Former Norton Co. buildings under demolition, 51-acre site to be reclaimed, redeveloped
Craig S. Semon, Worcester Telegram & Gazette
5 min read
Redevelopment has begun on the 51-acre Saint-Gobain site.
WORCESTER – If you’re driving along Interstate 190 and glance at the Saint-Gobain industrial campus in the Greendale section of the city, you may notice that some of the long-standing factory buildings that used to be the home of the old Norton Co. are being demolished.
Not only are the buildings being leveled, the demolition project is also part of the largest brownfield reclamation project ever in Massachusetts and quite possibly New England, according to Worcester Business Development Corp. President Craig L. Blais.
“Right now, just for the reclamation, just for the cleanup and the demolition and all the infrastructure, we’re over $50 million just to get this site ready,” Blais said. “And then this would be upward of $500 million once it’s all redeveloped. So this is a big deal.”
The wheels of progress are rapidly turning at the spot of the city’s 138-year-old abrasives manufacturing giant and former longtime home of Norton Co., which was acquired by Saint-Gobain in 1990.
As for the land, Saint-Gobain donated the parcels to the WBDC, plus Saint-Gobain gave the WBDC a $12 million check toward the cleanup effort, Blais said.
Abandoned building await demolition on the 51-acre Saint-Gobain site in Worcester.
To date, 10 vacated structures out of the 45 have been demolished, he said.
“We’re into it. The project has officially started,” Blais said. “We’re tearing down buildings. Taking out foundations. And cleaning up the soil.”
In November 2022, the WBDC acquired the 51-acre parcel in a development agreement with Saint-Gobain.
Process to take 3 years
“Saint-Gobain is still in some of the buildings. Over the next 36 months, they are going to be vacating those buildings,” Blais said. “So we could get started, we closed on the transaction and we identified all of the properties that could be demolished. So we could go through our process of getting all of our approvals.”
Blais said the WBDC has to go through historic and federal environmental reviews for approvals. To date, the WBDC has lined up $20 million in infrastructure grants, he said.
A derelict kiln furnace awaits demolition on the 51-acre Saint-Gobain site in Worcester.
While a few buildings are being evaluated for “historic significance,” including the administration building on New Bond Street, a majority of the buildings are not worth saving, Blais said.
“They’re old, industrial, multilevel buildings that would need a substantial code and handicapped accessibility upgrade,” Blais said. “With the new environmental codes and the stretch codes, it would almost be impossible to save the buildings.
“Fifty-one acres with this incredible access and visibility to 190 is extremely valuable property, once we get it all in the right form for redevelopment,” Blais said. “Right now, we have about a dozen developers — big developers, smaller developers — that have been talking with us that are interested in the site. We don’t know if it’s going to be one developer, if it’s going to be multiple developers. We haven’t got that far yet.”
Jobs are main goal
Blais said the goal is to turn the old parcel into a one-stop mecca for new jobs.
“We need a place to create jobs. It’s as simple of that. This large parcel needs to create a lot of jobs for the city,” Blais said. “We’re going to stay focused because we can go to working with a developer and then a user that wants to create a lot of jobs…Our goal is to create 1,000 new jobs.”
One of the buildings awaiting demolition on the 51-acre Saint-Gobain site in Worcester.
Blais estimates 30 acres near Ararat Street will be ready for development by next summer and predicts the completion of development in three to five years, he said.
“It’s an exciting project for Worcester because we’re retaining Saint-Gobain,” he said. “We’re rightsizing them so they stay here for years and years to come. And we’re reclaiming this property.”
In addition to retaining, rightsizing and reclaiming, Blas stressed that WBDC will also reconnect the West Boylston Street side of Greendale to the Ararat Street side and Indian Hill neighborhood, which were originally cut off by Norton Co.
"We’re opening them back up as public ways,” Blais said. “So New Bond Street, back to C Street to Ararat Street, you’ll have that reconnection from West Boylston Street, back to that whole other side of the city.”
WBDC received a $2 million cleanup grant from the federal Environmental Protection Agency, which is the largest such grant in the country, Blais said.
Redevelopment has begun on the 51-acre Saint-Gobain site in Worcester.
In addition, F & D Salvage, the demolition contractor for the parcel, reinstituted a rail spur with CSX that goes into the site, so it can truck all the debris off by rail. No trucks will be transporting debris through the neighborhood, Blais said.
“And this is the real incredible part. Ninety-five percent of the debris is being recycled,” Blais said.
Long history in Worcester
From its humble beginnings with a $10,000 investment and 13 employees in 1885, Norton Co. grew in just five years to become the nation’s most successful grinding-wheel producer with 30% of the market and more than 200 on its payroll.
In 1915, the company built 59 houses for its employees on Indian Hill, which was redubbed Norton Village.
By 1919, sales were more than $3 million a year, and in 1931, Norton purchased the Behr-Manning Co. of Watervliet, New York, adding coated abrasives and sandpaper to its line. These became two of Norton’s more successful products.
Norton maintained its strength for decades. However, in 1985 1,200 Norton employees lost their jobs in a restructuring.
The company's 105-year reign as an independent company ended in April 1990 when it was purchased by Saint-Gobain of France for $1.9 billion.
In 2017, Saint-Gobain still employed 1,572 in Worcester — a significant drop from the 5,500 who worked at Norton in the '50s — but the company remains the city's seventh-largest employer and by far the biggest industrial company.
Today, Saint-Gobain in Greendale employs 1,000 workers, Blais said. Those workers will be retained through the demolition project.
