triangle.
The Highland Corporate Parks are in the heart of the golden triangle.
So says Lori C. Adamo, director of Economic Development for Woonsocket. The parks’ 300-plus acres are located in Woonsocket and Cumberland, close to the triangle that links Boston, Providence and Worcester. Adamo believes it is this location that has sparked the success of Highland Parks.
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“It serves us well when we’re selling our park and our land,” she said. “I attribute it to a lot of things. Our land is inexpensive and for the City of Woonsocket, it’s more job creation.”
Founded in 1996, the Cumberland portion of Highland Park is ahead of schedule as far as land absorption.
Scott Gibbs is president of Woonsocket Industrial Development Corporation and executive vice president of Blackstone Valley Development Foundation. He said the park wasn’t initially as successful as it has become in the past year or so.
“It’s grown like any industrial park project,” he said. “It’s slow to take off.”
Gibbs said they are averaging 14 acres per year, when his organizations estimated only about 10.
CVS recently completed a 240,000 square foot addition to its headquarters; Tiffany & Company has started construction on a 100,000 square foot building; and IKON Office Solutions will soon occupy 30,000 square feet. Tri-Literal, LLC, which is Harvard, MIT and Yale, will occupy a 150,000 square foot space in the Park to distribute books and periodicals, Unicom moved into a 30,000 square foot space, and Retail Graphics is planning a 50,000 square foot expansion.
Joel Matthews, executive director of the Redevelopment Agency of Woonsocket, said 2000 was a good year for both Woonsocket and Cumberland.
“What happened last year,” said Matthews, “is that Unicom just moved in, and CVS completed their monster addition. We have seven sites remaining and are about to make an announcement on a Fortune 500 company that is about to build a 55,000 square foot site.”
At press time the name of that Fortune 500 company was unavailable.
Adamo cited CVS as a major reason for Highland’s continued success.
“I think CVS is a catalyst as businesses that would like to do business with CVS plant themselves in Highland.”
Matthews agreed.
“A key to what has transpired is allowing the CVS expansion, and they have some additional land they’re holding as a land bank,” he said. “We hope as they continue to prosper they’ll be able to put up additional space as needed. Fortunately for us they have enough land to consider these expansions.”
More than 3,000 people work in the CVS Woonsocket headquarters.
“That’s been a key part of our economy,” said Matthews. “Our main focus is to provide more and better jobs for Northern Rhode Island residents.”
“We’ve noticed it’s been part of a shift there, where people that left Woonsocket to work twenty years ago, there’s now more people coming into Woonsocket to work,” he said. “It’s gradually reversing itself and now with the commercial growth we’ve seen, we’re 1,000 jobs for the better.”
“It’s not only the number of jobs but the quality of jobs,” he added, “where college education and advanced training is needed.”
He also said the use and increased traffic volume on Route 99 has helped the parks as well.
Mike Giuttari, president of Providence’s NAI/MG Commercial Real Estate, who represents the Highland Corporate Park agreed.
“During the late 1980s as Phase 1 of the park was being developed there was essentially no way to get to this beautiful location,” he said, “and when you did get there, the client usually saw hills and rocks.”
“Today it takes 15 minutes from downtown Providence to get into Highland Corporate Park,” he said.
Adamo said after the aforementioned Fortune 500 company moves into the park, only a small amount of acreage will be available.
“It’s one whole park with three different units,” she said. “The earliest park is full, the expanded portion is the 60 acres which we are in the process of selling a couple plots to the Fortune 500 company.”
Matthews said the lack of space is a pleasant disappointment.
“There’s no other Highland Corporate Park we can pull out of our hip pockets,” he said.
Adamo joked that once the park was full, the towns would just sit back and reap the taxes. She then said in seriousness that would probably not be the case.
“Our mayor is a very proactive lady so we actually will certainly not sit idle once our park is full,” she said. “There certainly is a lot of opportunity to grow our city and we look forward to it.”
