again. But just to put scaffolding up there was $60,000 to $80,000.

“So, the cupola itself — the new one — the Memorial Hall Committee agreed to have it prefabricated.”

Kilhart said the new tower, once in place, will pretty much be an exact replica of the cupola with which visitors to Town Hall and passers by have long been familiar.

“It will look like what’s up there now,” he said, “with the exception of the fact that the clock itself. Right now, you have to wind this clock. You have to wind that thing almost every day.

“You’ll see the same facial plates for the clock on each of the four sides, but it will be an electronic version of the existing clock.”

Kilhart said he believes there was a plan to have the old clock, which has already been removed from the tower, refurbished and given to the town’s Historical Society.

“Basically, what we’re doing,” project manager Andrew Fleming told the paper, “we’re on site this week doing the interior field measurements, just to verify everything. The cupola we’re going to manufacture is going to be a one-to-one replica of what’s there.

“It is basically a two-part system. There’s an aluminum substructure that holds all the new cupola up around it. Come this winter, we’re going to crane off, in one piece, the old cupola, have the new cupola pull up and then crane it up and on. It’s kind of like a pre-fab swap.”

Fleming works is the project manager for the general contractor for the project, D.A. Sullivan & Sons, based in Northampton. He said measurements taken of the clock tower will then be forwarded to the company actually charged with manufacturing the replacement cupola, Campbellsville Industries of Campbellsville, Kentucky.

“The manufacturer does all of their digital modeling and designing off our, I guess you would say, analog measurements,” said Fleming. “So, we’re taking the existing conditions of the cupola right now — its existing footprint, the pilasters on the outside, how high they are off the ground — all these little metrics go into the manufacturer’s model, then we just kind of spot-check it along the way just to make sure the unit that comes is exactly what we need and will fit as planned.”

Fleming said the project will likely be completed sometime in early 2023. The length of time needed to complete the project is fairly normal, although supply chain issues can also be a factor, he explained.

“It’s a little bit of both,” Fleming continued. “For instance, right below the cupola that’s being replaced, those four windows are also coming out. When we first started this project, the window manufacturer had quoted me that it would be a 38-week lead time to get those windows. Luckily, as things are getting a little better, that came down to 18 weeks. So, we should actually be swapping those out in late September.

“Then it’s a very long manufacturing process for the cupola itself. I think we were quoted 275 days from accepted design, which is what we’re in the process of right now. It happened to be winter would be the time (for completion) because of how everything lined up when we got the contracts squared away.”

He added that the measuring process couldn’t begin until the old clock mechanism had been removed.

“When it gets close,” said Fleming, “we may wait a bit for a better weather day — maybe late winter, early spring. Because when we do have the original cupola off, that is an open roof. So, we’re just trying to minimize any exposure for Memorial Hall.”

Fleming said the overall cost of the project is $620,000, with $300,000 going to the clock tower itself.

Greg Vine can be reached at gvineadn@gmail.com

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