Major commercial construction is officially underway as the Jet Spray Corporation breaks ground on its sprawling $6.8 million world headquarters situated on a prime tract at the terminus of University Avenue near the Westwood Industrial Park. Donald Myers of Norwood Engineering, serving as the project engineer, reported that site excavation and preparation are largely complete, allowing the general contractor—Clark and Smith of Quincy—to pour the facility’s foundational concrete. Simultaneously, crews are constructing a dedicated 1,500-foot access driveway linking the new industrial site directly to an uncompleted section of University Avenue.

The industrial development has advanced past environmental hurdles despite prior concerns raised by the Natural Resources Coalition, which feared construction might negatively impact the nearby, inactive Ellis municipal water supply fields. Following rigorous study, the state Department of Environmental Quality Engineering ruled in July that the Jet Spray manufacturing facility would neither impair local water quality nor diminish groundwater volume. State environmental regulators confirmed that while the protected Ellis water supply acreage abuts parts of the proposed University Avenue roadway extension, it does not infringe upon the private Jet Spray property boundaries, leaving the project unaffected by environmental impact assessments governing the wider 4,000-foot University Avenue extension toward Route 1 and Everett Street.

Relocating its corporate operations from Waltham—where manufacturing is currently fragmented across three separate buildings—Jet Spray plans to consolidate its entire enterprise in Norwood upon completion. Initial employment at the modern facility is projected at 125 workers, scaling upward over time to 280 personnel. Local tax assessors estimate that once the completed corporate headquarters formally enters municipal tax rolls in 1981, it will generate more than $50,000 annually in vital property tax revenue for the town.

Archival Note: This article has been dynamically reconstructed from the original public record print archives of the Patriot Ledger

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