NORTON – A double whammy of bad economic news has hit this town of 19,222 recently, with its largest employer and taxpayer firming up plans to move its operations south and a second major business shutting its doors.
Earlier this month, residents in Lakeville, Mass., voted 396-140 to approve a 13-year package of tax breaks to get Sysco Boston LLC to move its food-distribution center from Norton to a new 650,000-square-foot building it plans to construct on the former site of Lakeville State Hospital, which closed in 1992.
Sysco Boston, formerly Hallsmith-Sysco Food Services LLC, is the largest employer in Norton, with 879 workers as of last December, and its top taxpayer, paying $281,090 this fiscal year, or 1.1 percent of Norton’s total levy, according to town documents. It is a subsidiary of Houston-based Sysco Corp., the nation’s largest distributor of food to restaurants.
Officials in Norton told The Sun Chronicle they will make an effort to keep Sysco Boston there, but a spokesman said the company wants to make the move to Lakeville.
Meanwhile, General Motors Corp. is closing its 400,000-square-foot parts distribution center in the Norton Commerce Center. The company first announced plans to shutter it as part of its bankruptcy reorganization last year, but U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., convinced then-CEO Fritz Henderson to keep it open an extra 14 months.
GM opened the Norton plant just six years ago, in 2004, after securing tax breaks from the town that would have been worth an estimated $2.6 million over 20 years.
The facility employed 478 workers at its peak, but was down to about 80 when GM announced its decision last year, and it now has just 38 workers, Mark Ridenour, the United Auto Workers’ local leader, told the union’s annual convention in Detroit earlier this month.
Even with 38 workers, GM would have been the eighth-largest employer in Norton as of last December, according to town statistics. The automaker is Norton’s seventh-biggest taxpayer this fiscal year, paying $143,828 or 0.6 percent of the town’s total levy.
