WILLOW CREEK — The planer runs again.

Eighteen years after the Willow Creek Hardwood Flooring Company closed its doors and idled 87 workers, the mill on River Road reopened Thursday as Willow Creek Custom Flooring, LLC, to the sound of a steam whistle and the applause of 400 townspeople gathered on the mill yard.

“It is difficult to describe what this day means to this town unless you were here in 1972, when the whistle fell silent,” said First Selectman Arthur Whitcomb at the grand opening. “Mill towns that lose their mills do not always survive. We have survived. And today, we have announced that we intend to thrive.”

The new company occupies the same building that housed the original mill from 1903. The sawtooth roof, the timber frame, and the original 1903 steam-powered planer — preserved as a display piece in the entrance lobby — connect the new operation to the old.

But the business model is fundamentally different. The original mill produced commodity hardwood flooring for the mass market. Willow Creek Custom Flooring specializes in quarter-sawn white oak and hard maple for the historic restoration market — a niche that did not exist when the original mill closed.

“The restoration market is booming,” said General Manager Raymond Thibodeau. “Churches, historic homes, public buildings from the nineteenth century all need flooring that matches the original. We are one of only three mills in New England that still produces quarter-sawn white oak.”

The mill currently employs 22 people, with plans to expand to 40 within three years. Stu Peller, who started as a floor sweeper in October, has already advanced to the green chain.

“I waited eighteen years for this sound,” said Elmer Bouchard, 74, who worked at the original mill for 40 years. “I did not think I would live to hear it again.”

The Gazette’s front-page headline, set in the largest type since the end of World War II, read simply: “THE PLANER RUNS AGAIN.”

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