Draft:Myles Standish Industrial Park

• Comment: Business park is probably cross between an organization and a place, but either way there isn't sufficient sourcing for notability. Star Mississippi 01:48, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

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Myles Standish Industrial Park

Myles Standish Industrial Park

Location	Taunton, Massachusetts
Coordinates	41°56′45″N 71°6′55″W
Opening date	1973
No. of tenants	111 (2023)
No. of workers	8,000+
Size	1,029 acres (4.2 km2)

The Myles Standish Industrial Park is a 1,029 acre (4.2 km²) industrial park located in Taunton, Massachusetts. The site opened in 1973 on the former location of Camp Myles Standish and has since expanded onto the site of the former Paul A. Dever State School; the site is named for Captain Myles Standish.

The industrial park hosts over 111 companies and employs over 8,000 workers.

History

Main articles: Camp Myles Standish and Paul A. Dever State School

Troops leaving Camp Myles Standish

The site that the Myles Standish Industrial Park encompasses was originally occupied by Camp Myles Standish, a U.S. Army and prisoner-of-war camp that served as a the staging area for the Boston Port of Embarkation during World War II. The camp opened on October 8, 1942 and closed in January 1946; the site of Camp Myles Standish was briefly considered as a possible site for the United Nations.

In 1959, the state of Massachusetts took over the site from the federal government to create the Myles Standish State School for the Mentally Retarded, later renamed the Paul A. Dever State School. The patients of the institution were housed in the former hospital area of the former army camp.

In 1973, The City of Taunton acquired over 700 acres (2.8 km²) of the former army camp for the purpose of constructing a modern industrial park, which opened the same year. The entirety of the Paul A. Dever State School closed in 1991 due to lawsuits over funding, with the entire facility closing in 2002. In reaction to the school’s closing, state Senator Marc Pacheco and local lawmakers enacted legislation for the site to be redeveloped as an expansion of the existing Myles Standish Industrial Park; however, the site had a negative land value due to the amount of remediation and new infrastructure required which led to the former campus site sitting vacant for several years.

In 2011, MassDevelopment and the Taunton Development Corporation (TDC) formed a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation called the Taunton Development/MassDevelopment Corporation (TD/MDC) which set out to specifically redevelop the abandoned Paul Dever School campus, which had since been deemed a hazard to public safety. In 2022, the 220-acre (0.9 km²) expansion of the Myles Standish Industrial Park and new Business Park at Myles Standish were completed on the former Paul Dever School site.

Tenants and freight transportation

Several corporations have regional facilities located at Myles Standish including food and beverage distributers, manufacturers, and biomedical firms; most of the facilities consist of warehouses and fulfillment centers. Notable corporations that have regional facilities at Myles Standish include PepsiCo, Amazon, Tesla, The Boston Globe, General Dynamics, Williams Sonoma, Reinhart Foodservice, Gordon Food Service, and the Waters Corporation.

National highway access to Myles Standish is provided by Interstate 495, which lies north of the industrial park. Myles Standish Boulevard bisects the industrial park, which connects Bay Street and Massachusetts Route 140 via Harvey Avenue. CSX's Middleboro Secondary connects the park to the national freight rail network via a 1.4 mile (2.3 km) industrial spur which is the only active portion of the former Taunton Branch Railroad (Mansfield Secondary).