🔒Allied Printing’s $15M expansion in Manchester approved; 50 new jobs expected

Manchester’s Planning and Zoning Commission on Tuesday unanimously approved Allied Printing Services’ plan to construct a 68,000-square-foot addition to its Tolland Turnpike headquarters. The commission supported the company’s $15 million expansion, citing its consistency with the town’s manufacturing goals and its substantial similarity to a previously approved — but never built — expansion from 2005. The addition, to be constructed on the eastern side of Allied’s existing 252,000-square-foot facility at 1 Allied Way, will accommodate new large-format printing equipment and is expected to add roughly 50 jobs. Allied Printing, one of Manchester’s largest private employers with roughly 420 full-time workers and 100 part-time employees, has operated in town for more than 70 years. President and CEO John Sommers has said the expansion was driven in part by the company’s acquisition of Bloomfield-based XL Color Corp., a large-format printing business whose operations are straining Allied’s current facility. “We’re bursting at the seams,” Sommers told the Hartford Business Journal in a recent interview, adding that Allied’s production floor already runs 24/7. The company explored building a second facility elsewhere in the country before committing to expand at its existing 27-acre campus, Sommers said. Manchester helped seal the deal by approving a five-year tax abatement tied to the planned addition. The project is being designed and engineered by Bloomfield-based PDS Engineering and Construction, which also handled Allied’s prior expansions in 2001 and 2008. According to application documents, the addition will feature a heavy-duty structural floor slab designed to support large-format printing equipment, and its exterior will be designed to match the existing building’s materials, colors and roofline. The expansion will also bring the site into full compliance with current accessibility standards, adding two additional accessible parking spaces for a total of eight. Overall parking on the site will decrease slightly from 353 spaces to 350. Construction is expected to begin this month, with completion targeted by year’s end.