Project Description

Greentech Park is an industrial park under redevelopment on the former Saint-Gobain campus in northern Worcester, acquired by the Worcester Business Development Corporation in 2022.¹ The campus will have four new buildings totaling one million square feet of combined floor space.^1,2 The project developers are evaluating whether to install a geothermal energy network rather than conventional gas heating. This is the only HEET Kickstart-funded feasibility study conducted for an industrial customer base.³

The proposed system would require between 700 and 1,100 boreholes with a capacity of approximately 50 million BTU to serve the planned building space.¹ The feasibility study was funded by a $50,000 Kickstart grant. As of March 2026, demolition of existing structures is still ongoing and the broader site remains in pre-construction.¹

Key Actors and Governance

New Garden Park, a subsidiary of the Worcester Business Development Corporation (WBDC), initiated and manages the project.¹ WBDC is a nonprofit quasi-public institution, making this a rare instance of a quasi-public developer pursuing a thermal energy network rather than a utility, community organization, or municipality. HEET administered the Kickstart grant and provided strategic guidance.¹

Funding and Costs

The geothermal system was estimated to cost between $40 million and $85 million before incentives, depending on system configuration.¹ Net costs after incentives were not calculated. Potential incentives identified include IRA ground-source heat pump credits and Mass Save energy efficiency program rebates, but neither has been formally pursued.¹ The $50,000 Kickstart grant covered feasibility only; remaining construction funding sources are unclear.³

Permitting and Approvals

Discharge of drill water to a storm drain would require an off-site discharge permit and an NPDES permit.¹ Massachusetts requires geothermal boreholes to be registered, though closed-loop ground-source heat exchanger systems are exempt from MassDEP Underground Injection Control registration requirements.¹ The City of Worcester has no well registration requirement, which represents a notably lighter local permitting burden compared to other cases in this dataset.¹

Community Engagement and Equity

Stakeholder engagement occurred in two stages. New Garden Park conducted site visits with Eversource in April 2024 and held a virtual meeting with Eversource and National Grid in May 2024.¹ Community outreach took place through the Greendale Revitalization Taskforce, where ground-source heat pumps were discussed with local residents.¹ The feasibility study characterizes stakeholder reaction as “generally supportive.”¹

As a private industrial redevelopment project, equity and environmental justice are not explicitly part of the project rationale. The site is a brownfield, and its redevelopment may have indirect community benefits, but no EJ-specific engagement or affordability analysis was conducted.