It may look like the most awesome dirt bike track around, but the vast excavation site visible off the southbound lanes of Route 3 is not for fun and games. It is the largest expansion of the Plymouth Industrial Park in recent years.
“My goal is to build it all out and bring in as many jobs as we can,” said Scott Spencer, owner of the land and developer of the project.
The 19-acre tract, accessed off Collins Avenue, runs parallel with the highway. Site work began in early 2022 after a lengthy town permitting process and a failed appeal by Save the Pine Barrens Inc. objecting to the amount of sand and gravel to be removed from the property.
For nearly two years earth removal and grading continued largely out of sight, until the excavation approached the boundary with Route 3 and opened a wide vista for passing motorists to see the scope of the project.
The current permit allows removal of 488,000 cubic yards of sand and gravel to level the site, construction of up to 137,500 square feet of space for manufacturing or other light industrial uses, and up to 240 parking spaces covered by a solar power canopy.
The first building will be a new home for Northeast Traffic Controls, which is now located on Scobee Circle, at the other end of the industrial park. “They need room to grow,” said Spencer, who founded Northeast Traffic Controls in 1994 and sold a controlling interest in the company in December 2022.
NTC deploys temporary barriers, warning lights and other safety equipment to manage the flow of traffic around highway construction projects. Its new facility will be a 37,500-square-foot building with offices, warehouse and maintenance space, plus a secure 2.5-acre open area for vehicle and equipment storage. Spencer expects to break ground this September. And that’s just the beginning. The site can accommodate several new industrial buildings of varying sizes, subject to additional review and permitting by the town.
“I get calls all the time from companies interested in the location,” Spencer said. “Some want all of it, others just some. I’m trying to figure out what makes the most sense. We want to do the best we can for Plymouth to help it grow.”
The Planning Board designated the Spencer site as a “unified complex,” a provision of the zoning bylaw approved by Town Meeting in 2002 that allows multiple buildings on one lot to share parking, drainage systems and utilities.
“We have a limited amount of commercial and industrial land left in town, so the unified complex allows us to be more creative in the way we use lands to maximize the impact, to create more jobs and expand the tax base,” said Lee Hartman, director of planning and development.
For example, the 240 parking spaces approved for the first phase of the Spencer development are more than NTC needs and will be shared by other companies as the buildout proceeds. “Our parking requirements are designed for the worst case,” Hartman said. “With a unified complex, you can have multiple uses in the same area that complement each other, so they can share the parking, and that encourages less pavement on the site.”
The industrial park, which Hartman called “the major economic driver in the community,” was established in 1968 to encourage manufacturing in town and create jobs.
The park still has a concentration of manufacturers, large and small. The biggest is Tech-Etch, a maker of advanced thin metal components, flexible printed circuits, and other precision products for high-tech industries. The company recently marked its 60th anniversary and runs three shifts a day, six days a week, with 500 employees at its Plymouth headquarters.
Another locally grown company, CDF Corp., dates to 1973. The company designs and manufacturers what it calls “mindful” industrial packaging that promotes reuse of bulk shipping materials and reduces plastic waste. CDF has 150 employees in Plymouth and recently expanded one of its two buildings in the industrial park to keep up with demand.
“Business is great. We ship globally and recently opened a manufacturing facility in Germany, but Plymouth will always be our home,” said Kate Connors, the company’s marketing manager.
SmartPak, located deep in the park off Grissom Road, was founded in 1999 and has grown to about 350 employees. The company ships all things equine, but its claim to fame is innovation in horse supplements. Many horses take multiple supplements for health and nutritional support, often twice a day. SmartPak assembles custom “peel and pour” packages specifically dosed for every horse. The packs are assembled on large semi-automated packaging lines in Plymouth.
There are several other small to mid-size manufacturers in the park, including Suncor Stainless Inc., with 100 employees making stainless-steel chain, cable and a wide range of hardware products. Flexo Concepts, with 25 employees who design and builds key components for printing and coating processes.
Over the years the park has grown physically, expanding to the west along the Industrial Park Drive and Resnick Road corridors. The mix of companies has also diversified. It includes numerous health care, educational, human services businesses, as well as state government agencies and companies in other business sectors. The next health care development will be an outpatient surgery center planned for an open lot between the existing medical buildings at 45 and 41 Resnick Road.
“This park couldn’t be a more perfect location,” said Richard Quintal, owner of Quintal Brothers Produce and chair of the Plymouth Select Board. “You can get anywhere from here, right on the highways. Not through neighborhoods.”
Quintal moved his business to a new building on Scobee Circle in 2000. He’s watched the park grow dramatically from his days as a young boy in North Plymouth, riding bicycles with his friends on trails through the undeveloped land.
“The park is a success story,” Quintal said. “And we need more of it. We can’t run town government with any less people, which means we need more industrial space and business parks to help with the tax base.”
Michael Cohen can be reached at michael@plymouthindependent.org.
Take a video tour of Plymouth Industrial Park, from the street and high above