WESTBROOK – One of the city’s largest employers has not changed its plans to build its $50 million corporate headquarters expansion in the city’s Five Star Industrial Park area, despite more headlines about a controversial quarry next door.

“It’s still our intent to expand on this property,” said Dick Daigle, director of facilities for Idexx Laboratories, referring to the company’s 350,000-square-foot building on Eisenhower Drive.

A quarry located just down the road and run by Pike Industries Inc., nearly drove the veterinary equipment and water-testing equipment manufacturer to scrap the expansion plans when Pike executives announced they would be reactivating and expanding on the decades-old quarry.

Pike’s plans included the construction of an asphalt plant, which Idexx representatives said at the time was inconsistent with the city’s vision for the area as a home for light manufacturing – the reason it chose Five Star Industrial Park as its headquarters in the first place.

With an estimated $15 million of new tax money from the future headquarters at stake, the city got involved with the dispute, which eventually led to a consent agreement last fall. Technically, the agreement is between Pike and the city, but Daigle said that Idexx and its interests were players in the agreement, which he said “meets all of our requirements.”

Pike has continued its work in recent weeks, building an access road as part of the consent agreement. The work included some construction blasting, which irked local residents and neighboring businesses when one of the blasts was deemed too loud by the city, and another conducted outside an agreed time window.

The problems were enough to prompt the city to issue two violation notices to the company, fining Pike $3,000.

But, Daigle said in a recent interview that the recent events had no bearing on Idexx’s future plans. Daigle said the company remained happy with the terms of the consent agreement, and trusted that Pike would honor it.

“The city has done a really good job monitoring the agreement,” he said.

Daigle had few details available about the project, as the company is still in the process of making some key decisions about the expansion. Among them, Daigle said, is whether the company should build the structure all at once, or in stages.

Regardless of how it’s done, Daigle said, the final building will be more than 200,000 square feet in size, and constructed on a piece of land the company already owns and is using for parking. Daigle said Idexx is planning to add to existing parking as part of the expansion plans.

Daigle said Idexx expects the expansion to support an additional 500 positions at the company. The expansion will be office space, he said, but when complete, it will allow Idexx to move its current office staff over into the new building. The company will then convert some of its existing office space into more lab space, Daigle said, which will accommodate the company’s needs to expand production.

“All aspects of the company are growing,” he said.