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Gillette will soon no longer be the best South Boston can get
By adamg on Tue, 10/24/2023 - 8:46pm
Banker & Tradesman reports it will be moving its manufacturing from its long-time home at World Shaving Headquarters on Fort Point Channel to Andover by 2026 - although it will maintain a presence in South Boston. And that means a huge piece of land could go up for development rights.
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Comments
Hear me out…
Hear me out. A massive space filled with just banks and funeral houses and empty store fronts with a Centre St running thru the middle of it all. Courage.
Boston's last major factory?
I think this is the last major manufacturing facility left in the city of Boston. Anyone know for sure?
Right down the street
on Broadway there’s a bar that produces entitled assholes.
I'm not sufficiently familiar with the area
to know what place you are referring to.
Might be
Manufacturing has really gone. Teradyne on Harrison Ave closed awhile back. All of the plants around Sullivan Square in C-town, Freeport Street in Dorchester, Honeywell in Brighton are long gone.
First Electronics Corp in Dorchester one of the few survivors.
Not a traditional factory but ...
There's that National Resilience (formerly Sanofi and formerly formerly Genzyme) plant at the Allston/Cambridge turnpike ramps where billions of Chinese hamster ovary cells work around the clock turning out a couple of drugs for people with Gaucher disease.
Genzyme
Has a big manufacturing plant in Allston.
I'll miss that sign.
So Citgo gets landmark status but this iconic sign doesn't. Doesn't seem fair.
Too early to tell
Gillette hasn't yet announced (or even decided) whether they are entirely vacating the South Boston site, or only moving manufacturing to Andover.
That building is going away
Even in a world with high interest rates, that spot is worth an enormous amount. If it's not being used for manufacturing, there's no reason to keep it as it is.
(Sentimental reasons aren't valuable.)
Anyway, in time a nice tower will become more iconic than a corporate logo. The sign will probably be preserved but moved elsewhere.
Move the sign to Andover?
Maybe
Or like the John Hancock sign at Fenway, just place it on a prominent building in the city.
They might sell the factory site but stipulate the sign gets worked into whatever gets built to appease people who can't stand the idea of change. (Looking at you, stupid Citgo sign.)
The thing about the Gillette
The thing about the Gillette sign is that it really gets its whole aesthetic from being stretched out on top of a very long flat building. Since another long flat building would be a waste of space for South Boston it might be hard to find somewhere else it would fit. You could put the Citgo sign on anything.
(Looking at the building on Google Street View, was the building intentionally designed to look like a bunch of razor blades? It was built long before the Mach 3 and that was an architectural element that was more fashionable at the time, so maybe it's just a coincidence.)
Tower?
Tower?
How close are they to the Logan flight path? If they are within whatever crucial distance, they will not be able to build any taller than anything in the rest of the seaport and Fort Point.
300 Feet
Depends on what you consider to be a tower, but the FAA/Logan flight path based height restriction for that parcel is 300 feet. For context, 500 Boylston (Denny Crane's building) is just over 300 feet. So something slightly shorter than that could be possible, but I would expect something more in line with the new Eli Lilly building (formerly GE HQ), which is about 230 feet.
I wonder how many …
… factory workers will be out of a job as a result?
Maybe none?
if they are willing to work in Andover?
And what of those who are
And what of those who are willing to work in Andover but can't afford to add another 40 miles to their daily commute? Or were you offering to drive them?
Time to relocate or find a new job?
This isn’t new
Relocate...
I'm sure a line employee at Gillette would have no problem finding a nice fixer upper in the area for a million-plus.
If they live in Boston
They’ll come out ahead moving to Andover.
Why does Gillette own a line worker anything? I’m sure they’ll offer a severance and job assistance for the workers that don’t want to continue their employment with Gillette.. What else do they need to provide?
Actually it seems all the houses are mcmansions
There are few houses for less than 500K. one or two. There are some condo's but why move so far from the city to live in a condo?
A line worker could actually
A line worker could actually find a pretty cool loft in Lawrence for 1/4 the price of anything there is in Southie, even rent controlled property.
Gillette Andover is on the Haverill commuter rail
It seems like a reachable location unless you live on the South Shore. But as other commenters mentioned this is not a new plan, so I assume the employees are figuring it out.
?
Have you been on that campus in Andover?
The closest commuter rail stop is a 40 minute walk.
That is like walking from Fields Corner to Lower Mills.
Don't expect a lot of people to be jaunting down from Ballardvale for this.
Add to that the fact that getting to North Station….
…. from many parts of Boston is not just a walk in the park.
Then there is the cost of commuting on commuter rail to consider. Plus the unreliability of Keolis.
The other option is to move to Andover. But how affordable is that for a factory worker?
It is 1.8 miles
ok 40 minutes is a walk, but Gillette afford a shuttle.
Also...
The lowest wages at Gillette are $37,000 a year and a line worker who's been at the job awaile makes around $71,000. I think they could afford a Charlie Card.
Hahaha
As if they would.
You know something we don’t?
I haven’t heard they will or will not provide a shuttle. Share your sources, please.
Um, I am not reporting a
Um, I am not reporting a shuttle mr.begganforanyargument.
https://www.andovertownsman
https://www.andovertownsman.com/news/gillette-to-move-manufacturing-to-a....
They will provide "transportation"
Judging from the size of the full parking lot,
even with being next to the Red Line and walking distance from South Station, most people working there are likely driving to Southie from the suburbs already.
Duplicate
n/t
More like 25 miles
More like 25 miles
Easier said than done
If you live south of Boston, a daily commute to Andover is a nightmare and not really doable for many.
There aren’t a lot of workers there
The loss of factory worker jobs happened gradually over time. That plant is now highly automated; it doesn’t employ massive numbers of factory workers any more.
Long time horizon
The move to Andover is more than 2 years away, that's a decent amount of time for workers to look at their options, make a decision, and act on it. This could mean moving, it could mean seeking alternative employment, etc. I'm sure P&G will offer some assistance with such transitions. Also, as another comment points out, the South Boston plant is highly automated, so not too many workers are there anyway.
This article says that
This article says that Gillette has 400-500 manufacturing jobs in Southie which will relocate to Andover, and everyone will be offered a position at the new plant, and some kind of transportation to the campus 20+ miles away. (All highway). Not sure if that means a shuttle bus or relocation incentives.
750 employees who work in product design and development will stay at the Southie location.
https://www.andovertownsman.com/news/gillette-to-move-manufacturing-to-a....
I live 2 blocks from here and the old, rusty looking industrial parts of this building mass along A street and make a big dead spot of several blocks in an otherwise residential and very pretty and walkable area. State Street Bank built a large building with a nice park on the other side of the street 6-7 years ago. Crispr moved in near them and made a really beautiful modern building with an expansive cafe in the lobby with cool Scandinavian decor and a view of the dog park. And then there's the back end of Gillette with all these mysterious vats and machinery all walled up and dingy looking.
I know everyone is supposed to be against everything in Southie, but I'm sure Gillette made it's own business decision that modernizing this old rusty factory, which looks like it hasn't been updated in decades, would be silly when the land is worth so much, and they would be sandwiched into a now residential area, when they could expand a lot more easily in Andover.