Plank Street
Plank Street
| Location | Map |
| Neighborhood | Middlesex Industrial Park |
| Laid Out | 1973 |
| Right of Way | 40 ft |
| Pavement | 30 - 31 ft |
Plank Street is a private industrial street in South Billerica, about 2,200 feet long including its Bedford end, the entrance to the industrial park first called the Middlesex Industrial Park and now the Middlesex Corporate Park. It leaves the Middlesex Turnpike at the Bedford line and runs northeast to Dunham Road. Its southwestern end, toward the turnpike, lies in Bedford: a deed of 1973 gives the right to use Plank Street and a strip of registered land "for ingress to and egress from the granted premises to Middlesex Turnpike" as ways "in the Towns of Billerica and Bedford."
The strip that became the street first appears as Parcel "B," 28,343 square feet, on a "Plan of Land in Billerica, Mass." owned by the Minuteman Sportsman's Club, Inc., drawn by Raymond Engineering Service of Hudson, Raymond J. Garcia, surveyor, and dated November 18, 1972. It runs from the Bedford line beside Parcel "A," 6.98 acres, with Baird Atomic land across the line; the Planning Board endorsed the plan on November 28, 1972, and it was recorded on January 26, 1973 (Plan Book 116, Plan 42). Both parcels then became part of the Middlesex Industrial Park of Graham Builders, Inc., a Land Court subdivision drawn by the same firm and first dated February 22, 1973, which shows "Plank St. (Private - 40.00 Wide)" (Land Court Plan 37078-A). On May 23, 1973 Jon H. Graham, trustee of Riverhurst Realty Trust, sold lot 4 of the park, the former Parcel "A," "bounded southeasterly by Plank Street," to the trustees of the Browning-Plank Realty Trust for $130,000. That deed is the earliest record of the name found. The name matches that of one of the two trustees, but no record says how it was chosen.
Building followed at once. The assessors date the truck terminal at 28 Plank Street to about 1973, the industrial building at 1 Plank Street, on the former Parcel "A," to about 1974, and the garage at 3 Plank Street to about 1978. In 1974 the town's Industrial Commission reported that "the Industrial Park, off Middlesex Pike at Plank St. has five new tenants and more are planned."
Plank Street has remained a private way; no vote accepting it was found. On June 20, 2020 the annual spring town meeting voted, 173 to 0, under Article 25, to appropriate $2,000,000 "to pay costs of making repairs to Dunham Road and Plank Street, each of which is a private way located within the Middlesex Corporate Park," the cost to be recovered by betterments, and the street was repaved in fiscal 2022.