Microspec Corporation presented a variance request to build a 60,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in a rural district on Route 202 to the Peterborough Zoning Board Monday evening, and after a lengthy discussion, board members agreed to continue the hearing Nov. 7.
The proposed facility – one mile north of the current one — would be built on a vacant 13-acre parcel in the area of a sandpit near a strip mall on Jaffrey Road (Route 202). The parcel contains wetlands, and the variance is for moving the new building location a few hundred feet south, placing it mostly in the rural residential zone, said Microspec CEO Tim Steele.
Microspec Corporation – founded by Steele, who runs the business with his wife Elizabeth – employs 100 people and has added manufacturing space to the second floor at its Peterborough facility on Jaffrey Road. However, Steele said business expansion, including a potential contract with a company that is working to cure type 2 diabetes, has caused a space crunch.
Microspec, along with Teleflex and MilliporeSigma in Jaffrey, produces various medical components used in elective surgeries. The company produces about 200,000 peripherally inserted central catheters (PICCs) and other types of catheters related to vascular procedures each year.
The Steeles’ attorney, Sean O’Connell, reminded the board that the focus of the hearing was to talk only about a use variance for the new facility. The Steeles have also proposed adding workforce housing on the property.
Sean Thompson, an abutter to the proposed facility, told the board the proposal has a “Commercial-over-citizens lens to all of it in that there would not be an impact because they are saying it would all be improvements.”
“But that’s clearly not the case. There would be an impact,” he said, pointing to potential noise and light issues. “So I question the validity of the request for the variance to begin with because the hardship was created by the project plan and not by the ownership of the property itself.”
O’Connell said the notion the property was zoned one way or another when his client purchased it isn’t germane to the question of “hardship insofar as it has been considered by the Supreme Court.”
Other concerns raised by the public included the proposed facility’s environmental impact, which Steele said is not an issue. He also said that many of the questions raised at the meeting were questions for the Planning Board and not the Zoning Board. Despite the continuance, he said, “It looks favorable for the variance to be permitted.”
In an interview, Steele also said he found most of the comments from the public to be negative, “indicating to me that these particular people are very uninformed about Microspec and what we do.”
“I will be bringing a PowerPoint of Microspec and probably an engineering assessment of Microspec’s environmental impact on the land we presently operate on,” Steele said, regarding the Nov. 7 Zoning Board meeting, which will start at 6:30 p.m. “I suspect we will have a fairly powerful presentation showing that the company is in reality a good neighbor.”