Kendrick Field in Worcester is on the other side of the train tracks. The freight lines rumble near the 15 acres parcel of land that’s home to a few baseball fields, a basketball court, and a football field. A few trees offering shade run between the road and the fields. If you keep driving along Ararat Street, eventually you arrive at the intersection of Interstate 190 or keep going and end up in Holden.
Sitting on the benches at the park, there’s an ominous feeling. A pair of smokestacks rise out of a few trees between the park and the factory on the other side. On one of them the word NORTON spelled down it, a relic of the previous company started in this space 137 years ago. Behind the fields is the main campus in Worcester for the Paris-based and multinational manufacturing company Saint-Gobain, which purchased the Norton Co. in 1990. The smokestacks belong to its old power plant, which served electricity to the campus for more than 70 years, but since Sept. 20, a new building and new system has been providing electricity and heat: the powerhouse, a 4.7-megawatt natural gas powered turbine.
On Oct. 9, Saint-Gobain held a ribbon-cutting for the new powerhouse. Worcester city officials joined the company’s executives to celebrate the new power system. Suits were worn. The new powerhouse cost $22.3 million, and the cogeneration system will not only power the facilities but also heat them and some of the presses by re-using some of the gas and steam emissions through heat exchange. The new power set-up will produce 50% less greenhouse gasses than the old system.