From The Daily Hampshire Gazette
by Chad Cain
Friday, May 23, 2008

It looks like Kollmorgen Electro-Optical is here to stay.

In a unanimous vote Thursday night, the expansive committee in charge of overseeing the redevelopment of the former state hospital grounds approved a significant change to the Village Hill Northampton master plan. The move paves the way for the city’s largest manufacturer and its largest for-profit employer to move into a new manufacturing and office facility on the development’s south campus – thus keeping Kollmorgen in the city.

Development of the south campus was always a question we had,’ said committee member Joe Blumenthal. ‘The community is being presented with an opportunity here that we should take advantage of.’

Kollmorgen, which employs 330 people at its Northampton plant, would be the lone anchor tenant in the revamped south campus, where most of the commercial building is slated. In approving a MassDevelopment request to change the master plan, the Northampton State Hospital Citizens Advisory Committee for Village Hill agreed to significantly reduce both the number of buildings and the amount of square footage slated for the south campus.

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