SHREWSBURY – The Shrewsbury Planning Board on Dec. 5 unanimously approved plans to construct an 845,500-square-foot UPS warehouse near Centech Boulevard on the Grafton-Shrewsbury town line.
The Grafton Planning Board has also approved the warehouse; construction is expected to start as soon as January.
“On behalf of Prologis and the entire development team, thank you very, very much. This was a highly aggressive schedule when we started, and we were only able to achieve it with your cooperation and the cooperation of all town staff,” said attorney Mark Donahue, who represented the applicant, Prologis, Inc., throughout the Planning Board process.
The project will sit on an undeveloped 212-acre lot at 50 Centennial Drive. Though the vast majority of the property is in Grafton, the warehouse itself is split with 70% located in Grafton and 30% in Shrewsbury.
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The warehouse will be a new regional distribution hub for UPS and may handle upward of 50,000 packages per hour. The existing UPS facility in Shrewsbury will remain.
The public hearing process began in June with a joint meeting between Shrewsbury and Grafton officials. Since then, the Shrewsbury Planning Board has held six public hearings, covering the site design, stormwater, noise pollution and traffic.
Traffic concerns drew the most discussion. Based on trip rates at UPS facilities in Indiana and Utah, the Shrewsbury project is expected to generate about 5,000 total trips per 24-hour weekday period. Roughly 3,600 of those trips would be from employees, 500 would be from single-unit trucks, and 900 would be trips made by articulated trucks.
The developer will be making significant monetary contributions toward the redesign of the Centech-Route 20 intersection.
