The Boston Globe
Globe Northwest, p10
By Davis Bushnell
Globe Correspondent
BOXBOROUGH - The interiors of three office buildings on Cisco Systems' bucolic Boxborough campus are expected to be completed early next year. That will likely set in motion plans to have the first group of employees occupy those buildings by early summer, according to officials of the giant computer networking company, based in San Jose, Calif.
Employees currently working in Chelmsford and Lowell will be part of the initial move to the new corporate center. The company already has 750 employees nearby, working in a renovated office building off Route 111 that used to be the NEC Technology building and has 277,000 square feet of space. The new campus's two-, three-, and four-story structures, all of them with facades made of bricks from Maine, are now substantially finished. Offering 430,000 square feet of space among them, they sit on landscaped grounds off the new Beaver Brook Road that cuts through 300 acres of what had once been open fields. Cisco would not say how many employees will ultimately work at the campus.
Two hundred acres are being set aside as open space. That includes a large fenced-off area aimed at protecting the Blandings turtle, a rare, endangered species; 2 1/2 miles of walking and jogging trails; and a soccer field donated to the Town of Boxborough.
Foundations for two other buildings are in place, "but the economy will dictate when they will be built," said Kevin Volpe, plant manager, during a tour last week. Ten buildings, totalling 1.9 million square feet of space, have been approved for Cisco's Beaver Brook Road site.
Although it has been hard hit by the recession, as have most high-tech companies, Cisco has invested about $150 million in its Boxborough properties, according to a document submitted March 27 to local officials by Katrina Doerfler, the company's corporate tax director.
In addition, Doerfler noted, $7.5 million has been spent on local improvements, most of that for new ramps off Interstate 495, new traffic signals, and the widening of Route 111 and Swanson Road, which ends at Beaver Brook Road.
"We're very pleased with the way things have been going," said David Birt, chairman of the Boxborough selectmen. "Cisco has put a lot of thought into its new campus. And, as a result, there are, for example, trails that can be used by the public, including people with disabilities; the protected area for turtles; and a small, nicely designed bridge over a pond."