With less than 8,000 square feet of office space and 30,000 square feet of light warehouse space left to be leased, Morrison said, the mill complex is close to 90% occupied. “Because there isn’t a lot of retail here, the average person doesn’t even know all that’s going on, because you can’t see the parking lot from the road,” he explained, adding that the vibrancy at the mill has translated into new opportunities for Palmer and especially its rebounding downtown. He said the center has become a hub of economic development that is successful, even if it isn’t visible to many in the community. “There’s not a lot of industry left in the area, so if you have a business and you can hire people and house your company locally, it’s good.”Īt present, there are 22 businesses in the mill that together employ more than 200 people, said Morrison, noting that, while this number represents a fraction of the workforce at Tambrands at the height of that operation, it is significant to a community that needs jobs, as well as a spark to support other service- and hospitality-related businesses in the community.Īnd the mill has become just that, said Lenny Weake, who wears two hats, one as the executive director for the Quaboag Hills Chamber of Commerce and the other as the owner of Alternative Options, Affordable Caskets and Urns in the PTC. “It’s a great old building, and I’m a Palmer girl, so I like to keep it local,” said Murray, who became one of the first tenants on the fifth floor of the main manufacturing building and still lives in town. And, for the most part, there is a decidedly local flavor - figuratively, and in at least one, literally - to this mix of ventures. So Morrison and his team widened their sights, and, over the past 15 years, the mill has become home to everything from a library-relocation service to a business selling caskets and urns to a chocolatier. Palmer native Lisa Murray has made her growing transportation business part of the revival of the PTC. The Technology Park at Springfield Technical Community College was opening at the same time (1999), and it and other properties in urban centers such as Boston and Worcester were proving to be much more attractive locations than the former manufacturing town off exit 8 of the Turnpike. But while these intentions were good, the timing and location were not. Indeed, the original plan for the mill, said John Morrison, a former employee at Tambrands who later started his own construction and landscaping business and then acquired the mill, was to attract the technology-related businesses that were emerging in huge numbers with the dot-com boom. She found all that and more at what is now called the Palmer Technology Center, a name that is somewhat of a misnomer - there are not many technology-related businesses in the complex - but that speaks to how the reinvention of the old mill has been a slow, steady battle that hasn’t exactly gone according to script. Several years ago, Murray’s company, Transportation Advisors, which offers nationwide consulting for trucking-industry compliance through Federal Department of Transportation regulations - specifically drug and alcohol testing - needed accessible, affordable space in which to grow. Today, however, the sprawling, 325,000-square-foot complex is a different kind of economic driver, and small-business owners like Murray have become the face of the landmark - even if their faces are not seen by many people. But when the plant closed for good in 1997, a few years of vacancy and stillness prevailed on Main Street, and the mill became another symbol of what once was in this blue-collar region. It kept the downtown of Three Rivers, one of four villages in Palmer, buzzing, especially at lunchtime. It was the epicenter of economic development since as far back as she can remember. Having grown up in Palmer, Lisa Murray lived in the shadow of the massive Tambrands plant, built in 1872. On the banks of the Chicopee River, the Palmer Technology Center hasn’t exactly lived up to its name, but it has become home to a wide array of businesses - and jobs.
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