Cooperative Reserve Supply Wood Storage Building

The lot at 1100 High Street, in Iron Horse Park, is 13.3 acres of the land the Boston and Maine Railroad bought in 1911 for its Boston and Maine Billerica Shops. On the railroad's purchase plan of April 1911 it lies across the line between two farms: Parcel III, about 32.1 acres running from High Street to Cold Brook, which Edward Spaulding of Billerica sold the railroad "with the buildings thereon" on May 1, 1911, and Parcel IX, about 17.6 acres south of it, which Warren Holden sold at the same time. Archie C. Burnett and Charles S. Cummings, who held options on the whole district east of High Street, released them to the railroad that spring. The railroad filled the low ground and used it as part of the shop yard for half a century.

In 1961 the railroad, which was selling off unused shop land, sold about 23 acres here to the trustee of The Omega Trust, a real estate trust, on a plan of February 1961 that shows the strip between two lines of track, an "area of sludge oil" and the 20-foot private way to High Street. The trust, renamed Welco Realty Trust, voted in 1973 to sell all its Iron Horse Park land to Penn Culvert Company "as part of the plan for the complete liquidation of the Trust," and the land passed through Kendall Nail & Hardware Co. to Penn Culvert, a Massachusetts corporation then of Malden, by a deed recorded September 21, 1973, for $105,000. In 1975 the railroad's trustees in reorganization completed an exchange of narrow strips along the lot's sides and gave Penn Culvert rights over a 50-foot driveway from High Street. In 1996 Penn Culvert divided the land, selling the southwestern 10.02 acres (Parcel A) to Brandywine Corporation and keeping the 13.3 acres with its buildings (Parcel B).

The wood storage building is the large metal-frame building on the southwestern part of the lot, across the old boundary between the Spaulding and Holden farms of 1911, by far the largest building at 1100 High Street. It was built for Cooperative Reserve Supply's lumber after the company leased part of the land in 2001, when the town's Board of Appeal granted a special permit for a new building on the leased land. The 1996 subdivision plan of the lot shows this ground open, with only the office and the smaller storage building standing at the northeastern end. The 2017 survey of the shop complex described "a large metal frame wood storage building constructed ca. 2003" and dated the third Cooperative Reserve Supply building to 2005.

In 2001 the town's Board of Appeal granted Penn Culvert a special permit to build a new building with signs on the land, noting that "the owner is leasing a portion of the land to Cooperative Reserve Supply Incorporated," a business that would need outside storage like the one already on the site. Cooperative Reserve Supply, Inc., incorporated in 1950, is a wholesale distributor of lumber, gypsum board, insulation and other building materials to retail building-material dealers; despite the name it has no connection with the Harvard Cooperative Society. Penn Culvert sold Parcel B in 2002 for $650,000 to 1100 Iron Horse Park, LLC, which conveyed it to Cooperative Reserve Supply in 2005. The company still owns and occupies the lot.

References

1. MACRIS BIL.386
2. Billerica assessor, 1100 High St (23-34-4): Cooperative Reserve Supply Inc., 13.3 acres, warehouse built about 1974; FY98 subdivision of 17-45-0, Plan 191-132 Parcel B
3. Cooperative Reserve Supply, Incorporated, 1100 Iron Horse Park, North Billerica: domestic profit corporation founded 1950 (find.coop, from Massachusetts data)
4. Cooperative Reserve Supply company profile: wholesale distributor of building materials to retail building-material dealers, North Billerica

Deed References Expand all

Recorded is Book/Page at the Middlesex North Registry of Deeds unless noted.