Neighbors get look at Kollmorgen plans

By Owen Boss

Staff Writer

NORTHAMPTON - Residents who live in and around Village Hill Northampton got a sneak peek at designs for Kollmorgen Electro-Optical Corp.'s new headquarters during a special meeting Wednesday night and had the chance to voice concerns about the building's impact on the surrounding neighborhood.

The more than 30 neighbors who attended the meeting, arranged by Ward 4 City Councilor David Narkewicz, got to speak with architects, site developers and Kollmorgen officials and view computer renderings of the proposed 140,000-square-foot manufacturing and office facility and its accompanying 485-space parking lot.

Kollmorgen, which makes optical and imaging systems for submarines, surface ships, combat vehicles and other defense platforms, is the city's largest manufacturer and has 366 employees at its current 5-acre location on King Street.

Last week, the company submitted a site plan to the Planning Board for the building on Village Hill's south campus, and Wednesday's meeting, in the former Cahillane Dodge showroom on South Street, was the first public presentation of the designs.

Chief concerns raised by residents in attendance included plans for landscaping and fencing and the amount of traffic expected to be generated by the new two-story building off Chapel and Prince streets.

Francesca Maltese, development director for Kollmorgen's development company, O'Connell Development Group of Holyoke, said designers of the new site made a point of preserving the view of nearby mountains and planned to use existing and newly planted trees to limit views of the office building from the street.

"The parcel out front on Prince and Chapel we have worked really hard to landscape so that the entrance to the building will only be seen down the main roadway to the front entrance," Maltese said. "The parking lot and area near the entrance will be densely populated with trees."

Another concern raised by nearby homeowners was the number of tractor-trailer trucks that would be using the company's service entrance off of Chapel Street and whether shipments would be arriving outside of office hours.

According to Kollmorgen President and CEO Michael J. Wall, like many other companies, Kollmorgen receives regular deliveries from UPS and Fed-Ex once in the morning and once in the afternoon and averages about 15 deliveries a week from larger tractor-trailer trucks. All deliveries, he said, will arrive between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. Also, Maltese assured residents whose homes face the location of the company's future loading dock that designers planned to plant thick rows of evergreen trees intended to block the view of the building entirely.

Another question raised at the meeting concerned plans for a still undeveloped 6.4 acre parcel near the entrance to the company's main parking lot.

According to Maltese, that land will still be owned by MassDevelopment, the state agency developing the former state hospital grounds, with the goal of building a much smaller 30,000-square-foot retail or office location.

Carolyn Hendrie, a representative for the building's architecture and design firm, Bargmann Hendrie Archetype Inc., said fencing around the location will be used only where absolutely necessary.

"There are certain requirements for security, but those do not require an entirely sealed-off site," Hendrie said. "Fencing will be limited."

Along Prince and Chapel Streets, Hendrie said, design plans call for lining the property with granite boundary markers rather than chain-link fencing.

Kollmorgen officials are scheduled to formally present design plans to the Planning Board at its regularly scheduled meeting Thursday, May 28, at 7 p.m. in City Council Chambers.

Owen Boss can be reached at oboss@gazettenet.com.