New owner might enhance Cherry Hill industrial park

Cherry Hill Industrial Park off Route 128 on the Danvers-Beverly line could be in for new investment and expansion as a result of its recent $48.3 million purchase by a Newton development company.

National Development of New England bought the 91-acre property from the Flatley Co. of Braintree last month, according to records at the Southern Essex Registry of Deeds in Salem. The sale also includes nine office buildings, totaling 601,000 square feet of space, where Osram Sylvania, Abiomed, and Medtronics are among the tenants.

''It's got a great tenant roster," said Brian Barringer, director of acquisitions for National Development, noting that the park has a 9 percent vacancy rate. ''It's a high-profile park in a great location."

Thomas Flatley, chief executive officer of the Flatley Co., did not return a call seeking comment on the sale. Flatley built Cherry Hill, which lies in Beverly and Danvers, in the early 1980s.

Barringer said National Development will waste little time getting down to business. It plans to add signs to the park from Route 128. Notices were sent to tenants last month informing them that their leases were being transferred, he said.

Cherry Hill also contains two parcels of undeveloped land. Two office buildings, each with 100,000 to 103,000 square feet of office space, could be built there, Barringer said. ''There is some potential for development," he said. ''But we have to weigh that with what we'd like to do to the buildings that are there now."

First National net declines in quarter

Aggressive expansion is eating into profits at First National Bank of Ipswich, where net income declined 60 percent for the third quarter, which ended Sept. 30, the bank reported.

Net income for the three-month period ending Sept. 30was $130,000, compared with $325,000 for that period in 2004. But loans increased 37.8 percent, to $228.2 million, while deposits grew 3.8 percent to $267.6 million, compared with the third quarter last year, according to the bank's recent earnings statement.

Total assets for the quarter were $390 million. The bank's 400 stockholders earned 6 cents per share for the period. First National went public last year, issuing a limited number of shares that are traded on the Over the Counter Bulletin Board under the stock symbol FIWC.

Donald Gill, the bank's chief executive, chalked the decline up to the cost of the bank's purchase of the Boston and Cambridge branches of Atlantic Bank of New York. ''We knew it would be costly," he said. ''In that respect, this is really no surprise. The good news is that we're pleased with the quantity of loans and the new customers those branches have brought to us."

Still, First National is taking steps to boost earnings. On Dec. 31, the bank will close its three branches at Wal-Mart stores in New Hampshire, which never turned a profit, Gill said.

First National isn't giving up entirely on the Granite State. A new branch is planned for Portsmouth, where the bank opened a loan office last year. ''Our loan production there has gone very well," Gill said, citing demand for both commercial and residential real estate loans. ''We think we gain even more market share by investing in a full-service branch."

Payer Technologies hoping to add jobs

Payer Technologies LLC of Portsmouth could add 12 new jobs over the next six months, if more rural hospitals buy its electronic health record-keeping software.

The company is installing its system at three hospitals in Vermont and New Hampshire, including Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon. The hospitals, which serve rural communities in each state, received a $685,000 federal grant to implement the system, which aims to reduce costs by improving record keeping, a company official said.

''A lot of small, rural hospitals have a number of computer systems," said Earle Rugg, vice president of marketing at Payer Technologies. ''The problem is, they often can't talk to one another. . . . But what we're introducing will create one electronic health record system."

Payer Technologies licensed the program from a New Zealand software maker. The company, which has about $5 million in annual revenue, should have the system fully installed at the hospitals by 2006, Rugg said.

Meanwhile, the company plans to peddle its product to other small-hospital networks, which cannot afford to invest millions to upgrade technology for electronic record keeping. If successful, the company, which now has 15 employees, could nearly double in size. ''We're expecting to grow very rapidly because of this," Rugg said.

Datebook

The Greater Malden Women's Business Resource Group will hold its first meeting from 5 to 7 p.m. Wednesday at Century Bank, 140 Ferry St., Malden. The new organization aims to provide resources and support for women in business. Anyone interested in attending should contact Linda Cassia at 781-324-6400 or by e-mail at linda@preferredimage.com or Jane Moran at callcustomers@comcast.net.

Kathy McCabe can be reached at kmccabe@globe.com.