Former Hansbury Property is New Home for Dodge Tree

The former Hansbury lumberyard property on Willow Street in downtown Hamilton is the new home to .

The 67-year old company will use the .9-acre property to store its eight trucks, according to Kandis Cloutman, who owns Dodge Tree Service with her husband Chris.

The property, at 281 Willow St., had been that created an overlay-zoning district to allow mixed uses on the property and several adjacent lots. Town officials had , which had sat vacant for several years. The new zoning overlay district allows for things such as a mix of residential and commercial uses, retail space or restaurants or multi-family residential uses.

Cloutman said last year’s Town Meeting vote to establish a new zoning district for the area did not play into the company’s decision to buy the property.

Dodge Tree bought the property from Bunky’s Realty of Danvers on Oct. 20 for $800,000.

Before that, in April, . At the time, Bunky’s President Jeff Bunk began to clean it up, removing brush and trash, including 200 to 300 doors and windows that were left on the property.

Later, in June, . The 2,000 square foot building was more than 200 years old and Bunk said it would have cost too much to repair it for reuse.

In the six months Bunk owned the property he never publicly outlined a plan to develop the property.

“Chris is a family member of mine,” Bunk said last week. “He expressed a real strong interest in it; It was a real good fit for him.”

For the past 15 years, Dodge Tree rented space from , right next door. Four years ago, the company considered moving to a property in North Beverly, just over the Wenham town line, but that plan did not materialize.

Dodge Tree will use the garage on the former Hansbury property but there will not be a tree company office there, Cloutman said.

The company chose the property because of its proximity to the company's existing customers in Hamilton and Wenham plus many other North Shore communities, including Ipswich and Topsfield.

“It’s very convenient,” Cloutman said. “It’s a good, central location.”

In addition to the trucks, logs will be stored on the property for a few days until the logs are sold, Cloutman said.

“It won’t be piled up there for more than a few days,” she said.

Cloutman said this fall the property will play host to a Christmas tree sale to benefit the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.