Report from the Shop (Billerica)

ck4049 wrote:Excellent arial photos! Is there still an RDC or two buried in the woods up there?

Nope. The two rotting specimens that have been parked at BET for the last 11 years were the ex-Billerica RDC's.

Wonder if there is any interest in turning the site into an intermodal terminal for UPS. One of UPS' largest distribution centers in New England is only a few miles away.

F-line to Dudley via Park wrote:

ck4049 wrote:Excellent arial photos! Is there still an RDC or two buried in the woods up there?

Nope. The two rotting specimens that have been parked at BET for the last 11 years were the ex-Billerica RDC's.

There were two more (6114 & 6917) that went into the turntable pit at BET back in '72 and haven't been moved back to the city since. Last I heard of them they were buried in the woods behind the main shop building. The two at BET right now are 6213 & 6214.

CPF363 wrote:Wonder if there is any interest in turning the site into an intermodal terminal for UPS. One of UPS' largest distribution centers in New England is only a few miles away.

There's been lots of interest, but because of the site's Superfund status and the glacial pace of the cleanup due to the EPA being perennially underfunded, it--like most Superfund cleanups--has run years behind schedule. The wastewater pools were only capped last year.

There's just not a whole lot you're allowed to do when it comes to building near a Superfund site, even when there are parcels onsite that are completely free of contamination and pose no risk. It's just not worth the extra hoops to jump through to make sure new construction doesn't disturb containment in the cleanup areas, and of course the land value is going to be crap until the EPA finishes its job so there's low motivation on the landlord's (MBTA) end to attract new tenants when it can just sit on it and fetch a better price when the cleanup is complete. If anything, you might be able to judge that progress by when the wrecking balls come for the Shops and the rest of the derelict buildings...because that would be the outward sign that the state actually sees some rising land value it can capitalize on sooner rather than later.

It doesn't help, either, that Pan Am hasn't feigned any interest whatsoever in pitching any redev plans for a freight-centric business park on that site. That would raise the immediate value of the parcels enough to put a hop in the state's step to get moving on site prep, since they'd know they had a partner pushing a viable redev concept. But this is Pan Am. Moreover, it's the same Pan Am that's been deeply and intimately involved with the state on peddling real estate at Northpoint in Cambridge on the old B&M yards. So Pan Am has proven to the state that they know how to move real estate around a well-packaged redevelopment concept. All they can read here by comparison with Billerica is the company's complete disinterest in doing the same, and disinterest despite this site serving PAR's core business. So why would anyone at the T feel motivated to pick up the pace when that's the overwhelming vibe they're getting from their only plausible partner for making money off that site. It's not worth their time and energy until the railroad TBD that succeeds PAR gets into town and starts kicking around rail-centric business ideas for the area.

I can only imagine the uprear people would make when they hear UPS trailers will start to roll in there. They are still fit to be tied about Waste Management going into the Globe building. Apparently people either A) forgot how many trucks the Globe used to run or B) foolishly thought the building would be vacant forever.

Not to mention with the planning board in that town it could never be done.

Has anyone been around Iron Horse Park lately and saw how the screamers are holding up?