2017 has been another extremely successful year at the Quonset Business Park. The park is now home to more than 200 companies and 11,000 full-time and part-time jobs. Its Port of Davisville is one of the top ten auto importers in North America. 

The continued growth at Quonset is reflected by the success of our tenants. Many park tenants have made investments in their facilities through major expansions and improvement projects this year:

• Toray Plastics (America), Inc. recently completed a 27,000 s/f expansion supporting their J6/J7 product line. 

• Ocean State Job Lot has made a major investment in their Quonset Business Park warehouse. The 480,000 s/f expansion brings their facility to 1.2 million s/f. 

• Building 3 of Quonset’s Gateway Offices opened its doors this quarter. All three Gateway Office buildings are fully leased and demand for high-quality office space at the Park continues. 

• Phase 2 of the West Davisville Industrial Condos was completed.

• J. Goodison Co., who opened their Quonset facility in 2016, completed construction of their new fabrication building. 

• Fujifilm Electronic Materials has expanded their loading dock by 3,500 s/f.

• The Air National Guard completed their C-130J Flight Simulator Facility. Once operational, the facility will be a remarkable training asset to the men and woman who serve in the 143d Airlift Wing and beyond.

There are also several construction projects nearing completion this year, including new offices at Electric Boat, Shoreline Business Solutions more than doubling their space, and new athletic fields for the town of North Kingstown.

Overall, more than 630,000 s/f of new structures and additions will be completed or underway by Quonset tenants by the end of this year.  

We have even more projects underway that will be continuing in 2018, including: Rhode Island Fast Ferry’s new terminal building; phase one of Finlays two-phase 93,000 s/f research and manufacturing facility; phase one of Quonset’s Flex Industrial Campus; the Air National Guard Fire Station; and hundreds of thousands of s/f of high-bay manufacturing space at Electric Boat for the Columbia-class submarine, just to name a few.

The Quonset Development Corporation is committed to helping businesses at Quonset succeed and creating the right environment to bring more jobs to Rhode Island. To stay up-to-date on the various projects happening at Quonset visit http://www.quonset.com/current-projects/.

Quonset continues to be a key driver of job creation and economic growth in Rhode Island. As 2017 comes to a close, we look forward to building on its momentum in the year ahead.

Steven King, PE, is the managing director of the Quonset Development Corp., North Kingstown, R.I.