Katelyn Baker
Well-Known Member
Years ago, 1600 Osgood St. was home to Lucent Technologies (and before that, Western Electric), employing thousands and playing a vital role in the budding telecommunications industry before the plant's closure.
And if Town Meeting voters consent this spring, it will soon be reborn into a massive marijuana farm.
"What we needed was a new industry that comes to Massachusetts," Jeff Goldstein, a principal of Ozzy Properties, which owns the property, said to the Board of Selectmen Monday. "And this is a new industry that got plopped in Massachusetts in November, and it's coming. It has to be here, and it has to be in Massachusetts."
Goldstein is filing a citizen's petition warrant article to amend the town's zoning bylaw to allow cannabis cultivation at the 1600 Osgood St. site with no size restriction.
Currently, that overlay district has a 20,000-square-foot size restriction for cultivation facilities.
Goldstein is also filing a Town Meeting article to authorize the town manager to negotiate a host community agreement with either the property owner or a cannabis company to set up such a grow facility.
There are no plans to operate a dispensary at the facility.
A plant that withered
The history of 1600 Osgood St. is a tragic one. Decades ago, Western Electric — which opened more than 70 years ago — was an economic powerhouse in the region and the largest employer in North Andover.
After AT&T took over and split Western Electric into pieces, that plant became Lucent Technologies in the 1990s, a manufacturing arm of AT&T. It still thrived, and it remained the town's largest employer (as well as one of the largest employers in the Merrimack Valley).
But in the early 2000s, things had changed. Lucent merged with Paris-based Alcatel and decided to gradually close its operations in the North Andover plant to recover from major profit losses. Lucent began cutting jobs like a weed whacker to a briar patch, and eventually the plant — this 1.8 million-square-foot behemoth — was closed completely.
Thousands of workers were unemployed, and thousands of families suffered. It's considered one of the darkest times in Merrimack Valley economic history.
In 2003, as Lucent was winding down operations at the facility, Ozzy Properties purchased the property and converted it into a multi-unit commercial and industrial facility by the time Lucent officially left in 2008.
The town has been working on a master plan for Osgood Landing since 2005, complete with tax increment financing (TIF), with which towns can set aside tax revenues of a business for economic development.
A growing interest
But today, the property employs a combined total of about 1,000 people, a far cry from the 13,000 who worked there under Western Electric, and the vision of 2005 has not even come close to being met. The property remains only 41 percent occupied, as businesses have not been as drawn to the site as hoped.
Ozzy Properties, which has been installing solar panels on the building since 2008, is currently working with Osgood Solar create a massive solar farm on the site, complete with solar panel-covered carports on its thousands of parking spaces. And Osgood Solar will pay the town more than $86,000 per year and $192,000 from a net metering credit agreement. But that, too, is a far cry from what town officials and residents had hoped for from this former economic engine.
"The truth is, 1600 Osgood St. is not being used to its fullest potential," said North Andover resident Tom Lee, a senior partner at 451 Marketing in Boston, which represents Ozzy Properties on its Osgood Landing promotion, on Monday while presenting the case for the grow facility. "The property is a 1.8 million-square-foot extraordinary manufacturing warehouse and office space. The facility is best suited for large-scale manufacturing."
And that's where the cannabis comes in.
Indeed, the legal marijuana industry has made great strides in recent years, as more and more states have approved medical marijuana and now states — including Massachusetts — are approving recreational use of the drug.
In 2012, Colorado and Washington became the first states to legalize marijuana for recreational use. Other states soon followed. Today, 28 states and Washington D.C., have legalized medical marijuana, and eight states and Washington D.C., have legalized recreational marijuana.
Massachusetts legalized medical marijuana in 2012 and recreational marijuana in 2016. This has led to a surge in demand for dispensaries as well as growing facilities, as all legal cannabis for sale must be grown in the state.
Currently, there are nine communities in the state with existing or developing grow facilities — Amesbury, Ayer, Quincy, Fitchburg, Franklin, Lowell, Brockton, Georgetown and Milford — and 97 dispensaries somewhere in the approval process (nine in Essex County alone).
That increase in demand has been met with innovation, and cannabis cultivation has jumped to the forefront of modern agriculture when it comes to efficient ways to grow plant life, Lee said.
"Because of the design of the infrastructure, Ozzy and the town can be the first to market large-scale, high-tech cultivation space, allowing the town to capture significant benefits as a host community," he added.
When Lucent was at the site, the town saw an average of almost $1 million in tax revenues from the property. But in fiscal 2016, the town saw only $340,582 in tax revenues from it.
Lee said a cannabis cultivation host agreement could bring much more than that to the town's coffers.
"The revenues for the town could potentially return to, if not exceed, the levels enjoyed when Lucent occupied the building," Lee said.
Lee and Goldstein also said the facility would bring between 2,000 and 2,500 jobs to the facility — jobs ranging from farming to research, many with high salaries.
Unanswered questions
But in order for this massive agricultural powerhouse to become a reality, the related articles have to be approved by Town Meeting.
"I think this is a really interesting idea," Selectman Phil DeCologero said. "I think it sounds like a neat concept, and I see a lot of potential. But you're going to be going to Town Meeting to ask for a zoning change for a particular property. And I think that if you shopped at the Market Basket in North Andover and wore a shirt that said, 'I am responsible for the Osgood site,' you would be stopped at every aisle. Everybody up here has to run for office, and it is perhaps the number one, if not perhaps the number two, topic that we get engaged on, which is: What's happening with that site?"
Goldstein replied the facility was designed as a manufacturing facility, and regardless of plans to draw in a variety of commercial companies, it will always be best suited for manufacturing.
When it comes to large-scale agriculture, one thing that comes to mind is water. And a grow facility as big as the one proposed or Osgood Landing would require a lot of water.
Lee said the water is recycled, creating very little waste, and a filtration system recycles any of the water not consumed by the plants. About 70 percent of the water used is recycled, Goldstein said, but a grow of that size would probably need a total 100,000 gallons of water a day — And that means 30,000 gallons of fresh water a day.
Goldstein said his company is working with the Volcani Institute, which is the research and development arm of Israel's Department of Agriculture. Goldstein is working in Israel and said he's amazed at how much progress that country's made in cannabis medicine.
"One of the things the Volcani Institute is looking at, and one of the things that's always of interest in Israel, is low water use and efficient water use," Goldstein said.
Goldstein said the facility would either go through the town for that water or build wells. Lucent had many wells on the property when it was there.
"This summer was a rough summer," Selectman Tracy Watson said. "You couldn't water your lawn. It may be 100,000, could be 30,000 — You never know which numbers are right until it's up and running and you actually know. So let's say 50,000 gallons a day. You can't do that when we're in a drought if you're pulling off of Lake Cochichewick. You can't do that period off of Lake Cochichewick."
But there's still no concrete plan for where the grow facility would get 30,000 gallons of water a day.
"I think this question will come up at Town Meeting, definitely, and people are going to be looking for definitive answers to the questions," Watson said.
And what about traffic? Since dispensaries restock daily, if the grow facility delivered to 20 dispensaries, that would mean 20 trucks a day leaving and entering to and from Route 125. Goldstein said the trucks coming in and out of the facility would be small since marijuana is light in weight.
Then there are security concerns. Goldstein said the facility had very high security when Ozzy Properties bought it — so secure that he had to have an armed escort to walk through it — and that it can be made that secure again.
But with a highly popular drug being produced in mass quantity, there are sure to be concerns about crime, even with the facility being across the street from the North Andover Police Department.
And there's also the issue of the soccer fields located next to the facility — soccer fields with uncertain fate if a new manufacturer moves in.
There's also the issue of who actually grows the marijuana.
"If you're asking me who I'm going to partner with and who I'm going to bring in, I honestly do not know how to grow cannabis," Goldstein said. "I've never grown cannabis in my life and don't have a clue. There are cultivation firms that have gotten started... So we're looking at several different options on this. The point is, until we have zoning, nobody really wants to spend much time with us."
Selectmen suggested Goldstein and his associates have solid answers to as many of these questions as possible before the March 6 deadline for citizen petitions.
News Moderator: Katelyn Baker 420 MAGAZINE ®
Full Article: Cannabis Farm Proposed For Osgood Landing
Author: Bryan McGonigle
Contact: 978-685-5128
Photo Credit: Matthew Staver
Website: Wicked Local North Of Boston
And if Town Meeting voters consent this spring, it will soon be reborn into a massive marijuana farm.
"What we needed was a new industry that comes to Massachusetts," Jeff Goldstein, a principal of Ozzy Properties, which owns the property, said to the Board of Selectmen Monday. "And this is a new industry that got plopped in Massachusetts in November, and it's coming. It has to be here, and it has to be in Massachusetts."
Goldstein is filing a citizen's petition warrant article to amend the town's zoning bylaw to allow cannabis cultivation at the 1600 Osgood St. site with no size restriction.
Currently, that overlay district has a 20,000-square-foot size restriction for cultivation facilities.
Goldstein is also filing a Town Meeting article to authorize the town manager to negotiate a host community agreement with either the property owner or a cannabis company to set up such a grow facility.
There are no plans to operate a dispensary at the facility.
A plant that withered
The history of 1600 Osgood St. is a tragic one. Decades ago, Western Electric — which opened more than 70 years ago — was an economic powerhouse in the region and the largest employer in North Andover.
After AT&T took over and split Western Electric into pieces, that plant became Lucent Technologies in the 1990s, a manufacturing arm of AT&T. It still thrived, and it remained the town's largest employer (as well as one of the largest employers in the Merrimack Valley).
But in the early 2000s, things had changed. Lucent merged with Paris-based Alcatel and decided to gradually close its operations in the North Andover plant to recover from major profit losses. Lucent began cutting jobs like a weed whacker to a briar patch, and eventually the plant — this 1.8 million-square-foot behemoth — was closed completely.
Thousands of workers were unemployed, and thousands of families suffered. It's considered one of the darkest times in Merrimack Valley economic history.
In 2003, as Lucent was winding down operations at the facility, Ozzy Properties purchased the property and converted it into a multi-unit commercial and industrial facility by the time Lucent officially left in 2008.
The town has been working on a master plan for Osgood Landing since 2005, complete with tax increment financing (TIF), with which towns can set aside tax revenues of a business for economic development.
A growing interest
But today, the property employs a combined total of about 1,000 people, a far cry from the 13,000 who worked there under Western Electric, and the vision of 2005 has not even come close to being met. The property remains only 41 percent occupied, as businesses have not been as drawn to the site as hoped.
Ozzy Properties, which has been installing solar panels on the building since 2008, is currently working with Osgood Solar create a massive solar farm on the site, complete with solar panel-covered carports on its thousands of parking spaces. And Osgood Solar will pay the town more than $86,000 per year and $192,000 from a net metering credit agreement. But that, too, is a far cry from what town officials and residents had hoped for from this former economic engine.
"The truth is, 1600 Osgood St. is not being used to its fullest potential," said North Andover resident Tom Lee, a senior partner at 451 Marketing in Boston, which represents Ozzy Properties on its Osgood Landing promotion, on Monday while presenting the case for the grow facility. "The property is a 1.8 million-square-foot extraordinary manufacturing warehouse and office space. The facility is best suited for large-scale manufacturing."
And that's where the cannabis comes in.
Indeed, the legal marijuana industry has made great strides in recent years, as more and more states have approved medical marijuana and now states — including Massachusetts — are approving recreational use of the drug.
In 2012, Colorado and Washington became the first states to legalize marijuana for recreational use. Other states soon followed. Today, 28 states and Washington D.C., have legalized medical marijuana, and eight states and Washington D.C., have legalized recreational marijuana.
Massachusetts legalized medical marijuana in 2012 and recreational marijuana in 2016. This has led to a surge in demand for dispensaries as well as growing facilities, as all legal cannabis for sale must be grown in the state.
Currently, there are nine communities in the state with existing or developing grow facilities — Amesbury, Ayer, Quincy, Fitchburg, Franklin, Lowell, Brockton, Georgetown and Milford — and 97 dispensaries somewhere in the approval process (nine in Essex County alone).
That increase in demand has been met with innovation, and cannabis cultivation has jumped to the forefront of modern agriculture when it comes to efficient ways to grow plant life, Lee said.
"Because of the design of the infrastructure, Ozzy and the town can be the first to market large-scale, high-tech cultivation space, allowing the town to capture significant benefits as a host community," he added.
When Lucent was at the site, the town saw an average of almost $1 million in tax revenues from the property. But in fiscal 2016, the town saw only $340,582 in tax revenues from it.
Lee said a cannabis cultivation host agreement could bring much more than that to the town's coffers.
"The revenues for the town could potentially return to, if not exceed, the levels enjoyed when Lucent occupied the building," Lee said.
Lee and Goldstein also said the facility would bring between 2,000 and 2,500 jobs to the facility — jobs ranging from farming to research, many with high salaries.
Unanswered questions
But in order for this massive agricultural powerhouse to become a reality, the related articles have to be approved by Town Meeting.
"I think this is a really interesting idea," Selectman Phil DeCologero said. "I think it sounds like a neat concept, and I see a lot of potential. But you're going to be going to Town Meeting to ask for a zoning change for a particular property. And I think that if you shopped at the Market Basket in North Andover and wore a shirt that said, 'I am responsible for the Osgood site,' you would be stopped at every aisle. Everybody up here has to run for office, and it is perhaps the number one, if not perhaps the number two, topic that we get engaged on, which is: What's happening with that site?"
Goldstein replied the facility was designed as a manufacturing facility, and regardless of plans to draw in a variety of commercial companies, it will always be best suited for manufacturing.
When it comes to large-scale agriculture, one thing that comes to mind is water. And a grow facility as big as the one proposed or Osgood Landing would require a lot of water.
Lee said the water is recycled, creating very little waste, and a filtration system recycles any of the water not consumed by the plants. About 70 percent of the water used is recycled, Goldstein said, but a grow of that size would probably need a total 100,000 gallons of water a day — And that means 30,000 gallons of fresh water a day.
Goldstein said his company is working with the Volcani Institute, which is the research and development arm of Israel's Department of Agriculture. Goldstein is working in Israel and said he's amazed at how much progress that country's made in cannabis medicine.
"One of the things the Volcani Institute is looking at, and one of the things that's always of interest in Israel, is low water use and efficient water use," Goldstein said.
Goldstein said the facility would either go through the town for that water or build wells. Lucent had many wells on the property when it was there.
"This summer was a rough summer," Selectman Tracy Watson said. "You couldn't water your lawn. It may be 100,000, could be 30,000 — You never know which numbers are right until it's up and running and you actually know. So let's say 50,000 gallons a day. You can't do that when we're in a drought if you're pulling off of Lake Cochichewick. You can't do that period off of Lake Cochichewick."
But there's still no concrete plan for where the grow facility would get 30,000 gallons of water a day.
"I think this question will come up at Town Meeting, definitely, and people are going to be looking for definitive answers to the questions," Watson said.
And what about traffic? Since dispensaries restock daily, if the grow facility delivered to 20 dispensaries, that would mean 20 trucks a day leaving and entering to and from Route 125. Goldstein said the trucks coming in and out of the facility would be small since marijuana is light in weight.
Then there are security concerns. Goldstein said the facility had very high security when Ozzy Properties bought it — so secure that he had to have an armed escort to walk through it — and that it can be made that secure again.
But with a highly popular drug being produced in mass quantity, there are sure to be concerns about crime, even with the facility being across the street from the North Andover Police Department.
And there's also the issue of the soccer fields located next to the facility — soccer fields with uncertain fate if a new manufacturer moves in.
There's also the issue of who actually grows the marijuana.
"If you're asking me who I'm going to partner with and who I'm going to bring in, I honestly do not know how to grow cannabis," Goldstein said. "I've never grown cannabis in my life and don't have a clue. There are cultivation firms that have gotten started... So we're looking at several different options on this. The point is, until we have zoning, nobody really wants to spend much time with us."
Selectmen suggested Goldstein and his associates have solid answers to as many of these questions as possible before the March 6 deadline for citizen petitions.
News Moderator: Katelyn Baker 420 MAGAZINE ®
Full Article: Cannabis Farm Proposed For Osgood Landing
Author: Bryan McGonigle
Contact: 978-685-5128
Photo Credit: Matthew Staver
Website: Wicked Local North Of Boston
