Rockport To Vacate Lancaster Building, Move Jobs South
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Rockport will vacate its facility in Lancaster, pictured above, in the fall.
The Rockport shoe company will vacate its warehouse and outlet space in Lancaster this fall, and building owner Parsons Commercial Group of Framingham is seeking new tenants.
Rockport is moving the location’s operations from 580 Fort Pond Rd. to Spartanburg, S.C., where parent company Adidas already has a distribution center for its Adidas and Reebok brands.
Rockport built the 275,620-square-foot building in 1994, and Parsons bought it last May in a sale/lease back agreement.
Andrew I. Sacher of Parsons said the building could be a good location for a company looking for a regional corporate headquarters. It includes 22,859 square feet of office or R&D space and has easy access to Route 2, he said.
Development Plans
Sacher said Parsons has also begun working with the Town of Lancaster to get legal changes that could eventually allow for further development of the 137-acre parcel that the building sits on. He said the company hopes to get an earthwork removal permit to begin removing and selling sand and gravel from the land. That could make some money in the short term and get the area ready for possible development five or 10 years down the line.
“If you can actually generate some value off of the site with earthwork removal and also prepare it for future development, that’s always a good start,” Sacher said.
Noreen Piazza, planning director for Lancaster, said Parsons has not yet formally submitted any proposals for the undeveloped land. To do anything with the area would require a change to the town’s water resource district, and she said voters will take up the idea of doing so at a town meeting in May. Piazza said the town currently has more area zoned to be a possible source of drinking water than it has used so far.
“It’s really examining whether we still feel that we need that area,” she said. “At first glance it’s not looking like we do.”
Sacher said finding good occupants for the building is especially important because the Rockport move will mean the loss of several hundred jobs in the community.
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