By John Lippman

An abandoned and sprawling machine tool factory at the gateway to downtown, long a ghostly reminder of the region’s economic decline, will finally be demolished and the site remediated thanks to a new funding program from the state to clean up some of Vermont’s worst contaminated sites.

The 270,000-square-foot former Jones & Lamson Machine Co. building on Clinton Street, aka Route 11, once employed 1,500 factory workers and was the crown of Springfield’s manufacturing hub. It will be receiving an estimated $3.7 million administered through Vermont’s Brownfield Economic Revitalization Alliance program, said Bob Flint, executive director of the Springfield Regional Development Corp., which owns the 14-acre property.

“It’s an understatement to say this is just another brownfield site. This beats them all,” Flint said Thursday in front of the entrance of the Jones & Lamson factory, now overgrown with ivy, during an event to trumpet the state setting aside money from a $210 million budget surplus for brownfield cleanup. In attendance were Gov. Phil Scott and other state, federal and town officials.

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For the entire article, see

https://www.vnews.com/Springfield-gets-state-funding-to-demolish-and-clean-for-Jones-Lamson-brownfield-site-42502336

Posted September 20, 2021