Click the link to view the story as printed in NHBR From The Ground Up June 26-July 9 2015 issue.
FROM THE GROUND UP:
The Prologis project
Dacon Corporation, TFMoran, others team up to create
614,000-square-foot distribution center near Manchester airport
As the Manchester-Boston Regional Airport grew larger and busier in recent years, a large parcel of land just off Raymond Wieczorek Drive, to the south, sat conspicuously empty. It remained that way until Denver-based Prologis, one of the world’s largest industrial developers, teamed up with the local engineering firm of TFMoran and Natick, Massachusetts-based Dacon Corporation to get started on a plan to convert the vacant land into a state-of-the-art distribution center for the aerospace industry.
The Prologis project, at 52 Pettengill Road, is now home to a 614,000-square foot, high-bay distribution center for United Parcel Service Supply Chain Solutions and jet engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney. The new facility, which sits adjacent to the airport, is a welcome addition that will benefit the immediate Londonderry/Manchester area and the greater southern New Hampshire region.
“At full capacity, this project will bring upwards of 400 well-paying jobs to the area,” said Chuck Reilly, director and vice president of Dacon Corporation. “When you consider that land sat undeveloped for more than 100 years, and within a 15-month period, there’s been almost one million square feet of new development – including the UPS facility and a nearby Federal Express Ground facility, just to the north of us – it’s a huge economic engine for Londonderry and the Manchester airport area.”
Construction on the building – a conventional, high bay steel and precast concrete panel building with approximately 24,000 square feet of office space, 400 parking spaces and room for as many as 100 tractor trailers – started in July of 2014. UPS and Pratt & Whitney are currently in the process of occupying the new facility. The building has 100 percent backup generation power and is almost 100 percent automated for pick and pack warehouse operations. The entire project came in right on schedule and on budget.
“The schedule was a real challenge,” said TFMoran President Robert Duval. “The team needed to get a 14-acre building designed, permitted, and up-and-running in less than a year. We sat down with the team, worked out a strategy, and then everyone just rolled up their sleeves, got to work, and made it happen. Partnering with the local, state and federal approval agencies was a critical part of that success.”
In addition to Prologis, Dacon, and TFMoran, Reilly praised the local construction firm of Continental Paving as “absolutely key partners in this effort.” He also credited the Town of Londonderry, City of Manchester and the Manchester-Boston Regional Airport for their willingness to allow the project to meet its aggressive schedule of permitting and approvals.
Completion of the project has allowed Londonderry to see Pettengill Road get underway, connecting Raymond Wieczorek Drive to Industrial Drive, which has been in planning for over a decade.
Dacon Corporation is a Natick, Mass.- based firm now in its 30th year of operation. It was founded by a group of architects and construction professionals who believed that by combining their skills, they could provide the best building solutions. Dacon, a fully-integrated design and construction management firm, specializes in design-build contracting, providing an efficient approach and saving the client time and money through the course of any given project.
The Pettengill Road facility is just the latest project Dacon Corporation is completing in the southern part of the state. Among the projects Dacon has also constructed in the region are the 388,000-square-foot Delta Education building on Northwest Boulevard in Nashua; the 100,000-squarefoot, three-story Brookstone Inc. worldwide headquarters in Merrimack; and a new 150,000-square-foot chocolate production facility in Stratham for renowned Swiss candy company, Lindt & Sprüngli (USA), Inc., which is nearing completion.
Bedford-based TFMoran is a consulting firm specializing in civil engineering, structural engineering, traffic engineering, transportation engineering, land surveying, landscape architecture, environmental permitting, stormwater monitoring and construction support services since 1968.