LEWISTON — The time was right for a change.

That was the obvious fact that led Neal Ouellette and Ruth Gallagher, co-owners of the 98-year-old Pineland Lumber Co., to accept a purchase offer from Hammond Lumber Co

Pineland has been a local icon since its founders bought land and buildings covering a considerable area of Androscoggin River shoreline along the Lewiston side near the Great Falls. Although numerous changes took place over nearly a century of business, Ouellette and Gallagher are pleased that its history of local ownership will be much the same under Hammond ownership.

Pineland President Neal Ouellette talked this week about the four decades in which he has worked at the company. Treasurer Ruth Gallagher has seen 35 years of employment there. Both are continuing employment with Hammond, and several other Pineland employees have been hired by the new owners.

As the transfer of Pineland’s physical assets at the 10 Avon St. location took place below the second-floor office windows, Neal noted that the sale means he is going back to the same location where his involvement with the industry began. He worked first at Peter Allen Lumber Co., 282 Poland Road, Auburn, which is now one of nine Hammond retail operations of the Belgrade-based company.

For Gallagher, there were many positive memories of the relationships they built with customers, employees and vendors.

“It’s for the love of the industry,” she said when asked why she chose to keep working under the new ownership rather than begin a well-earned retirement.

“There are wonderful challenges every day,” she said.

She talked about friendships with contractors who relied on Pineland Lumber Co. over the years as the company’s core business shifted from strictly wood products to varied building supplies and eventually, kitchen design.

“The faces don’t change the way you see faces change in other industries,” she said.

One incident highlights the personal-service nature for which Pineland became known: She told of a contractor whom their salesman could not get to buy from Pineland.

“He always said, ‘Nope; I’m all set,’ until one day on a job in Poland he needed a particular lock set,” she said. The salesman didn’t say a word, but he drove back to the store, got the lock, took it back to the work site and handed it to the contractor.

“From that day on, he was our customer,” Gallagher said. “It was salesmanship by action.”

Ouellette related times when he would talk with a young customer and he would learn that he had done business over the years with a father, a grandfather and even a great-grandfather.

Prior to 1890, the property belonged to the R.C. Pingree Co., which ran a sawmill for many years. The most southerly lots of the original tract were sold to the Lake Auburn Crystal Ice Co., which cut ice on the Androscoggin River until a little before 1930.

Pineland Lumber was organized on March 12, 1912, with John C. West as president, Charles L. Turgeon as treasurer and Albert E. Turgeon as secretary.

The original Pineland operation encompassed much more of the Lewiston shoreland than it does now. There was an office where the former B. Peck Co. warehouse was located on Middle Street, another where the Empire Theater stood, and a large planing mill where the Bates Mill weave shed was located. After a disastrous fire, the sawmill property remained largely unoccupied except for sorting, grading and concentrating pine lumber.

Logs were brought down the river and held in a boom near the shore. Sawn lumber was piled on the land, which nearly reached to the Maine Central Railroad.

Floods in 1936 and 1986 threatened the company, but it survived on the original site until the present.

In the beginning, planing machinery was set up in a brick building and the company was chiefly occupied in dressing and shipping pine lumber, but local demands increased continuously, and in a short time items were added to the inventory to satisfy newer demands of the building trade.

The site was highly visible from the Auburn side of the river, upstream from the Maine Central Railroad trestle.

Gallagher remembered that Pat’s Pizza built a restaurant with a riverview deck and people started noticing the lumber company. Ouellette and Gallagher decided to place the now-familiar white “Pineland Lumber” sign on the roof to capitalize on that exposure to customers.

A brick building with a large chimney is another landmark of the property. It housed the boilers and the engine for planing operations.

In addition to Ouellette and Gallagher, Pineland has several employees with a dozen or more years of service.

Henry N. Tukey Jr., who died a few months ago, had the distinction of more than 60 years of service with Pineland. He served as treasurer and principal stockholder until his retirement in December 1993.

“Hank had a heart attack at that time, but he recovered and came back to give us another eight years as a consultant,” Gallagher said.

“We’re happy that the Pineland family of employees will be joining us,” said Mike Hammond, vice president of the acquiring company and grandson of its founder. “We share the same commitment to preserving and promoting Maine values.”