Devens’ future as economic engine ensured
Energized by the more than doubling of available space for business activity, Devens introduced its newest high-powered tenant, Commonwealth Fusion Systems, on Feb.
10, marking another chapter in the former Army base’s transition into a business development dynamo.
Those gathered tomark the occasion toured the future home of the company’s new SPARC facility.
In March of 2021, Commonwealth Fusion Systems announced it would be developing a 47-acre site over the next four years to further the company’s goal of developing fusion power as a reliable source of energy.
A collaborative project with themassachusetts Institute of Technology’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, SPARC, when completed, will be the world’s first commercially viable net energy fusionmachine, using hightemperature superconductingmagnets to produce energy through nuclear fusion.
CFS expects the facility to be operating in 2025. According to the company, ARC, its future fusion power plant that will expand on SPARC technology, won’t launch until sometime in the 2030s.
CFS Ceobobmumgaard said the new campus represented CFS’S “commitment” to fusion energy and the fight against climate change.
“So, of all the things that could affect climate change, why didwe choose fusion? Because the universe already chose fusion,” Mumgaard said. “Fusion is the thing that powers the stars, that built all the atoms in everything around us — when you look up into the night sky, you see fusion power plants.”
“This (new campus) is just the beginning,” he said.
Traditional nuclear power has long been produced through fission, a physical process where large, unstable atoms are split into lighter nuclei.
Conversely, the fusion process slams two smaller atoms together at high speeds, fusing them into a single, larger entity. This process can produce even more energy than the fission process, and does so without creating highly radioactive fission products or waste.
Beyond SPARC, the new campus will host CFS’ corporate headquarters, as well as an advanced manufacturing facility that will support both SPARC and future ARC power plants. The campus is also expected to expand in the future to include the development of additional facilities and advanced research and development projects, according to CFS.
These expansion plans, or even CFS’ decision to choose Devens in the first place, could have been jeopardized by the lack of remaining capacity designated for economic activity.
Peter Lowitt, director of the Devens Enterprise Commission, the zone’s one-stop permit authority and land-use agency, had previously warned that with 7.44 million square feet of commercial space already developed, Devens would reach its 8.5million square-foot growth barrier by the end of 2022 or early in 2023.
Chapter 498, the original 1994 legislation that established the Devens Enterprise Development Zone, limited the amount of business expansion there to 8.5 million square feet.
With existing cap space dwindling, state Sen. Jamieeldridge, an Acton Democrat who represents the three Devens towns, pushed legislation that would raise the limit to 12million square feet.
Select boards in Shirley and Ayer, two of the threedevens communities, favored eliminating the cap entirely, but Harvard’s board wanted a 12million-square-foot limit, which Eldridge endorsed.
However, thanks to outgoing Gov. Charlie Baker and his administration, an economic-development bill the state Legislature enacted in early November contained language that substantially lifted the cap on future commercial projects at Devens, the state’s flagship industrial park.
State lawmakers eventually approved language submitted by the Baker administration that also included that 12 million-square-foot number — not as a new development ceiling — but as additional space beyond that original footprint, bringing the total area available for business activity to roughly 20 million square feet.
“We were sweating bullets,” said DEC’S Lowitt at the time. “(Now) we won’t have to tell Bristol Myers Squibb or Commonwealth Fusion that they can’t do their next planned expansions, which is something we were fearing without intervention from the Legislature.”
Or King Street Properties, which is developing a 45-acre bio-manufacturing campus for life science companies to develop large-molecule drugs for more complex medical processes.
Buoyed by that room to grow — thanks to the forward-thinking efforts of three municipalities, the state Legislature and governor — Devens will continue to be a draw for additional businesses, and as such serve as the main driver of the Central Mass. economy.