Construction on the 80,000-square-foot building could start this summer, if all goes according to plan, said Beverly planning and community development director Aaron Clausen.

HighRes, which also has offices in the United Kingdom and Shanghai, China, creates automated laboratory equipment, according to its website. Well-known clients include Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, the National Cancer Institute, University of California Los Angeles, University of Oxford and St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital.

This is the second major commercial relocation project announced in Beverly within the last few months — Krohne, Inc., a German company that creates tools to measure water flow, announced its intentions in November to move to Beverly from Peabody, dropping $20 million on a new facility and creating 54 new jobs at 55 Cherry Hill Drive.

The HighRes project is in its very early stages — the company has submitted a request for Site Plan Review with the city for an empty parcel at 102 Cherry Hill Drive, Clausen said. The company is also seeking tax increment financing (TIF) — a break on property taxes at the outset of the development with gradual escalation of assessed taxes once the company is up and running.

Clausen said the new facility would have two floors — the ground floor for light manufacturing and a loading dock, while the second floor would include office space for accounting, marketing and engineering.

Jobs created would be in the software engineering, research and development, and "high-tech" manufacturing areas, he said.

How much the city would rake in from tax revenue is unknown right now, Clausen said. It's also too early to tell how much it would cost to build the facility, although Clausen estimates it might be $8 million to $12 million.

With hopes of shovels in the ground by later this summer, Clausen expects a public hearing for site Plan Review with the Planning Board will likely be scheduled for April during the board's upcoming meeting this month.

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