Clock Tower History

The Assabet Manufacturing Company tower clock, which was made by the E. Howard Clock Company of Waltham, was given to the town in 1892 by Lorenzo Maynard. The wooden tower, built over a brick base, was painted white with a brick red trim. The stairway to the tower, which is 85 feet from the ground, has 124 steps and the wooden tower floor is 12 feet across, with the clock mechanism in the middle of the tower. There are two sets of cables and weights, one for the timer and one for the striker. The 8-day mechanism requires 90 turns of the hand-operated crank to wind the time and 330 turns to wind the striker. Each 9-foot diameter clock face fits within a 12-foot tower wall and is lighted by five 60-watt bulbs.

Clock Tower Place, located in Maynard, MA is a large complex of premium commercial space situated in pastoral, historic surroundings. Affectionately known as the "Mill" to its tenants and the people of the town of Maynard, Clock Tower Place stands in the center of this traditional New England community as a monument to the perseverance and foresight of the town's founders.

Clock Tower Place is the most recent rebirth of the historic mill property that was the setting of important developments in the industrial and information ages. In 1847 Amory Maynard purchased water rights to a stretch of the Assabet River and deeds to adjacent land, in partnership with William Knight. The two set about building a woolen mill and began manufacturing carpets and carpet yarn.

By 1957, the Mill and the town of Maynard became the focus of yet another revolution in technology. Digital Equipment Company, one of the largest minicomputer manufacturers of the twentieth century, built its empire from within the walls of the Mill. Maintaining character and charm and flexibility of space in the Mill, as well as the high-tech infrastructure, Digital began to move into the rejuvenated space.

The Mill from 1974 to 2001

The Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) purchased the entire Maynard Mill (the Mill) complex in 1974. DEC had begun its operations at the Mill in the year 1957. Its first offices occupied a total of 8,600 square feet of rented space in what was known, then as now, as Building 12. The owner of the Mill, and DEC’s landlord, from 1953 was Maynard Industries Inc.

DEC’s corporate objective was to research, manufacture, and market a computer that would be small and modestly priced, useful in most (if not all) commercial applications. DEC succeeded from the outset in achieving this objective, and rapidly expanded its leased space both inside and outside the Mill complex until it became the sole tenant and landlord of the Mill in 1974.

By the mid 1980’s DEC’s worldwide computer sales were second only to those of IBM, and its sales of smaller minicomputers were second to none. DEC, the Maynard Mill, and the small town of Maynard, Massachusetts, became the "Mini-Computer Capital of the World."

At the same time, the personal computer revolution had gathered great momentum. Since DEC had decided to concentrate solely on computers for commercial applications, and personal computer software could be applied to both personal AND commercial applications, DEC became vulnerable to either a merger or a buyout just as its sales and market penetration peaked.

Eventually the Compaq Computer Corporation of Houston, Texas, purchased Digital, and began consolidating all of DEC’s operations. Prior to the Compaq buyout, due to gradually declining revenues in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, Digital had begun downsizing its operations in the Mill in 1993.

In 1995, the Franklin Lifecare Corporation (FLC) purchased the entire Mill complex from Digital, with DEC retaining only a single one-year lease in Building 5.

Franklin Lifecare intended to develop the Mill into an assisted living facility for senior citizens from all over New England, providing diverse housing and on-going, on-site health-care support.

FLC could not obtain sufficient financing for this endeavor, so FLC mothballed the Mill within months of its purchase, ceasing all operations, retaining only minimal fire protection and enough security to prevent the physical deterioration of the complex.

In 1997 FLC put the entire complex up for sale. A new entity called Wellesley/Rosewood Maynard Mills, L.P. (WRMMLP), was established, and it negotiated the purchase of the Maynard Mill from FLC, and taking over the property on January 1, 1998. WRMMLP named the Mill complex Clock Tower Place (CTP).

When CTP began its ownership of the Mill, there were only three tenants occupying a total of 30,000 square feet of the entire 1.1 million square foot complex.

In April of 1998, CTP successfully negotiated a fifteen-year property tax discount and tenant tax credit/deduction program with the Selectmen of the Town of Maynard. This Tax Increment Finance Agreement, or TIF, was then approved by a Special Town Meeting of the town.

In January of 1998, CTP also launched a full-scale campaign to market and lease all 13 buildings in the complex. It entered into an exclusive brokerage agreement with the internationally renowned commercial real estate company, CB Richard Ellis, Whittier Partners (CB Whittier).

The success of CTP in achieving its goals is due to dedicated personnel on all levels, experience, timing, hard work, skill, and good fortune. But it is also based, to no small degree, upon the partnership offered to the Management of CTP by the town officials and citizens of the Town of Maynard. Without this solid partnership, the success of CTP in developing a "Maynard Mill for the 21st Century and Beyond", would have been extremely difficult, if not impossible.

Top