HUDSON – An Intel official on Thursday confirmed company plans to sell its 149-acre research and development site at 75 Reed Road in Hudson.
After the plans were first reported by the Register, William Moss, a senior director of Corporate Communications at Intel wrote in an email to the Community Advocate that the roughly 800 employees at the Hudson site will move to a facility Intel is leasing at 500 Beaver Brook Road in Harvard.
Hudson Director of Planning and Community Development Kristina Johnson separately identified the prospective buyer for the site as Portman Industrial, a real estate developer out of Atlanta.
Johnson said that same firm is in the process of redeveloping the site of the Silver City Galleria, a former mall in Taunton that was demolished last year.
Moss wrote that Intel expects to transfer the property to its new owner at some point in the summer of 2023.
Digital Equipment Corporation first built what is now Intel’s site in 1979, using the facility to build high-powered processors.
That was part of an initial boom in computer manufacturing in Central Massachusetts in the 1980s, employing thousands in Hudson and beyond.
Digital’s fortunes began to slow, though, before Intel eventually acquired its Hudson campus in 1998 as part of a settlement in an alleged patent infringement case, according to the Register.
Intel then ceased its microchip manufacturing operation in Hudson in 2014 and began searching for a buyer for the site, according to the Worcester Business Journal.
Boston.com reported that Intel laid off around 700 employees in its manufacturing operation, while retaining staff at its research and development facility.
The manufacturing facility was demolished in 2015 after Intel was unable to find a buyer.
The process of Intel’s sale and Portman’s redevelopment of the site remained in its preliminary stages as of Thursday, according to Johnson, with nothing formally filed with the town.
Portman’s project at the site will eventually then have to go before the Planning Board as part of Hudson’s permitting process.
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