Photo/Grant Welker
Devens marked its 100th anniversary in 2017.
March 3, 2021
MIT-founded fusion energy firm to build 47-acre Devens campus
Photo | Courtesy | Lincoln Brown
A rendering of the proposed Commonwealth Fusion Systems facility in Devens
By Grant Welker
A Cambridge firm developing fusion energy said Wednesday it'll build a 47-acre site in Devens in the latest boost for the community's development efforts.
Commonwealth Fusion Systems said it will occupy a campus to be developed and owned by King Street Properties of Boston, which already announced separate plans for Devens first detailed last year.
Construction of the CFS site, at 111 Hospital Road off the community's main thoroughfare, Jackson Road, will start this spring. The site will also include CFS's offices and advanced manufacturing operations. The mostly wooded property is now owned by MassDevelopment and has long been pitched as a potential major life sciences or research and development site.
Construction is expected to cost $300 million.
CFS is working in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to design and build what it says is the world's first net energy fusion device, a technology based on plasma physics and high-temperature superconducting magnets.
The facility will be a demonstrate site, not producing power itself, with a goal of proving that fusion can work as a power source. Eventually, CFS hopes to build a fusion power plant, but it wouldn't be at the Devens site.
Bob Mumgaard, the firm's CEO, said in a statement the Devens campus will be an important milestone in commercializing fusion energy and fighting climate change. CFS was spun out of MIT's Plasma Science and Fusion Center.
Wednesday's announcement comes a week after Bristol Myers Squibb, a pharmaceutical company that's perhaps Devens' best known tenant, said it is expanding its Devens facility by 244,000 square feet, including hundreds of new jobs in areas including cell therapy development and manufacturing. The new site will manufacture a cell therapy recently granted U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval.
Bristol Myers Squibb's expansion is expected to be completed later this year and ready for commercial manufacturing by 2023, the company said.
King Street Properties said last fall it plans to start construction this spring on a $500-million, 700,000-square-foot complex for drug manufacturing, an effort eyed at attracting firms that are based in places like Boston and Cambridge. Other Devens businesses have also been expanding. Bio-Techne, a biotechnology company, completed a 27,000-square-foot expansion that was announced in February.
MassDevelopment, a state economic development arm, is a major landowner and development partner in Devens, a former military base that straddles the towns of Ayer, Harvard and Shirley.
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