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what's going on um in the town of tewksbury and and our other middlesex three communities um but we also want to use them as a way to build relationships um and and connections um even if it's virtually so so a few things that we're gonna ask from you is and i try to look at these types of events as um as much of a real meeting as possible we're going to keep it as a meeting not as a webinar um so in terms of trying to look at it as real meeting we ask that if you haven't already if you could put your name on in your company in your zoom box so people know who you are um thank you for attending our virtual network and i think most of you have been on they seem like they're getting more and more popular and it's really just a way to continue keep connections alive um we are recording this event as well too just an update on that uh but also if you um want to connect with other people we ask that you put your credentials your name your linkedin information email whatever in the chat box and we're gonna um send all of the contact information to everybody on the registration list again just another way to keep connections um alive um we've got we've got a great panel a great discussion um so i'm looking forward to to all of our speakers today and thank you to our speakers i'm starting with steve sadwick the assistant tau manager who's going to give us an overview on what's happening in tewksbury um as well as bob buckley of raymond bronstein who'll do an overview of the home depot distribution facility and then um corrine moleski from ahb architects and bob mccormick from avid engineers they're going to tag team on the expansion of my chronic and then many of you know rob anderson formerly from the town of billerica we're going to reintroduce him as our mass development uh new contact for mass development and um if you guys don't know um fulcrum we want to thank fulcrum associates for sponsoring this event if you don't know them they're a well-known construction management firm i know bill jean was on the earlier discussion as well too so if you don't know bill i recommend you you reach out to him and we have his contact information there great guy we have a number of upcoming events we try not to do more than one event a week but next week's going to be our exception just because the holiday season and and i encourage you to attend both if your schedule allows um the first one's on the changing face of retail it's part of our real estate webinar series obviously a lot was happening with retail even before covet cover certainly exasperated this uh there's so many unknowns and what's gonna happen with retail but we've got a great panel to kind of give some inside information and and on thursday we've got mark melnick coming to talk about the economic and employment outlook for 2021 this is the third time mark's coming it has come to middlesex three uh i can't say enough good things about him he's thoughtful and he's engaging um judy burke and i were just saying every time we talk with him we feel smarter he's just you walk away learning something so i i highly recommend attending both of them as well too and as we talked about earlier um certainly there's a lot going on in the state as well with the mbta cuts on this uh just updates in terms of covid on their upcoming events we're not going to go through all of this but we just we encourage you to follow us on linkedin and twitter we hope not to provide too much information but we'd like to keep you informed and so maybe we can put the linkedin twitter information in the chat box so that you you know what it is so we'd love for you to follow us and uh as we talked about earlier um there are changes going on at middlesex 3 as well too and if you haven't met steph fritz i you're kind of seeing double there two steps in the middle six three sorry about that it either makes your life more difficult or less i'm still not certain but um but if you haven't met steph i i encourage you to reach out to her she's she's um stepping up and doing a lot of the work that that aaron used to do she's great to be a great person to um to connect with um so i think that's that's where we stand um and i'll stop sharing and i'm going to perfect uh and then i'm going to turn it over to um to steve i it jesus it's kind of like bingo here i can never keep track of everyone um so if you're not talking if you just put yourself on mute and steve the attention is going to be on you today so thank you for joining us sure um and sorry i missed uh possibly the introductions because i was bouncing in and out internet issues anyways steve sandwick assistant town manager in tewksbury and um also been with middlesex iii for a number of years and co-chair of the real estate and infrastructure subcommittee with bob buckley um so what's been happening in tewksbury um i just wanted to kind of run through uh primarily with our larger employment establishments things have been going fine raytheon expanded they have an existing campus in tewksbury off of north street but they needed additional space so they took 134 000 square feet at innovations center which was the old weighing manufacturing facility of about three-quarters million square foot facility so raytheon moved in there and joined um corning life science is uh currently located in that facility also so it's still good signs that things are filling up there in that facility at innovation center l3 harris another larger employer is at uh one radcliffe they moved in and have been up and running now uh the radcliff area of tewksbury includes not only l3 harris but thermal fisher had moved in a division there a few years back so those are some pretty good signs for our larger employers starting to look at some of the smaller or mid-size employers at the billerica business park which borders both tewksbury and billerica there's a few buildings that are split between the two communities and then some that are specifically in tewksbury but building six we've seen a expansion from dgi and they took up about 28 000 square feet and then alert innovations was another 25 000 square feet we've also seen both of our car dealerships demolished their existing facilities and rebuilt new facilities so itamian and ira toyota have gone through that process market basket i think everyone's aware that they just continue to open new stores across the region and being that they're headquartered in tewksbury and they have a significant warehouse presence that's good for one of our local employers to see the expansions continue even with the markets the way they've been lately and then lastly as far as larger employers are concerned national grid has a ready-path solution for when the mystic generating power plant comes offline and we're starting to have discussions with them now on how that's going to impact their facilities in tewksbury they have a significant footprint in tewksbury and there will be upgrades to those facilities so that's the large and mid-sized companies that are doing um fairly well i would say our smaller establishments because of copit19 and a lot of the restrictions and just high costs of doing business have been struggling route 38 is where we find most of those small businesses um and there have been some mainstay establishments that have gone out of business and we're sorry that to see them leave but there are some promising signs where we have some um property owners that are looking to reshuffle reshuffle some tenants and also there's some interest from some other new outside companies looking to relocate along with 38 but also probably closer up towards the low line we're looking at newer businesses obviously stadium plaza which sits on the tewksbury lowell border has a the loss of kmart there and that plaza has just been a little bit run down so um i would expect to see some things there sometime soon i think um there's other two other projects that are on the agenda for today and that being micronics which is another one of our midsize companies and you'll hear about them and then i think bob buckley will be talking about the home depot distribution facility and how um we've worked with our neighbors in billerica to try and get that project up and running so all in all um it's kind of a mixed bag but i think i'm fairly positive the housing market continues to drive development on route 38 back in the last the great recession tewksbury put into place overlay districts which allowed for mixed use and it's really the residential portion of those mixed use projects that is carrying those projects the commercial components are taken significantly longer to be absorbed in the market um but what we're finding is is that we have a lot of older dilapidated buildings that were either vacant or had ran their useful life that we're being demolished for these mixed-use type facilities so that's all um good news we're looking to bring forward a complete zoning recodification package to the annual town meeting in 2021 it was teed up for 2020 but obviously with covid we decided to withdraw that because we didn't want people to feel um they're health threatened at all to come in and vote on that we have the route 38 reconstruction project which continues to move forward that will have a significant impact once it's completed for businesses along route 38 going through the town center our economic development committee is looking at upgrading the committee's web page and then we continue to meet with property owners frequently weekly as far as new ideas and concepts that they're looking to bring in so all in all kobit 19 has made a challenge but i think that things are looking up in tewksbury and it's i mean these are major projects that you're just rattling off too those are a lot going on in tewksbury we've been busy yeah yeah and um we have a few minutes i don't know if anyone has any questions or if we want to keep them at the end as well too um or if people can contact you separately if they want to follow up with sure information okay great if we can include your contact information that would be helpful um and so yeah there's certainly a lot happening and and not to um put some friendly competition in all of this but i think this is one of the highest attended uh what's happening meetings so it seems like there's a lot of uh interest in what's going on in tewksbury as well too so i don't know if it was you or or other speakers that's attracting everyone oh it's bob it's bob buckley he's the drawer you you set him up nicely so thanks steve we can you know if we have time at the end maybe we can uh have some questions as well too so thanks for thanks for the update uh bob do you want to take it from here oh you're you're on mute as well too sorry about that those who don't know me uh bob buckley from riemann bronze today uh we do real estate development practice out of our burlington office uh before i begin i'd just like to make a couple of uh prep comments um first of all it's nice for me to be able to speak but the real credit for this project goes to my staff i had very good people working on this i i know that demarcus um my partner mark bond uh his his input was was critical i have i think she's on christine hung i saw her earlier and melissa cushing without their uh diligence this project wouldn't have gotten off the ground um and i thank them for that and unfortunately they don't get the recognition that they deserve so i'm giving it to them now um second um i want to also say that this was and steve could attest to this because he was near the beginning of middlesex 3. this was really as as was rob anderson i think rob's on here also um this was the epitome of what we saw when we formed middlesex iii almost a decade ago that communities would work together and uh for the common good um and this this clearly mandated that everyone uh worked together because it was a unique piece of property it's the old raytheon site that is off a woven [Music] road or drive in in tewksbury half of the building 700 approximately 780 000 square feet we don't call it a distribution center by the way it's a processing center um and rob anderson knows why but half of the building is in tewksbury half of the building is in billerica and the balance of the land is in the city of lowell so you had two disparate bylaws that you had to make them work together with different definitions and how do they work together you had two conservation commissions so by the way we were where we had jurisdictional issues with respect to the wetlands protection act as well as a river so we had a little bit of everything and we started off um less than about a year ago i think we had a meeting up in tewksbury where we had all of the stakeholders together and we had all the municipalities there and we talked about what we were trying to do how we could put some order on it um and i have to say unfortunately most people in the community and most people in the background don't see how hard the municipal workers work to do something positive uh but the professional dedication across the the board led by people in each community steve certainly having steve in tewksbury was a who was a big asset steve never gets flustered never gets flustered it was always able to say okay let's think this through and let's let's let's see how we can come out with the solution that works so we had to uh start by making the pieces of the puzzle puzzle fit together which required everyone to work together as i said taking two sets of bylaws and making them compatible and we had to be somewhat creative but we got there because i think everyone knew what the economic benefits to the community were this is not a you know a warehouse in the in the the historical sense of the word this is uh really it's a processing center in the sense that e-commerce orders are submitted and processed and delivered and it's not to the stores you know it's not a stocking facility a true distribution facility if anyone has watched watch sporting events of late day when home depot has a commercial um they'll show someone who's remodeling a house or doing major construction and home depot drives in and delivers pallets with all of the uh components needed for that the development and that's basically what this is and so if you have a contractor that is doing a project or a contractor who's remodeling or doing major home improvements whatever they um they basically order all of their merchandise it's it's sorted packed and delivered to to the site um this i think i believe this is the second one of these facilities in the united states um and i would have to say it is a it's a high-tech marvel if you saw the uh equipment that is being placed inside of the building to handle the processing uh in the uh response time it it's incredible it's it's multi-multi-millions of dollars that are being put into the guts of the building so what does that mean for the region it means jobs it means good paying jobs it's technologically driven those who are involved with middlesex 3 understand that robotics and other types of of activities in this region are very strong and certainly facilities like this are very uh robotic driven um there are opportunities for those to create their own businesses by being independent drivers um for those involved and i and i i know i made fun of them in the session beforehand and involved with traffic um the beauty about facilities like this is that traffic is off peak um the the the the trips generate generally after the morning peak and come back either before or after the evening peak so that it's a way of incorporating a use into an environment that is not stressing um what everyone always complains about with any development which is traffic we made it work we committed to some major funding uh for the city of lowell and for those who may be from the city of lowell hopefully the building permits will be issued shortly and those payments that are owed to you will be made shortly the building permit is the trigger um but i i think that i i take a view and i know some of the people from the municipalities who worked on this have a similar view which is that some of our mission in this region is to create good stable productive jobs because a lot of good thin s come out of that uh that effort and this i think that i know steve and his counterpart and the worker in lowell that was their motivation too these are good jobs you know we're tying in a uh with the lrta to you know bring people from lowell to the site creating uh dedicated bus shelter for them trying to try to encourage that type of of uh coordination between the municipalities all for a common objective this will be a state-of-the-art facility uh but i will have to say it was one of the more complicated projects i've done um in quite some time and without as i said to be getting a good quality staff on our side and professionalism and guidance from the municipalities uh where rob when he was with bill rickers certainly steve and his staff it never would have become a reality because one of the problems he run into is when you have people from other parts of the country who come to the commonwealth of massachusetts they don't understand how development is done from a from a permitting standpoint i mean they're used to doing a facility in arizona or nevada where how much land you need and what do you need you want you need a road okay we'll put the road in you know um here we have to make it work and the only way it works effectively is we bring a lot of talent to the table and try to solve problems but they're under construction um i get a weekly report construction is going very well i hope that those in the municipalities will attest to that there's been no complaints or uh issues we have good communication so there are issues there's a there's a way to resolve it very quickly um our neighbors up there the commercial neighbors uh have been uh very supportive and cooperative because i think like anything else it's the first step on an interim process that everyone will benefit if we do it right um so i've been talking a while uh maybe talking too much but if anyone has any questions they're glad to answer well you know and we can keep the questions up until the end as well that if that works um but but just to kind of tie the two um the two projects together um my my husband works for micronic and they recently moved from right across that building um in billerica to tewksbury um and i'm told that the the building that was formerly there is completely leveled is gone and it's a big pile of dirt that i've got to go see it is is that correct yes but dust control is in effect didn't even think of that yeah yeah they took the bull i i actually on a saturday drove up there just to see what was happening and i have never seen demolition like that it just seemed like a a movie where a clawed excavator just was taking chunks of the building down you know an added benefit here and steve is aware of this there was some environmental um and raw probably also there were some environmental issues here that this allowed those issues to be addressed uh that date back to the old raytheon days um so you know there were many many benefits uh besides the economic benefits that were attended to this development you know you're right along the river there so that uh resolving and making sure that you control any uh environmental condition is always a positive so all in all i mean as i said in the beginning it was a unique example of at least the initial vision of middlesex 3 where communities would work together to achieve something that's good for the region everyone had their own interests everyone had their own wish list and way of doing things but you know when questions came up simple questions like who does the inspections during construction you know how do you allocate that responsibility which means that you know the building departments have to communicate with each other um you know you'll handle this we'll handle that i mean uh you know fire response how do you know what what the the coordination between the uh the parties were emergency access issues if people aren't familiar with the site you have to go over a bridge over the commuter rail line to get to it which created some other issues with the mbta and having people involved with uh facilitating response from the mbta so it was an example of everyone saying okay this is good for the region let's make sure we all work together without violating our individual uh mandates or objectives but it was professional unfortunately i would say that 85 of the people don't understand how dedicated and how hard the municipal employees or governmental employees work to achieve this objective um so great well thank you thank you for that work and and um certainly is the future i know that there are more and more of those sites that are um popping up as well too and they're they're massive i see peter nodding um i'm gonna hand it over to to karen moleski from hp architects and um bob mccormick from avid engineering engineers where is bobby there's a problem with having the meetings um so come in i i think you have control of uh your your screen your slides and you can share your presentation with us i hope so i hope i do it right okay good luck uh oh it says i'm disabled it says host disabled participant all right you keep talking willie no worries hi i'm corinne malewski i'm the director of interior design with ahp architects uh we are located in lowell we've been in this building in the boot mills for a couple years been in business for over a decade now our primary focus is on uh commercial architecture interior design within life science corporate office manufacturing we also do a good amount of retail and some multi-family as well i'm excited today to introduce bob mccormick avid with avid engineers they have been a member of m3 for a couple of years now i believe but i don't think bob has really spoken before so i'm excited for you guys to meet him they have an office in billerica and yesterday we figured out that i believe it's been over 10 years that our firms have been working together dated that back based on the age of my kids so um as architects we really appreciate avid's willingness to think outside the box and they consistently deliver quality drawings and services for our clients so i'm just going to let bob speak for a couple minutes about their firm and the types of things that they're up to well that was really nice of you karen i appreciate you saying those things and uh bob buckley i i feel like uh i feel like i'm on a panel with joe biden i've seen you speak so many times it's like uh an honor to be uh standing next to you up here that's pretty cool um so avid engineers weren't mepfp telecommunications and process engineering company mepfp is mechanical plumbing electrical fire protection what we do effectively is manage and coordinate all of the wires and pipes that grow out that that go throughout your facilities we we do it all under one roof there's a lot of coordination that that goes into things um we have a great reputation um and have for almost 20 years now in the life sciences um with manufacturing i think we really enjoy uh very complicated projects uh rob anderson i see that you have uh tremont yard as your background that was a building that we designed uh i don't know maybe 10 15 years ago so it makes me happy to see that and um yeah we're in the process of relocating from billerica to lowell and uh re-upping our space in boston but we're a growing firm we're uh taking on market share we're we're increasing um sort of uh our uh brand throughout the industry but uh you know we're really confident about the future and we we plan to be around for a while and we're really thankful to be working with firms like ahp and current to help deliver great projects like micronics so um yeah i don't know correct if your presentation's all set maybe you can do that yeah you're a muted corinne great thanks bob all right you guys can see this okay awesome thank you so we're today we're talking about my chronic at 55 54 clark road in tewksbury i just wanted to take a second to highlight some of the members on the team um which were all part of m3 early construction ourselves and avid so this was a nice example of m3 members coming together and working together on a project which we're really happy to to report so my chronic designs and manufactures high precision production equipment for the electronics and opto electronics industry they were previously in three different locations within massachusetts and they opted to consolidate into a hundred thousand square foot of existing space in tewksbury um and i believe stephanie or steph was gonna post a link to a youtube video from their site that explains more about what the company does it's a really nicely done video and if i'm droning on too long you guys can click over there and watch it all right after after um so we're just going to look at the space itself we were initially brought in by a broker they introduced us to the team we bid for the architectural and mep structural engineering uh portions of it so these are some of the before photos hopefully nobody's looking at them saying oh gee it looks nice um and you can tell that they're actually before photos this is sort of a really initial pass that we went through a few iterations of but basically trying to show how they were going to fit these different functions that all fall under the micronic umbrella within the space and including mrsi micronic aei and the clean rooms that were a part of that so i want to point out we basically spent six weeks going from schematic design all the way through full cds with full engineering for 100 000 square foot space that included offices training a lunchroom clean rooms sixty thousand square feet of that was assembly with clean room specialty labs product testing and training areas and then additionally forty thousand square foot uh is filled by conference open office spaces lunchroom and collaboration zones so when you say a hundred thousand square feet in six weeks it's more impressive when you start to think about the individual components that all went into that so on the left you see basically a chunk of the building and there's little tiny squares everywhere and little tiny tags everywhere and basically what we do is go in meet with the different departments and you know measure all those pieces document and create matrices that tag each piece of equipment and their associated you know gases uh compressed air specialty power so on the right you see a zoomed in version of what was a machine shop and each little oval tag there goes back to a matrix which then gets handed to bob and his team for them to coordinate all of these uh components so uh that piece of it if you look back at this plan the yellow being the office is sort of the you know basic carpet and paint type areas but the complex spaces are the other colors so the complexity of this project included a very tight schedule the hard date was based around the time that micronic needed to vacate their previous facility and this drove every decision that we made so everything from finishes furniture selection the lighting i noticed ted farnham from boston light sources on the call and ted was great to work with us you know basically trying to pick fixtures that would show up on time because we had a tight-knit team assembled we were able to expedite the process by working through a number of obstacles together so you know quick ship carpets quick ship lights making sure that everything was coordinated and gonna be there when it needed to be the slide that's up right now is you know when people say gee it must be fun to be an interior designer this part is fun to me so what's in the middle of the screen is actually a hand sketch that i did on the ipad and allows me to like really quickly change out colors and concepts and it's supposed to be just sort of a rough you know idea of how these components can come together like the gradient glass we showed square down lights kind of a cool space age looking chair um the carpet the tile and then the textural wall tile so basically you know just using uh you know the ipad pencil to uh to show them what their reception area could look like when they decided they didn't want that to just be paint and carpet as it was originally designed and then this is a view of the actual space so that that is the fun part of being the designer when you get to do the custom reception desk and you know help them pull their branding together and make a statement when you first walk in um so the construction of the hundred thousand square foot facility which included new rooftop units new restroom cores clean rooms was just over three months of construction which is really impressive um on the structural side there were some pieces of equipment that had challenges that way related to their weight so we had to do specialty footings for those i'm just going to click through some of the shots here um on the right is sort of some of the existing conditions of a typical little pantry and what we made it and then some open open office space on the left and then they had a big lunchroom space so you know it's just vct on the floor which many of you probably know that's sort of a inexpensive and uh easy thing to put down but just doing it in a way that had some splashes of color and integrated some of the branding branding elements uh brought it to life a little bit more um so basically my you know my i guess proud moment of this is just engaging the design team in an early process can really enhance the schedule and bringing everybody together um you know on a team and saying okay this is the deadline this is what we need to accomplish and then everybody working towards that together you know help them meet their schedule i'm going to let bob uh speak about some of the back end spaces and some of their involvement um so i'll turn it over to him uh hi everybody so uh thank you corinne that was great um let me see so so i'm working for my home here in westford and it looks like uh many of you are as well uh so i want to thank stephanie i guess for the work that she did to make this event happen i think it's uh really excellent to be able to see all of you folks that we wouldn't ordinarily be able to see here during the pandemic so uh you know thank you very much stephanie for inviting me to be a part of this and to participate here in the group um corinne thank you very much for for everything that uh that you did with the product uh with the project same with uh erland i think uh things were a fantastic success and we were really happy to be a part of it and um very importantly i want to thank steve and his team from the town of tewksbury for the role that they played in facilitating the project i think that um as corinne mentioned the project time frame was very important to my chronic it was effectively a deal breaker and you know while erlang and and ahp and avid were on board to make that happen uh you know we really needed everybody to participate um uh along that line and and the town of texas very really stepped up and did the things that they had to do to uh help make sure that everything was successful um so uh anyway when i was asked to be a part of this and i thought about my experience and my role in the project i i wanted to make sure that i didn't waste everybody's time and that i tried to bring a perspective to the group that um may be a little uh a bit on the unique side and so uh as exciting as engineering is for the multitudes i think um i'm probably going to stay away from getting into too much detail about exactly how we delivered the the project i think that grin did a nice job of showing you uh at a high level how things were um prepared you know it takes a tremendous amount of detail and care to track all of these you know if you take a look through that building and you look at every pipe and every wire there's a lot going on and it takes an awful lot of work by everybody to try to make sure that nothing slips through the cracks and and things happen well and things happen smooth so you know it doesn't do any good to deliver a factory uh on time that doesn't work right so it's that hard work that really is uh uh very important and and you know we pride ourselves on that i know corinne does as well so um you know i and i think she did a great job explaining it but what i thought i would take my time to talk about um given the number of sort of governmental agencies that are um on the call is uh my career experience so um i've been delivering these types of projects for 20 years which is kind of amazing to say because it does not feel like i've been doing this for 20 years but i've traveled all across the world uh i delivered projects in china taiwan south korea saudi arabia oman italy russia germany um all over the place and in doing that primarily the work that i do overseas is our factories of one form or another whether it's materials or it's life science components um that's that's usually what you know brings encourages people to bring us from the united states overseas to share our expertise and um here in this instance it was fantastic because we had a pr a company like micronic which i believe is a european country that was that opted to build a factory here in north america and that's a very special thing and that's a very meaningful thing and i you know as somebody who's in this business that's something that um that i would like to see more of um we have designed uh multi-billion dollar sapphire production facilities for companies like apple um we were hired by the kingdom of saudi arabia to uh help them enter photovoltaics and help them to deliver to develop their solar power industry we we went over there with that expertise and taught them how to construct um pv panels just recently we helped insulate corp relocate their facilities from china to acton which is a local project and you know in the hundreds of millions of dollars uh and uh they're making um insulin uh insulin pods uh that help people with diabetes and it was great to be a part of that and to rob's point earlier i think the united states is becoming more competitive on a global scale when it comes to labor uh through the use of robotics and uh they're using robotics and uh the the fulfillment facilities uh like we have in the lowell tuxbury borica corner there and um they're also using uh that type of technology and uh manufacturing facilities and the united states was really well poised to compete very well um in that industry but uh i think what it takes is for everybody to be sort of in the same boat rowing in the same direction and so um i just thought you had to tell you a little story about my career history and and let you take sort of what you will from it but um so i started avid engineers uh you know all those years back 15 20 years ago whatever it was um we started off in billerica we've grown we have office in nashville we have uh you know our offices in boston um we're relocating bill rick at the lowell hopefully shortly but everything is run out of the merrimack valley um i am a uh you know i was born in lowell my kids were born in lowell i live uh next door and west for now um you know i uh i i i'm proud of uh my history here in this area and so when um when we when when people in other countries when the kingdom of saudi arabia finds us in the work of massachusetts and hires us to you know flies us overseas to help them develop a technology it's uh i guess it's very flattering and very exciting and a great thing to be a part of um but uh but what we uh when they look at us they don't see a handful of uh kids who grew up in the merrimack valley and you know a company that has their company party at friends right they see us as an american engineering firm with american ingenuity and american know-how and in a large extent getting to the last recession i think that's how we made it through uh by sort of relying on that american brand let's say even though we were a smaller company to deliver things overseas and um people buy it and not only do people buy it but it is a real thing um when they hire us for our american knowledge their right to do so um america is um the smartest country in the world in my experience okay and when we're over in places like uh china or italy or saudi arabia it becomes very evident that we have something very special here in the united states and so um so so what i want to share with you is that i think that there's a perception at least amongst the everyday people that that i live with that people overseas are very well educated and the folks in china are working very hard and very smart but i think what gets overlooked in that evaluation is that the united states has an institutional knowledge that is unmatched and so while people in other countries uh are well educated oftentimes what we find when we go over fees is that those people are doing things for the very first time and because they're doing it for the very first time they need to be very conservative they you know make a lot of mistakes that we because of our experience or institutional experience are take for granted from the time i was 12 years old working as a plumber for my father he was teaching me uh you know that the reason we stall pipes at right angles is not because they need to be at right angles to work but because that's how you do it if you do a job you do it well you take the time to do it correctly and then working over in andover as an engineer for the first time i had the benefit of working with some really super super intelligent people who taught me so much and i was able as a young engineer to learn from their 30 years of knowledge just as they were able to do the same when they were a young engineer the folks i encounter overseas oftentimes come from to the children of farmers and so when they're doing things they're doing it for the first time and um i think that what america is in the process of doing right now is distributing that institutional knowledge throughout the planet to our competitors and i i think that's fine i think it's a global economy and i'm glad to participate it and i i love the people i've met overseas and they're fantastic people and i'm proud to help the world uh advance um from an engineering perspective um but i also uh you know love to see the people uh here in the merrimack valley working and doing well also and i think that um what i want to sort of uh stress now to the people that are uh on the governmental side of things is that um we are as a company competing excuse me as a country competing against other countries and um as a state we're competing against other states and as a county and as a town or a city we're competing against uh other towns and cities and so when um when uh contractors and engineers and employers and um uh people who are inventing technology come up with ideas what what really needs to happen and what tewksbury did a really fantastic job of in the case of micronic is facilitating that production because when you go to china everybody's on board to make things happen because everybody from top to bottom realizes that we are all competing and the united states has cruised somewhat on our institutional knowledge but we're in the process of handing that away to everybody else and so we're losing um that advantage and so what we really need to do i think as a country and of the population is band together and take on that same mentality where we're competing for market share for our quality of living for our children so that we continue to work together the way we did on this micronic project to get things done uh because ultimately if a company is making a decision about where to build their new facility um if china is going to you know smooth away and make it happen very quickly um then the united states has to do the same thing and i think that there's uh somewhat of a sense that there's magic going on in china and or in these other places um but there isn't uh they can't build things any faster than we can they can't design things any better than we can they certainly can't make things look any better than koran can and i think that we need to start recognizing that and really pushing it and uh working together as a team so i think you know when it comes to my chronic and what it is i have to contribute to this group humbly um in my experience is uh is what i've seen and that's that's what i've seen and that's what i think and um i don't know i hope that you all gained a little something from it and that this uh wasn't uh a waste of your time but uh yeah thank you again everybody who who let me participate well and bob that's a great point as well too and i look i look in this meeting as well too with all the great resources that we have right here as well and and i i hope it again if you guys can put your information on the chat box because there's a lot of overlap and a lot of resources that you can benefit by by knowing um the other people in on this on this call but you're right micronics a great example of that um and and thank you i know bill bill mack um from erland is is on this call as well too great guy great resource um and and uh corrine i've always think of you when i think of lighting but but apparently it's ted that i should be talking with ted brunswar that's great so yeah you're the guy that i should be giving credit to um so there's definitely a lot of a lot of middlesex 3 members that really were part of this um this project so um kudos to to all of you um that's great to hear and and and bob make certain you talk with maria dickinson from the city of lowell if you haven't met with her if you're moving over there she knows everything about the city of lowell as well too so um with that um can i ask karen a question of course i'm afraid the the presentation i mean it was clear that lighting did you have to i mean using the use of colors of basically white um did you have to make substantial changes in the lighting format to make because it really pops and it's really manufacturing or in the office oh i mean i think it really makes it stand out but the manufacturing the light levels are definitely higher in that type of environment so because they're working with small pieces um and so we do try to bump up those levels ted want to jump in oh you're muted there we go no that's uh that's that's right uh i mean it's interesting how the factory floor has changed that's that's today's factory floor and it's uh it's got a ceiling and it's it's white and it's uh i mean the foot kennels the the brightness is probably three times what you would have in a normal office but that's because people are working on very fine things um i i i just wanted to add i believe uh the interstate electric is actually the electrical contractor on this job i remember bill and they're out of bill ricka too um and uh this project i mean they got involved early got us involved early i mean the whole team was i was looking at the time frame on that project and it was extremely fast and it all pulled together beautifully and i'm gonna put a shout out just i grew up in lexington so i am totally part of this group so excellent you you're doing some business in this area and uh i i have to say though interstate i believe they also moved from billerica to tewksbury right steve yeah yeah so uh with that maybe we'll turn it over to rob anderson and he can explain what was going on there well well thank you um yeah i uh as people might know um i i recently uh joined mass development from billerica i think i'd also point out that i am the third rob to be speaking at this uh meeting so it's a first step towards world domination for people named rob so we're well on our way but at mass development um i have replaced can good and many of you may have known him i ken did retire and i think one of the great things about mass development is that we're a regional player that partners very well with municipalities and our partners at the state's office of business development um we are and i will keep this uh brief because i know i'm uh the last person here but we're a uh finance and development agency we work with uh developers uh manufacturers nonprofits banks and communities to help increase the quality of life for residents there are lending programs that partner with existing banking relationships for tax-exempt bonds loan guarantees i even some lending programs so when a municipality is out there and having the conversation about what can the state do to help um the state's office of business development has the connections for uh workforce for the tax incentives mass development is kind of that financing arm that can bring something to the table to help long-term sustainable economic development happen throughout the region and it it all becomes um part of uh you know you say a three-legged stool for a business um it's the state's office of business development it's the municipality um and it's it's mass development and with any luck a lot of those businesses will sit on that chair um in the northeast region um whether or not they're in uh tewksbury which um once again i i do have to say uh bob buckley uh steve the tewksbury team even the people in lowell it was a regional effort for economic development a rising tide lifts all boats and that's kind of how mass development views that as well we want to be that team player that can potentially bring things to the table um so because uh the focus is kind of twofold it's kind of on the financing side and real estate real estate oftentimes gets down at the municipal level um there are things that mass development runs such as the brownfield redevelopment fund um there is a new financing program called uh property assessed clean energy where businesses who are looking to invest uh in clean energy solutions for their buildings can take advantage of the financing programs through mass development and that requires a buy-in from the municipality if anyone's interested in thinking about that and these are things like new windows new roofs um solar canopies and parking lots solar canopies on top of buildings those are the things where mass development can come in help on the financing solutions to make sure that it is a project that can take that next step and it can actually benefit not only the region uh but also the world through those clean energy programs um we do have programs for collaborative workspaces um i know uh lowell makes uh took advantage of uh this in the city of lowell um i do know that uh we have our commonwealth uh place making um grants that are out there those are things where um and and i'm gonna hit on this at the end it's collaborative um there are real estate and development programs uh such as uh master plans uh the site readiness program all of those things that can put municipalities in a better position to succeed and i think one of the things i started with is i replaced ken good but there is a phenomenal team in the northeast um i'm perhaps a quarterback um right now i'm a little bit more of the water boy i guess uh bringing things to the team because i haven't learned everything yet but mass development is out there uh working on the behalf of municipalities manufacturers and non-profits to increase the quality of life for the region so my contact information is there if anyone knows me uh i am very friendly i do love coffee so post covid you're going to see me uh in your office um but uh that's just a brief overview i think stephanie's going to be posting this to the web so it kind of gives a a brief um you know kind of this is what mass development does this is what we can work on and hopefully everyone gives me a call and says rob uh what can your organization do to help us uh succeed so stephanie once again thank you for the the five minutes to give a brief overview of what we do well rob i'm sure we're going to be seeing a lot more of you um as as we move forward and there's a lot of information that we covered over the last hour as well too um so we are going to make all the presentations um available we'll send them out in our thank you email as well as if you have information you want to post your contact information on the chat in the chat section we're going to send that out to everybody as well too so feel free to put that in as well as our upcoming events because we know we have a lot so there's a lot of information thank you to everyone um thank you to to steve corrin um rob rob rob thank you thank you all um for joining the the conversations um thank you to uh fulcrum associates for spo soring this meeting as well too i don't know where bill jean there he is but again thank you bill um we appreciate all your support as well too um and at this time i'm gonna leave it up to to you guys um we we usually end these at 11 um i can stick around if anyone wants to stick around but i'm assuming most people need to jump off this to get to their um you know their jobs um but if anybody wants to i hate to end a conversation if you if you guys want to stick around and um if anyone has questions as well too um so um i'll i'll leave it up to you guys if there are any questions we do have a few more minutes before 11. um but yeah i kind of figured i'd start seeing people jump off so again thank you to steve um bob buckley um bob mccormick corrine rob anderson um and since i'm not hearing anybody or seeing anyone take their mute off then anthony i'll just i'll just say thank you for uh m3's efforts to continue to keep everyone connected during this time as it was mentioned previously it's a it's a challenge to stay connected and you guys are doing a spectacular job with these monthly meetings and i i for one personally appreciate the efforts that you're making and the opportunity to be able to continue to sponsor and make these happen so please keep us in mind and thank you again and look forward to the next one thank you bill i think we all need to just stick together to get through all of this and like i said a lot of this is follow up in contact and following up with people after the meetings as well too so uh thanks for putting your contact information in in and hopefully i'll see you guys next week we've got two great events coming up as well too so um hopefully you'll you'll be able to jump on then so with that i'm gonna i'm gonna end and um and and have a have a great weekend everybody thanks stephanie bye guys