LEBANON — The city’s last sawmill would be demolished under plans to build a new manufacturing facility on Route 120 near the Plainfield town line.

Progressive Manufacturing is asking Lebanon’s Zoning Board for a special exception to construct a 27,750-square-foot “light industrial building” and 56 paved parking spots at 526 Meriden Road, the former home of the GH Evarts & Co. sawmill, which stopped operating last year.

Plans for the 6.5-acre parcel show existing structures would be razed. They include a lumber facility, two garages, two sheds and a small shop, which take up a combined 13,000 square feet.

Progressive Manufacturing shares a mailing address and the same corporate offices as Solas, a firm that produces gas-burning fireplaces from its headquarters in Lebanon’s Airport Business Park.

It’s unclear whether Solas plans to move all operations to Route 120 or maintain a presence in its existing 65,340-square-foot facility on Technology Drive. Phone messages left for Patrick Moynihan, the company’s president and founder, were not returned Tuesday.

The Route 120 site has a long history serving Upper Valley loggers and businesses.

Historical records show a sawmill operating there in 1952, although late Lebanon resident Reuben Cole said in 2014 that lumber operations possibly predated him. Cole, the former president of Mascoma Bank who was an abutter to the sawmill site, died in 2018 at age 93.

West Springfield, N.H., company GH Evarts & Co., purchased the property in 1996 and later expanded the buildings to make safety improvements.

Several businesses, including the Taylor Farm in Plainfield and Longacre’s Nursery, supported the move, saying the mill provided sawdust and other wood products.

Owner George Evarts then sold his company — including its Grantham sawmill — in 2018 to Kennebec Lumber Co., of Solon, Maine.

The sale brought Kennebec’s holdings to six lumber facilities in New Hampshire in addition to a mill and five log yards in Maine. The company also owns Maine Traditions, a hardwood floor manufacturer.

A message left for Kennebec owner Dennis Carrier was not returned on Tuesday.

The sawmill’s closing comes at a trying time for New Hampshire’s lumber industry, which is struggling after several of the state’s biomass plants shuttered or stopped taking low-quality wood.

Republican Gov. Chris Sununu vetoed a bill last summer that would have required utilities to purchase renewable generation credits from wood chip-burning electricity plants.

The veto, and failed override attempt, resulted in the full or partial shutdown of most plants, including Springfield Power.

“The loss of markets for our natural resource is becoming quite a problem for the forest industry,” said Troy Simino, a third-generation logger who lives in Cornish.

Simino, who brought logs to the Evarts sawmill in Lebanon for two decades, said lumber markets are “tightening” and some loggers are going out of businesses. He also sees important forestry facilities, such as the Route 120 sawmill, going away.

“If you lose the infrastructure to produce this natural, renewable product, as we are in New Hampshire, it’s a waste of that resource,” he said.

The Lebanon Zoning Board is scheduled to discuss the Route 120 building proposal when it meets at 7 p.m. Monday in Room 386 on the third floor of 20 W. Park St.

Tim Camerato can be reached at tcamerato@vnews.com or 603-727-3223.