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Managing Editor SPRINGFIELD One of the last industrial park properties in the city welcomed its first tenant with the ribbon cutting of the new 236,000 square foot Performance Food Group (PFG) distribution facility on Tuesday. A member of the city's business community since the 1970s at 430 Taylor St., PFG was considering moving out of the city due to growth its former facility could not handle. What helped motivate the company to stay was keeping its current group of employees, Sean Griffin, the president of PFG-Springfield, explained. "The major incentive was to maintain our associate base," he told the audience of over 100 PFG employees and local officials. The company employs 270 people now and plans to add another 240 new jobs over the next seven years. The remarks were made in the refrigerated loading dock of the new warehouse in the Smith & Wesson Industrial Park on Roosevelt Ave. PFG is a national company that sells a line of 65,000 food products to 44,000 schools, restaurants and healthcare facilities across the nation. Among its better-known clients are Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, Outback Steakhouse and Ruby Tuesday. It has 19 distribution centers, and the only other one located in New England is in Augusta, Maine. Mass Development Vice President of Real Estate Richard Henderson said that PFG was initially considering sites in Worcester and Connecticut. Mass Development is the firm that is developing the Smith & Wesson Park and there was a successful effort made to find a way to keep the company in Springfield, he said. The key to that success was having the 34-acre industrial park itself and David Panagore, the city's chief economic development officers, said the transformation of the property was an unused area with a brownfields problem to land that could be developed took $8.6 million in state and federal funding to the city. Henderson said one of the factors that helped make the new facility a reality was the speed of the permitting process to help the company meets its deadline for the new building. Griffin said both city and state officials were very cooperative in the discussion to entice the company to stay. | ||||||
