North Country industrial park gains

Plans by the towns of Littleton, Bethlehem and Lisbon to join forces and jointly build an industrial park continue to move forward.

According to the Caledonian-Record newspaper of St. Johnsbury, Vt., officials from the three towns have signed off on federal grant funding for design work, but owners of the proposed site are still reviewing some of the stipulations included in the grant.

“We’re all continuing to be optimistic that it will come together,” Andy Smith, president of Peabody & Smith Realty and one of the three members of Peak Three Associates, the group that owns the site proposed for the industrial park, told the newspaper.

Jere Peabody, vice president of Peabody & Smith, and Littleton businessman Ron Murro are the other partners in Peak Three, which Smith said has owned the 140-acre site on Brook Road in Bethlehem for the past eight or nine years.

“We’ve basically been holding [the property] without developing it, at the towns’ request, for the past seven years,” he said.

The federal Economic Development Administration has approved a $272,354 grant, which has been accepted by all three towns.

That money would be used for such preliminary aspects as designing a replacement for the Reddington Street Bridge, the configuration of the park, improvements to Reddington Street and its intersection with Route 302, and the extension of water, sewer and electric lines to the site.

The total project is expected to cost about $4.5 million, with the majority covered by federal and state funds. The three towns together would pay a total of about $200,000. – NHBR STAFF