SKOWHEGAN — What comes next for the Skowhegan Indian, the large wooden sculpture that has looked over the town for nearly 60 years, remains unclear, months after the local chamber of commerce threatened to dismantle it if no interested buyer emerged.

Leaders of the Skowhegan Regional Chamber of Commerce, so far, have not had much to say about the results of a request for proposals that closed in July.

But a local business owner — who helped restore the Indian during the last major overhaul in 2014 — said he is interested.

“It’s just kind of rough to see something just fall apart when it doesn’t need to,” Joe Almand, owner of Joe’s Flat Iron Cafe on Water Street, said. “I personally consider it one of those historic things in Skowhegan. … It’s a large sculpture that’s been here for a really long time. Somebody came up with an idea to put it there, and it hasn’t gone away.”

Almand said he submitted his proposal last summer to acquire the Indian, but conversations so far have been slow-going, and for him, frustrating.

The chamber’s executive director, Maygan Dunlap, said recently she had no information to share about ongoing conversations about the Indian and declined to say whether the organization received any proposals this year.

She said the chamber’s board of directors is in charge of making decisions about the Indian. The board is next scheduled to meet Dec. 11, Dunlap said, although she was unsure if there would be any update then.

Board President Luke York did not respond to multiple phone calls in the last week.

Commissioned by the Skowhegan Tourist Hospitality Association in 1966, the 62-foot tall wooden Indian statue was completed in 1969 by artist Bernard Langlais, a student and teacher at the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, according to a history previously published on the chamber’s website.

Some consider it to be the largest sculpture of its kind in the world.

The local landmark, behind the Cumberland Farms and municipal parking lot off Madison Avenue and High Street, depicts a Wabanaki fisherman holding a spear in his left hand and a weir, or fish trap, in his right hand.

“The sculpture is dedicated to the Maine Indians,” a sign next to the sculpture reads, “the first people to use these lands in peaceful ways.”

Langlais’ aging work has been deteriorating, in part, because of the year-round exposure of its wooden elements to Maine’s harsh climate. A 10-year, $65,000 effort to restore the Indian was finished in 2014.

When more visible damage to the statue in early 2024 led the town to block off the area with yellow caution tape and traffic cones, chamber leaders said they were going to come up with a plan of how to proceed with addressing the damage again.

The chamber offered the Indian first to the town of Skowhegan in March 2024, saying that owning and maintaining the large work of public art was “outside of our purview.”

The select board, considering whether to ask voters at town meeting if they wanted to accept the statute, ultimately rejected the chamber’s offer, citing expected high costs of restoration and maintenance.

The chamber said then it would open the offer to the public for 90 days before proceeding with taking it down. But the organization did not do that.

Instead, in May it issued a request for proposals, offering to hand over the Indian to an individual or organization for $1.

“The Chamber seeks a responsible party who will ensure the continued care, preservation, and public accessibility of the artwork,” the request for proposals said. The chamber also requested bidders submit a maintenance plan, budget, a project timeline, and references.

Almand believes he fits the bill.

In 2014, he worked with another local builder, Stephen Dionne, on the latest restoration effort.

Almand, an experienced carpenter, is well-known among downtown business owners. He opened his coffee shop in 2023, after suffering serious injuries in a fall in the Kennebec River gorge ended his career as a Skowhegan firefighter. His wife, Christine Almand, used to be Skowhegan’s town manager.

His proposal, which he shared with the Morning Sentinel, calls for an assessment of the damage in the first year and most of the repairs to take place the next year.

He estimated the cost for materials and rental equipment would be about $10,000-$15,000 and has some resources already lined up. He would contribute his labor for free.

Almand’s plan also includes specifics for two annual inspections and future cleaning and maintenance, for which he said he plans to raise additional funds.

Almand and Dionne had left the chamber with a detailed maintenance plan more than a decade ago. Almand said, as far as he knows, none of the suggested work was ever done. Dionne has previously said the same, noting that nobody ever contacted him.

At the chamber’s request, Almand said he would establish a nonprofit organization that would own the Indian, although that process can be lengthy to complete.

He also envisions the nonprofit could take on other works of art around town. In 2013, Langlais’ estate gave more than 20 of his other sculptures, many of which also are wooden, to the nonprofit Main Street Skowhegan. 

Almand said, based on communications he has received from the chamber, he assumes he is the only interested party at this point. But he said he was frustrated about an overall lack of communication from the chamber’s leaders.

After submitting his proposal over the summer, he said it was not until the beginning of this month that he heard back from the chamber, asking for him to provide his insurance cost estimate and a detailed project cost breakdown.

The chamber asked him to provide the information within two weeks, and he responded he did not have time. Almand further questioned why they needed that information up front, because the chamber will not be paying for any of it.

The chamber’s leaders have also been communicating through a middleman, attorney Ryan Rutledge of the Skowhegan law firm Mills, Shay, Lexier & Talbot, Almand said.

Meanwhile, according to Almand, Rutledge has also been working to sort out who actually owns the land where the Indian sits — either the Hight family or the town.

Rutledge, who serves on the chamber’s board of directors, could not be reached this week, as he was out of the office.

“At some point in time,” Almand said, “it’s either going to be the Indian is just going to continue to get worse, and we’re going to have more problems, or I’m just not going to have the interest in dealing with them anymore.”