PLAINVILLE — A life sciences facility is now planned for the location in the town’s business park that had been earmarked for a controversial trucking warehouse.
ThermoFisher Scientific/Brammer Bio plans to build a facility at 5 Commerce Blvd., which is off South Street (Route 1A).
The business deals with cell and gene therapy, and 150 to 250 high-paying jobs are expected.
Plans for what would have been a 288,000-square-foot warehouse had elicited strong opposition from neighbors concerned about truck traffic, noise and air pollution.
The warehouse, which would have had numerous truck bays, sparked a heavy turnout of residents to planning board hearings last year as they were worried about the impact on their homes and property values.
The latest plans have eased those concerns.
While the previous plan had gone through town boards last year and received approval from the planning board, the change in use is now making its way through local permitting.
Neighbors are still concerned with traffic flow, and have turned out to recent selectmen meetings where proposed traffic changes have also been taken up. Many relate to Cross Street, which Commerce Boulevard connects to.
Selectmen have voted to support changes to the intersection of Cross Street and Commerce Boulevard that would place an island in Cross Street to limit traffic speeds and restrict trucks from turning from Cross Street westbound into Commerce Boulevard, board Chairman Jeff Johnson said.
Also, a traffic signal is still planned for the South Street/Commerce Boulevard intersection. All traffic from the site will be directed to that intersection, according to the town’s planning and development director Chris Yarworth.
“The planning board and board of selectmen are both excited about this proposed change of use. High-end biomedical facilities are one of the uses that were hoped for in the business park, and this use is far more beneficial to the community than the previous trucking warehouse,” Yarworth said. “It will bring high-paying jobs, less truck traffic, less noise, and more tax revenue, and will hopefully provide a springboard to bring other similar facilities to the town in the future.
ThermoFisher/Brammer Bio has approval from the zoning board and still needs to return to the planning board to revise the site layout to add parking in place of the truck bays, revise the traffic plan, and for other minor changes, Yarworth added.
The developer, a real estate investment firm, NorthBridge Partners of Wakefield, Mass., did not have a user slated for the warehouse.
“While marketing, the new use came up,” Yarworth said.
The property is expected to be sold to ThermoFisher/Brammer Bio.
Construction is tentatively planned to begin later this year and the building is slated to be operational in 2022.
Brammer Bio, which ThermoFisher bought last year, has more than 700 employees, with facilities in Cambridge, Somerville and Lexington as well as in Florida.
Stephen Peterson can be reached at 508-236-0377.
