Sheffield Pharmaceuticals was feeling a bit cramped in its historic New London headquarters at 170 Broad St., and with little available industrial space in the Whaling City, company COO Jeff Davis was intrigued when the owner of a large, vacant, newly renovated building in the Norwich business park came knocking.

Sheffield Pharmaceuticals, using the name Norwich Warehouse LLC, purchased the former Decorative Screen Printing building at 9 Wisconsin Ave. in the Stanley Israelite Norwich Business Park for $3.7 million.

Sheffield plans to move its storage and distribution operations to Norwich within the next two months after some roof work and office renovations are done. Initially, six or seven employees will move to the Norwich site, and two additional employees will be hired immediately, Davis said Tuesday.

He said it was difficult for trucks to maneuver in and out of the Broad Street factory, while the Norwich business park site has plenty of room and has easy access to Interstate 395 and Route 2.

"That's a really well laid-out warehouse in Norwich, with six loading docks," he said, "We'll be able to organize things. It's much more spread out and we need that space."

Sheffield manufactures over-the-counter health care ointments and creams and health and beauty products, including its historical Dr. Sheffield label, distributing goods to some 60,000 major retail and drug store chains throughout the country. Davis said the company uses common freight delivery service and does not own a fleet of trucks, making easy access to major road networks important.

Still, Davis said, the nearly $4 million purchase was "a big move for us." The four-story New London factory has a total of 100,000 square feet of space, with 70,000 of that devoted to storage and distribution, Davis said. The company also leases some storage space on Garfield Avenue. Sheffield has been on Broad Street since 1850.

Davis said it's too soon to announce plans to expand the business, but he hopes to add more manufacturing jobs in New London. While the 136,000-square-foot Norwich building is big enough for future manufacturing, that's not in the plan, he said.

"We have an aggressive sales plan, and we'll certainly need to expand manufacturing in New London," he said.

The firm Block and Khan owned the Norwich building under the name Tentech LLC. The company invested more than $1 million since 2012 to do an environmental cleanup, paint and install energy-efficient lighting and heating systems, company representative Ed Block said in a news release that announced the sale Monday.

Block initially approached Davis about possibly buying the building several months ago, Davis said. Sheffield had done business in the past with Block and Kahn.

"It took a while," Davis said of the decision to buy the Norwich building. "It's a big move for us. We had to consider other options. When we saw it, we immediately thought it would be a good fit for us."

c.bessette@theday.com

Twitter: @Bessettetheday