By Aaron Wasserman
FITCHBURG — Micron Products Inc., a city-based manufacturer of medical components, plans to buy the
former Harper’s Furniture building on Main Street, according to executives involved in the deal.
The deal would be the company’s second major real-estate purchase this month and make the company the primary tenant of Moran Square on lower Main Street.
“We have a very large investment in our current facility and this is adding to it,” James E. Rouse, Micron Products’ president and chief executive officer, said Friday. “We’d have a complex down here, not just a couple buildings.”
The company plans to sign a purchase-and-sale agreement on the approximately 40,000 square-foot building in the near future, according to Rouse and Kevin Rice, former co-owner of Harper’s Furniture, who are selling the building.
Both declined to disclose the sale price because it is not yet public record.
Micron Products also plans to buy a former fire station on Summer Street and an adjacent empty lot from the city for $175,000, Paul Fontaine of the Fitchburg Redevelopment Authority announced earlier this month.
Rouse said Friday his company plans to use the fire station for office and manufacturing space, and the vacant lot for parking.
The two sides said they have been negotiating intermittently about the former Harper’s building since last fall.
“Once they bought the fire station and vacant lot, it would make sense that they buy my building because they would own the whole block, all the way back to the river,” Rice said Friday.
He and his wife, Laura, Harper’s other co-owner, bought the building in October 1998 for $225,000, according to the city Assessor’s office.
Rouse said is not immediately clear how Micron Products would use Harper’s former location, a three-story building in Moran Square, where Main, Summer and Lunenburg Streets converge.
The company plans to occupy the whole building, but that could change, he said.
Rouse said his company plans to hire more employees when they complete the expected purchases.
The company has hired 20 new employees in the past year and expects to continue a brisk growth rate, he said.
The company recently spent $1.3 million renovating one of its existing facilities on Sawyer Passway, just off lower Main Street, Rouse said.
Micron Products has also submitted a request to the City Council for a tax break so it can buy and renovate the two buildings, according to a letter sent from Dan Curley, executive director of the city’s Industrial Development Commission.
“They’re a well-established and successful company in the city,” Curley said in a telephone interview Friday. “Anything that is done to help them expand is good for the city of Fitchburg.”
The council needs to approve the proposal for a tax-increment-financing program before Mayor Dan H. Mylott can enter negotiations with the company.
Micron Products now occupies two buildings on Sawyer Passway, totaling approximately 120,000 square feet.
The company is a wholly owned subsidiary of Arrhythmia Research Technology Inc. that designs and manufactures medical devices. It has two divisions, Micron Integrated Technologies and New England Molders.
Rice said Friday the Harper’s building almost sold two other times earlier this year to developers interested in converting it to condominiums and retail spaces.
Those deals collapsed when the developers’ financing fell through, he said.
Both Rouse and Rice said city officials did not place any pressure on them not to sell the building to an industrial buyer, despite the city’s emphasis on residential and commercial development downtown.
“They want what’s best for the city and they knew the building had to sell eventually,” Rice said. “Micron is a publicly traded medical company that has the resources to do something nice with the corner.”
City officials “couldn’t have been more helpful” while the building was on the market, Rice said.
Lisa Wong, the Redevelopment Authority’s recently departed executive director, continued to help negotiations even after leaving her city post, he said.
A conceptual plan for Moran Square — conducted by city officials, Fitchburg State College architecture students and the Revolving Museum of Lowell, and released earlier this year — envisions a residential and retail future for the square.
Mylott said Friday there are multiple potential uses for Moran Square and he supports Micron Products’ planned acquisitions on Main Street.
“I think what Micron is trying to do in Moran Square is very commendable,” he said. “What they’re planning to do is going to be very helpful to restructuring that whole square.”
