The Silver Bell Technology Park, LLC site was originally a farm in the rural area of Orion township. It was owned by the Carpenter family and a large crop was potatoes. To obtain more plant-able land, a deep ditch was constructed along the Southern boundary of the property to allow the planting of potatoes. These drainage ditches led under the old Silver Bell Road into a small lake known as Carpenter Lake.
Upon the death of the original farm owner, the property was divided into long narrow parcels , each of which were 80 acres determined by the required lot size minimum restrictions in effect at that time…The parcels were sold off and used mainly as speculative land investments. Only the South-East corner section of the property (Silver Bell a & Giddings Rd) was developed as a home and grave wholesaling site by Wayne Figurski. Another property to the East owned by the Weber family was used as a sand and gravel mining operation. Gravel was also mined on the Northern side of the property and trucked to the Weber’s site.
A small regional airport was constructed (Allen Airport), and operated on land starting on the South-East corner.
A small outlying parcel which was formed by the drainage ditch location was purchased by a small high-tech company Sensor Developments Inc. (SDI), who developed this small parcel into a modern Eco-friendly facility to design, and manufacture, precision mechanical sensors and electronic systems.
The SDI building was constructed in two phases. !n 1982, the building consisted of 13000 sq ft of Office/Laboratory space. In 1992, it was expanded to its current 28,000 sq.ft size and many features added.
Over the next twenty years, the adjacent parcels of land were obtained and combined into the large contiguous area which now exists.
