ELLSWORTH, Maine — Just seven months after announcing its intent to buy, the Jackson Laboratory is under contract for the former Lowe’s building in Ellsworth and anticipates closing the deal by the end of the month.
A spokeswoman for the Bar Harbor lab confirmed Tuesday that Lowe’s and the lab have agreed to complete the sale and are simply working through the final paperwork, but she said it would still be some time before Jackson Lab opens for business in Ellsworth.
“We expect to have some warehousing, some administration and some mouse production there,” said Joyce Peterson, the lab’s public information manager. “What mix of those three hasn’t really been defined yet and it’s going to be a while before they finish the planning. It will take quite a bit of renovation, so it’ll be a few years before anyone’s working in that building.”
Lowe’s opened its Ellsworth location at 21 Kingsland Crossing in January 2008 and shuttered the store — along with 19 other underperforming Lowe’s nationwide — in November of last year. The closure left 83 workers jobless.
The seven-month negotiation for the nearly 18-acre parcel included amendments to the city’s Unified Development Ordinance. City Planner Michele Gagnon said that laboratories and research and development already were permitted uses in the city’s commercial zone.
But the definition of those uses still needed to be expanded to accommodate Jackson Lab, which provides more than 2.7 million lab mice to thousands of laboratories worldwide each year.
“The old ordinance didn’t allow for production of research material or the breeding of animals,” Gagnon said Tuesday. The necessary changes were approved by the City Council in June.
It’s a time of immense growth for the Jackson Lab. Aside from the all-but-guaranteed Ellsworth expansion, the lab also is growing its Sacremento, Calif., campuses and plans to break ground on a 250,000-square-foot research facility in Connecticut in January.
Plus, expansion is ongoing at the flagship Bar Harbor campus’ research and mouse-production facilities, Peterson said.
“We’re growing all three campuses,” she said Tuesday. “We have 30 open positions just here in Bar Harbor, and that’s not even counting the research recruiting we’re doing.”
The former Lowe’s building is more than 140,000 square feet, with ample parking, and is already set up with adequate utilities for the lab.
“By setting up production, warehousing and administrative functions in the Ellsworth facility, the Laboratory will bring year-round jobs with good pay and excellent benefits to Ellsworth,” wrote Jackson Laboratory’s executive vice president and chief operating officer, Charles Hewett, in March.
Hewett said some of those jobs would be new, but others would be moved from Bar Harbor. About 60 percent of the roughly 1,400 Bar Harbor-based employees commute from off-island, he said, so the relocated workers would see a cut in their commute time of about an hour.
After the deal closes, Jackson Laboratory will face Ellsworth Planning Board Review before it can begin renovations and eventually open its doors in Ellsworth. Gagnon, the city planner, said the lab is clearly a good fit for the city.
“The question for us was: Does it fit our vision? Is it compatible with the area? We believe it is,” she said.
Follow Mario Moretto on Twitter at @riocarmine.
If Baldacci were still guvnah, he’d already be set up with his media crew in front of the vacant facility ready to do some credit claiming…
What purpose is your swipe at Baldacci supposed to serve? What pointless drivel.
You think LePage is not going to show up and grab some camera time?
Lepage isn’t sure what they really do at JL. You can’t actually see that DNA stuff, it might not really exist.
i see renovations coming for contractors, cross the t’s and dot the i’s
Once the contract’s are signed there are gonna be more than a few happy camper’s that are going to be thrilled to do interior and finishing work this winter ! Beat’s trying to do foundations in December.
I left the state to get my PhD in Neuroscience. A development like this makes it enticing for me and other educated young people to come back to (or stay) in Maine. Good for Jackson Labs and Ellsworth for working together on this.
How sweet is this? Lowe’s and their minimum wage jobs are gone and they will be replaced by Jackson Labs and their jobs that pay a living wage. This is a huge win for the workers of Maine. We are still losing the war, but it is encouraging to win a battle here and there. It would be nice if we could do this to every WalMart in our state.
Absolutely–what we need is less tax paying corporate entities like Wal-Mart and Lowe’ s and replace them with non-tax paying ones like Jackson Lab! It is not “sweet” at all– it is a sham and will cost the taxpayers dearly in the amount of resources this Jax facility will require and that the city must provide. Take a look at Bar Harbor and the amount of tax dollars the Lab pays to the town for the services it receives– there’s nothing “sweet” about it at all! Do your homework before you bemoan the role of the corporate presence, whatever the wage they pay. I bet you know nothing of earning a wage, as those that typically espouse such nonsense can afford (trust fund?) to not work at all.
I was, of course, speaking of the workers of Maine, not the corporations or non profits. I do know about earning a wage. I also know about paying a living one. Again, from a worker’s point of view, Jackson Labs jobs are far superior to Lowe’s jobs, period. Jackson Labs has a social conscience, Lowe’s does not. You speak of Jackson labs costing the tax payers dearly. Well what about places like Lowe’s and their “public assistance” wages? How much does having to make up the difference for these employees cost in government cheese every year? Trust fund is a good one too! lol. My inheritance was a funeral bill.
Don’t listen to the out-of-stater. He’s very wrong, and very condescending.
Except that now people who will be paid more will spend more money in the area, which will directly benefit a lot of local businesses. Yes, TJL is a non-profit but they still for their fair-share of resource usage. You think the ultra-corporate big-box stores don’t cut deals w/ town reps for a lower tax burden? Look at the mess Walmart created w/ that idiotic intersection? “Pay to move all the roads to go past our store or we’ll go elsewhere” was likely the gist of their argument.
I liked the part where you personally attacked the person for their views, and made a Romney-ish “47%” statement.
Dont blame Walmart for the intersection when it was the State engineers who designed the roadway. Walmart paid for it in part, but they didnt design it.
However, Jackson Lab employs over 1400 workers, all of whom pay taxes, both real estate, if they are home owners, and income (more than the Lowes workers who were at the lower end of the scale)—sounds like a better deal for the residents of Hancock County.
I have been wondering what the status of this sale was every time I drive by the empty building. Good to know it is still moving forward…. Best of luck JL and welcome to Ellsworth!
More work for contractors!
Lowes
http://serviceagroup.com
More work for contractorsLoews