In Groton, A Company With No Room To Grow

In less than six weeks, Robert Wood will open a production plant in Groton.

He’s starting a water collection and purification business, and it’s going well. To handle the orders he already has, he’ll need 200 employees and 100,000 square feet of space in the first six months.

That may prove close to impossible. Wood’s future plant is located at the Mystic Business Park, LLC on Flanders Road, and there are no public utilities.

 “I really didn’t expect space to be a problem. I really didn’t,” said Wood, president of AirWell H20, Inc. “Having found this out was quite shocking, but also finding out that the utilities never have been completed.”

In May, the Groton Town Council authorized the public works director to look into how much it would cost to extend utilities across Interstate 95 to the industrial area and to 82 acres of developable land. Mystic Business Park, LLC, houses about 30 businesses, some of which would like to expand but cannot.

Public Works Director Gary Schneider said the department hired the engineering firm Fuss & O’Neill of Manchester, this summer to work with the state Department of Transportation and determine the mechanics of bringing water across the I-95 interchange alone. Once that work is completed, they'll assess the cost of the full project.

The most recent calculation was done in February 2008, and estimated the cost of the full utility route, which could also be done in phases, at $14 million.

The Fuss & O'Neill study is expected to be done in the next 120 days, which would put it in this year’s budget cycle, Schneider said.  Ultimately, the project could end up in the town’s capital improvement program and go to referendum in November 2012, but such a move would have to be approved by the Town Council and Representative Town Meeting.

Richard Dixon, a lawyer who represents an industrial park in the Flanders Road area, said Groton can't afford to lose growing businesses like Wood's company.

“The big tragedy in all this is this has been a project that has been talked about since I was on the town council in the 1980s,” he said. “It has run into one unnecessary road block after another. We can’t turn our back on it any longer. It has to happen.”

Wood returned to Groton from California a year and a half ago, because he said he wanted to stay in the area. He leased 5,000 square feet of space to start, believing he could expand. His production area opens Nov. 1.

If he could, he said he'd build a plant on land adjacent to the industrial park and fill it. If he can't build because of the lack of utilities, he'll keep 5 percent of his business here, or whatever he can accommodate. Then he'll take the rest elsewhere.

“I grew up around here. I want to give something back to the community,” Wood said. “It’s really about jobs. Everyone knows that’s what we need the most.”