---

By John Barrella

MIDDLEBOROUGH — A stretch of West Grove Street is becoming home to one of the more significant private investments in the town’s recent history: a $33 million, roughly 112,000-square-foot corporate headquarters and manufacturing facility being built for REXA, Inc., a manufacturer of electrohydraulic actuators and industrial process-control equipment currently headquartered in West Bridgewater, serving industries including oil and gas, renewable energy, mining, and water and wastewater treatment.

REXA has not responded to repeated attempts by The Goat News to discuss the project. This publication left two voicemails with the company over the course of several days, visited REXA’s new Middleborough facility in person yesterday seeking comment, and separately emailed Sarah Rocco, a REXA employee, directly. As of publication, none of those attempts had generated a response.

The project, rising at what’s being marketed as Campus 44, will consolidate REXA’s engineering, design and manufacturing operations under a single roof, according to the company. Construction broke ground in late 2025, and the facility is now nearing completion, with REXA having targeted a summer 2026 opening.

Town officials cleared the way for the project through 2024 and into 2025, approving a Tax Increment Financing agreement intended to attract REXA’s investment following a community information session held that fall. The TIF vote passed unanimously at Town Meeting.

The numbers behind that push are substantial for a town Middleborough’s size. The project is expected to secure REXA’s roughly 100 existing jobs while creating at least 25 new ones, with the company saying it plans to hire locally for engineering, machining and service roles and to pursue internship and co-op partnerships with area schools. Project backers have projected the facility will generate more than $1 million annually in local economic activity, on top of new real estate tax revenue, permit fees, and increased meals and hotel tax collections tied to visiting clients.

It’s worth noting exactly what those job figures represent. In every public description of the deal reviewed by The Goat News — including the developer’s own announcements — REXA’s commitment is described as giving “priority in hiring to qualified local residents,” not a fixed job-count requirement written into the TIF agreement as a binding legal obligation. In other words, the 100-retained, 25-new figures widely cited in connection with the project appear to function as a stated expectation rather than an enforceable term the town could hold REXA to if hiring came in lower than projected.

The building itself is a significant physical footprint: architecture firm Maugel DeStefano designed roughly 20,000 square feet of two-story office space paired with expansive manufacturing bays, 28-foot clear heights, and multiple loading docks engineered to move materials from receiving through shipping. Integrated Builders is serving as construction manager and STV as owner’s project manager.

The site was originally owned and developed by VMD Companies; but sold Lot 2 to REXA for $6.6 million in September 2025. Newmark’s Rick Schuhwerk is credited with leading the search that identified the Middleborough property.

For Middleborough, REXA’s arrival represents one of the largest private investments in town in recent memory — a tangible bet from both the company and town officials that Middleborough can compete for advanced manufacturing investment in the years ahead. But between the hiring language falling short of a binding requirement and the company’s unwillingness to answer questions about it, residents are left taking the jobs figures largely on faith, for now.

As a public service, The Goat News is sharing REXA’s careers page (https://www.rexa.com/careers/) so Middleborough residents can see current job openings with the company directly.