ORANGE – Drive past 60 Guest St. in Boston and you might see construction crews working on a nine-story, 350,000-square-foot life science building coming with a $500 million price tag.

And the North Quabbin region will leave its fingerprints on the project, as the nets installed to save any falling workers are being assembled in Orange.

Garold Amadon, owner of Busherod McKeaver Enterprises, has been crafting the nets in the Orange Innovation Center’s parking lot since early Jan. 4 and completed roughly 100 of the 160 nets ordered.

“The psychological part for an ironworker, having these nets below them, is really cool,” he said as his workers labored away on a net on Thursday morning. “They don’t have any deaths, because of this. What happens is, they’ll get broken ribs or a dislodged shoulder. No serious injuries happen.”

A net is installed for every set of beams, he said.

Amadon’s son, Cori Amadon, is the vice president of the James F. Stearns Company, which is handling the construction project’s steel work, and offered his father the opportunity to build the nets. The elder Amadon said his son holds the patent on the specific net system used.

“There’s none like it anywhere,” Garold Amadon.

Garold has operated Busherod McKeaver Enterprises out of the innovation center since 2016 and found the perfect spot to make nets in the business incubator’s parking lot “because it was salted and dry, by the sun.” OIC owner Jack Dunphy said it is common for his tenants to grow the scope of their businesses and was thrilled to lend a portion of the parking lot to the endeavor.

“I’m all for businesses, entrepreneurs, finding new avenues to grow and try new things,” he said standing near one of Amadon’s nets. “It’s great that we can make a ...connection to (the) Boston area that brings more business out here for everybody.”

Amadon said he has hired seven men with Iron Workers Local 7 Union.

“The union sends these guys to work with me,” he said. “I’m like a supervisor, general manager, or whatever.”

Amadon had Indian-made rope delivered from Connecticut on Thursday. The black rope the workers were using came from a factory in Pennsylvania. It is fishing net treated with fire retardant to prevent it from melting if it comes into contact with heated tools used by welders and other workers. Amadon said a man he chatted with at Honest Weight Artisan Beer, a brewery housed in the innovation center, described the nets as parenting, because its comforting effect is similar to the one a parent can have on a child.

Amadon, also a musician who performs under the stage name Gibbon the Troubadour, explained he has excess netting he would like to give away.

“I’m hoping we can find some moms and dads that want to build soccer nets for their daughters and sons in the backyard,” he said. “Because we’ll just give it to them.”

Boston Real Estate Times reports national, multi-disciplinary firm SGA designed the forthcoming building, billed as Boston’s first purpose-built life sciences development. There was a ceremonial groundbreaking on Sept. 22, 2022, and the project is expected to be completed next year. Known as FORUM, the building will sit on one of the final available sites in Boston Landing, a 15-acre mixed-use community along the Massachusetts Turnpike in Boston’s Allston-Brighton neighborhood.

Reach Domenic Poli at: dpoli@recorder.com or 413-930-4120.

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