68,000-SF Facility Opens in Familiar Neighborhood

When Columbia Tech opened its 68,000-square-foot state-of-the-art contract manufacturing facility at 27 Otis St. on Jan. 1, some of the employees shortened their commute.

By .09 miles.

“We had a warehouse distribution center in Shrewsbury and we had a warehouse distribution center at 10 Otis St.,” says Jim Coghlin, chief operating officer at Coghlin Companies. Columbia Tech is a wholly owned subsidiary.

“We essentially out-grew both locations. We looked at an opportunity where we could consolidate and potentially expand."

Columbia Tech moved into the 27 Otis St. building in December, and consolidated the operations at 25 Bowditch St.  n Shrewsbury and 10 Otis St. in Westborough into it, Jim Coghlin says.

The new facility is in a neighborhood familiar to the Coghlin Companies.

Coghlin Electric/Electronics moved into 35 Otis St. in 1994, Jim Coghlin notes. Wesco bought the business in 1999.

Coghlin returned to Otis Street in March 2009, addressing space needs.
"It was like coming home again,” Jim Coghlin says,

"Coincidentally, we ended up back at 53 Otis St. We went from 35 to 53. It's just reverse numbers."

The 60,000 to 70,000- square-foot facility at 53 Otis St. is the Coghlin Companies’ largest, Jim Coghlin says.

The new facility at 27 Otis St., meanwhile,  will serve the Coghlin Companies’ three businesses, he says: DCI Engineering, the "design and engineering services business;  Columbia Tech, "our product manufacturing arm"; and Cogmedix, which does medical device contract manufacturing.

"This building feeds our production operations," which are in Westborough, West Boylston and Worcester, Coghlin says.

"The nice thing about this space here is it's very wide open and clean. Functionally, it works much better for our distribution area,” he says.

The new space includes about 68,000 square feet, and about 40,000 to 50,000 square feet is being used for warehouse, Coghlin says. "The other space we can expand into with manufacturing." The 10 Otis St. and Shrewsbury facilities had about 50,000 square feet between them, he says.

In addition, the 27 Otis St. site has two roughly 20,000 square foot bays, and Columbia Tech is exploring possibly expanding into either of them, he says.

The facility employs 40 to 50 people, nearly all of them moving from the 10 Otis St. and Shrewsbury sites, Coghlin says.

The move’s timing turned out well.

The Coghlin Companies were "recently awarded a significant opportunity" that will generate "a significant piece of business,” Coghlin says.

The project involves “the manufacturing of large pieces of capital equipment for the technology sector, and it is a Coghlin companies project incorporating both our DCI Engineering and Columbia Tech business units,” he says.