Matt Arner moved his company, SolarFlair Clean Energy Solutions, to Ashland after outgrowing space in nearby Framingham.
Matt Arner learned the ropes of the clean energy industry building tiny solar arrays in Nepalese villages to replace kerosene lamps as the traditional home lighting source.
“If you could finance that $500 system, the monthly cost was less than they were paying for kerosene to light their lanterns,” said Arner, who studied international development at Brandeis University’s Heller School. “It’s the same model here, except it’s a $20,000 system rather than a $500 system.”
Arner now works with Massachusetts residents and businesses in the changeover from fossil fuels to solar sources for electric and hot water generation. His Ashland company, SolarFlair Clean Energy Solutions, is on a pace to install 200 solar projects across the state this year.
SolarFlair is the kind of company that Ashland officials want to attract more of as part of a “Green Mile” cluster of renewable energy companies they envision settling within a 1-mile radius of the downtown and MBTA commuter rail station. An economic development report submitted in May identified clean energy as a potential growth sector for this Metrowest town’s Pleasant Street corridor, a neighborhood leading out of the downtown containing a mixture of flex properties and smaller, older homes.
Like many suburban communities, Ashland seeks to expand its meager commercial tax base by attracting low-impact industry. Only 9 percent of the town’s $64.3 million budget is paid by businesses, and voters have never approved a Proposition 2 ½ override to raise property taxes.
“We’re not going to be a Natick or Framingham, nor do we want to be,” said Anthony Schiavi, the town manager since 2013. “But when businesses are looking to expand, we’re there to open discussions.”
Renewable energy is a natural focus given the industry’s healthy recent growth across the Bay State. Clean energy companies have hired 28,000 employees since 2010, according to the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, and the industry payroll is expected to top 88,000 workers this year.
The availability of low-cost commercial real estate in suburban communities is a draw as clean energy companies evolve from start-up phase to maturity.
“They have quite a bit of real estate that was built for low-intensity manufacturing, and that piece of the market has left Ashland,” said April Anderson Lamoureux, author of the economic development study. “What we’re seeing in these smaller communities is an effort to repurpose these spaces.”
A quarter of a mile from SolarFlair, the owner of a 72,000-square-foot warehouse is in negotiations with a clean energy company that could bring more than 60 employees to a new facility as part of an expansion and relocation from a nearby community.
John Dudley, chairman of the Ashland planning board, acquired the vacant property at 60 Pleasant St. formerly occupied by a fire alarm equipment manufacturer in March 2014 for $1.9 million and runs his home improvement company out of the building. He saw opportunity in a property that’s located within walking distance of mass transit and near revived downtown development activity. including a proposal for 400 apartments.
The energy company, which Dudley declined to name, is looking for 30,000 square feet of build-to-suit space as it expands. The facility, which contains 21-foot clear heights, would be used for manufacturing and office space.
“I was looking to bring some solid jobs into the community. Knowing there’s not much commercial land, Ashland has been pretty receptive,” Dudley said.
In other parts of the state, converted mill spaces in older industrial cities have proven attractive to green energy clusters. Turnkey solar developer Kearsarge Energy moved in 2012 to the Riverworks mill complex in Watertown, while wind turbine manufacturer Ogin Inc. and composting energy provider Harvest Power Inc. are tenants at the Waltham Watch Factory. And at Lawrence’s 3.6-million-square-foot Riverwalk mill complex, photovoltaic component manufacturer Solectria Corp. has expanded from 3,800 to 90,000 square feet in the past decade.
Arner founded SolarFlair in 2007 in his Hopkinton home and moved the company to Framingham in 2009 before leasing the 10,000-square-foot office and warehouse space on Pleasant Street in early 2014. The availability of an acre of outdoor storage space for photovoltaic panels was a major draw, Arner said. Six months later, the town selected SolarFlair as contractor for the Ashland Solar Challenge, part of the Solarize Massachusetts program that coordinates town-wide solar residential campaigns.
Multi-Pronged Economic Development Strategy
An economic development report submitted in May by Anderson Strategic Advisors LLC recommends a multi-faceted strategy to encourage commercial development in Ashland.
Acting upon the Anderson report, the town named Planning Director Nathaniel Strosberg as the interim liaison for economic development, serving as the single point of contact for businesses and developers. And it’s preparing to hire a full-time economic development coordinator to assume that role in the new fiscal year, which began on June 1.
Schiavi, the town manager, said the town is adopting various business-friendly programs and sustainable development incentives. It’s open to offering tax increment financing agreements to developers whose clients meet minimum job-creation thresholds, he said.
The town applied for and received a $6-million MassWorks grant to support development in its downtown rail transit district, which was adopted to encourage mixed-use projects near the commuter rail station. The grant will pay for infrastructure including water, sewer and road improvements to serve a proposed 400-unit apartment complex. Bicycle and walking trails are also planned.
To promote the Green Mile, town officials hosted a visit by Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (MassCEC) officials and will reach out to incubators such as the Cambridge Innovation Center and Greentown Labs in Somerville, hoping to recruit startups that are in expansion mode.
“Some of the (Ashland) properties might be amenable to companies that are looking for assembly space or raw fabrication space,” said Alicia Barton, CEO of MassCEC. “The startups that are concentrated in Boston and Cambridge are growing and looking for places where they can cost-effectively do assembly.”
The 2011 bankruptcy of Devens-based Evergreen Solar spotlighted the cost pressures affecting clean energy manufacturers in Massachusetts. But Barton said the industry’s local startups often prefer to keep assembly in-state for quality control and time-to-market reasons.
“Many of these companies are innovating the designs on a rapid pace and they want to be able to do that in real time,” she said. “They don’t want to wait for it to be shipped to China, receive it two weeks later and send it back. They want to do customization quicker and easier.”
