The barren, 150-acre P&G Campus in Andover will be getting new life as part of Gillette’s $1 billion to plan to modernize its facilities in South Boston and Andover.
Gillette parent company Proctor & Gamble said Tuesday it is moving about 450 manufacturing jobs to Andover from its South Boston headquarters. The South Boston facility will keep 750 corporate, engineering and research and development jobs as part of a plan to redevelop 30 acres overlooking the Fort Point Channel the company owns.
Andover Town Manager Andrew Flanagan said the Lowell Junction area is a critical part of the Town’s economic development strategy.
“P&G’s decision represents a multi-year effort to prepare Andover as a location that can support economic growth and P&G’s expansion,” Flanagan said in a text message. “This project will continue to diversify Andover’s tax base and further solidify the Town’s position as one of Massachusetts’s premier locations for innovation and business development.”
The reorganization will bring Gillette’s total Andover workforce to about 650 employees while ending more than a century of razor manufacturing in South Boston.
Gary Coombe, chief executive of P&G’s grooming division, told the Boston Globe the move could add more jobs in the future, as P&G considers relocating other divisions to the modernized Andover facility.
“Both of these sites have underutilized assets and both of these sites have assets that are somewhat antiquated, poorly designed and in need of investment and transformation,” Coombe told the newspaper, which first reported the story. “If you were to set up the company now and decide you were going to build a 21st century manufacturing plant, you probably wouldn’t put it here [in South Boston]. You’d probably go to a site with more land and more space.”
The jobs and economic development result here is fantastic. But how will those people get to work, and from where? We need our state delegation to work Mass DOT to work the Federal Highway Administration to get an I-93 exit there. This has been long discussed and may be more difficult now than would have been fifteen years ago, but we cannot have more traffic transiting Andover and Ballardvale!
Plan for denser affordable housing in Ballardvale and add a shuttle bus from the railroad stop to the different workplaces. Make it easy to avoid commuting by car from long distances. Companies could provide free rail passes instead of parking spaces or find other ways to reward living locally and/or using public transportation.
100% agree with you Kathleen. We should be pushing these companies to set goals to reduce the percentage of employees who travel to work in single-occupancy motor vehicles. These employers could offer subsidized public transit passes, could help fund projects to enhance alternative transportation mode options, etc. For example, River St. could get a shared-use path to make it safe to bike from the Ballardvale station to Lowell Junction. Anyone travelling via commuter rail from the Boston area to work here in the morning is against the rush hour direction, so bikes are allowed. 450 more jobs DOES NOT have to mean 450 more single-occupancy vehicles.
ANDREW: There was a Lowell Junction TMO that encouraged rideshare and biking. I don’t know if it’s still a thing or not. My last interaction with the TMO was about 10 years ago. https://junctiontmo.com/join-us/ has a line advertising on-line ride matching as well as bicycle and pedestrian support.
Thank you for the link! I’ll reach out to them and see if they’re still active.