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Business park on upswing
 New
companies, expansion add hundreds of jobs to city
By Aaron Nicodemus, Standard-Times staff writer
NEW BEDFORD — The New Bedford Business Park had the best
year in its history in 2006, with six companies either
relocating or expanding in the park, and three new roads
allowing for more to come.
Tom Davis, executive director of the Greater New Bedford
Industrial Foundation, said the park never had more than
four new or expanded companies in any one previous year.
The expansions included two new companies, Commercial
Drywall and Horacio's Sheet Metal, as well as a small
electricity plant powered by methane gas from the Crapo
Hill Landfill, operated by Commonwealth New Bedford
Energy. There were expansions to existing park tenants
Natco, Five Star Surgical, and Depuy Johnson & Johnson.
First Highland Corp., a national developer, recently
purchased the large vacant Velvet Drive Transmission
building at the entrance to the park and is renovating
it for use by multiple manufacturers.
AFC Cable, which did not appear in the announcements
yesterday, is moving into its huge, new facility in the
park sometime in 2007. The plant is already under
construction.
"This is an all-time record for us, dating back to
1960," said Mr. Davis of the park's expansion in 2006.
All told, the new companies and the expansions brought
250 jobs to the business park this year, according to
Mr. Davis.
Several business leaders spoke about why they chose to
expand in the business park.
Natco Inc. is a wholesale food distribution company that
was founded 100 years ago in a Park Street basement. It
has since grown into a multimillion-dollar corporation
that employs 130 people with an average wage of $60,000
per year.
Mark Eisenberg, CEO of Natco, said the center of the
company's distribution area is not New Bedford. But the
company has chosen to stay, and expand.
"We have built in New Bedford because it is our home,"
he said.
David Cabral, another New Bedford native, and his
partners built up Five Star Surgical from a tiny space
in the basement of a city mill building into a
37,500-square-foot facility in the business park. The
company recently purchased a surgical product
manufacturer from Taunton, and is moving its employees
and business into the company's recently built addition.
"We've always wanted to build our business here," he
said.
A small, electric-generation plant has also been
constructed near the landfill, turning methane gas
produced by buried, decaying garbage into 3.3 megawatts
of electricity.
George Aronson, principal of Commonwealth Resource
Management Co., said the plant sells its power to a
commercial marketer, delivered into the electric grid by
NStar.
"It's green electricity," he said.
For the past seven years, much of the region's job
growth has occurred in the New Bedford Business Park.
The park has been in an expansion mode since 1999, with
the number of businesses there doubling to 36. The total
number of employees in the park has increased from 3,000
to 4,500, with a total payroll of $250 million.
And there is more expansion to come, Mr. Davis said. The
three new roads open up 125 acres in 10 separate lots to
development. The park is set to have another six
projects completed this year, bringing 450 more jobs
into the park, Mr. Davis said. Seventy-five percent of
the newly opened land is in Dartmouth, and 25 percent in
New Bedford.
The business park has become the top generator of jobs
for the region, Mr. Davis said. And the jobs the park
has created are of high quality.
The average pay for a blue-collar job in the business
park is $17.50 per hour, with high-quality fringe
benefits. Mr. Davis said about 60 percent of the park's
employees live in New Bedford, 25 percent in Dartmouth
and the remaining 15 percent from other communities.
"Regardless of where you build the road, it benefits
working families in both communities," he said.
Contact Aaron Nicodemus at
anicodemus@s-t.com
Date of Publication: December 06, 2006 on Page A06 |
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