Nearly two dozen Torrington Company buildings to be razed to make way for redevelopment

SLOAN BREWSTER 

TORRINGTON — Once a top manufacturer of ball bearings, bicycle spokes and a long list of other items, the Torrington Company is coming down.

The eight- to nine-month project to demolish 22 of the 25 buildings on the site, which sits on North Street and encompasses parts of several other streets including East Elm, Prospect and Field Street, will hopefully begin on Labor Day, said Glenn Carbone, who owns the property under Torrington Standard, LLC.

While the contract has not officially been signed, Carbone said the plan is for Manafort Brothers Inc. Construction of Plainville to do the work.

Carbone, the half-brother of Mayor Elinor C. Carbone, said redevelopment plans for the site are in the “very early stages” with conceptual drawings but nothing “concrete” yet.

He said he envisions a level site with small manufacturers, such as an olive oil company, lumber distributors or fine furniture makers.

“These buildings have been an eyesore for a long time,” Carbone said. “You haven’t been able to see from Route 4 to North Street since the 1900s.”

One building on the site — at the corner of Prospect Street and Route 4 — is occupied by Silgan Dispensing, Carbone said.

Two others are will be retrofitted for manufacturing or industrial purposes, Economic Development Director Rista Malanca said when she updated the City Council on the project at its regular meeting last Monday.

In its heyday, the company, which included two divisions — Excelsior Needle and Standard Spoke Nipple — that were combined into the Torrington Company, comprised one of the most important industries in Torrington in terms of employment, gross revenue, taxes paid, factories in Torrington as well as factories nationwide and worldwide, according to Mark McEachern, executive director of the Torrington Historical Society after taking a deep dive into the history of the company this week.

Excelsior Needle Company was incorporated on Feb. 24, 1866. The company, which used a water-powered swaging machine to make needles, initially worked out of the Ashborn Guitar Factory. In 1870, the company moved to a three-story wooden building in Railroad Square. Then in 1890, operations were relocated to Field Street.

According to a brochure from the historical society, in the 1890s U.S. manufacturers produced more than one million bicycles..

“Bicycle wheels needed spokes, and Excelsior’s swaging process could turn out a perfect product,” the pamphlet reads.

Torrington Swaging Company, which also produced other items, such as watchcase pins, was set up in the Excelsior plant and ultimately surpassed Excelsior in sales.

In 1898, Torrington Company was incorporated with the two divisions.

In 1906, a standalone plant for the Torrington Company’s Standard Division was built. Designed by Charles Palmer and built by the Torrington Building Company, it consisted of two long parallel buildings with clerestory windows. The buildings were connected to a coal-fired steam plant built near the railroad tracks.

According to a list compiled by B. Pavlik, products produced by the Standard Division included bicycle spokes, pedals, handlebars and stems; spokes and nipples for wire wheels for bicycles and automobiles.

From the 1910s to the 1930s, 80% of spokes for wire automobile wheels were made at the plant, Pavlik wrote. The product line also included bearings, metal tubing, machine screws, swaging machines, piano hardware, carpet sweepers, vacuum cleaners, spark plugs, tie rods for biplane wings, shafts for airplane wings and rifle parts.

In 1968 the Torrington Company was sold to the Ingersoll-Rand Corp. Work eventually ended for the plant and the company following a serious of mergers decades later.

In December, Torrington Standard, LLC received $2 million as part of $18 million in grants to the state distributed to 13 cities and towns. The funds will cover abatement and partial demolition of the structures. According to city officials, the buildings slated for razing are safety hazards after holes in their roofs allowed water to come inside, causing structural issues.

In January of last year, some demolition work, such as taking out windows, was completed in preparation for the larger grant-funded project.

Malanca told the City Council about the $4 million project, which is being run by Carbone’s company but with some city oversight to assure the $2 million in grant funds is used properly.

“I think it’s very important that we still have milestone check-ins,” Malanca said.

In a phone call Wednesday, Mayor Carbone said she was hopeful a wrecking ball would be on site in the next few weeks.

“I for one am anxious to see this project going forward,” she said Monday. “It occupies a major block in Torrington.”

Greenwich has a $1.6B backlog in building projects. Its financial processes are to blame, report says.

Andy Blye

GREENWICH — Greenwich's town government, including the powerful finance board, has been dominated by Republicans for decades and conservative policies have contributed to a backlog of work exceeding $1 billion, according to a new report from the League of Women Voters of Greenwich.

The LWV, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization that promotes civic engagement, recently published a Capital Projects Funding Study which reported that the town’s historic policies and norms have meant low taxes for residents, but a slow building process that delays needed work.

These projects tend to get more expensive over time, so delaying work ends up costing the town more money in the long run, the report said.

The Board of Estimate and Taxation has been dominated by the Republican party for most of the past century, so Republicans have been able to dictate borrowing practices, building timelines and other financial policies for decades. Democrats won control of the BET in 2017, but lost it in 2019.

“The Committee’s review of Town budget documents since 1970 suggests that Town financial policies have resulted in consistent underfunding of school building maintenance and have deferred renewal of school and other facilities,” the report read.

There are nearly $1.6 billion in construction projects that Greenwich will need to undertake in the coming years, but the process for picking and executing the projects needs to improve, according to the report.

The LWV gave a public presentation on the report online on July 25. Steve Waters, co-chair of the committee that drafted the study, said past practices have contributed to a huge wish list or backlog of work.

“The concern that we have about some of the things that have been done over the last 20 years  — or longer, really — are that what we've done is we've kept taxes low on a year-to-year basis, but we haven't funded our needs,” Waters said.

 Upgrades, like repairing schools, replacing infrastructure and more, becomes more costly over time, he said.

"You could make the case that while we zealously guarded year-to-year tax increases by kicking so much down the road, that we've exposed the town to much higher costs of projects, simply because construction costs have escalated so much," Waters said.

The League does not take sides in partisan politics. It drafted the report to assess Greenwich's entire building process, not assess the merits of individual projects, members said.

Some local Republicans have accused the League of Women Voters of Greenwich of bias. Last year, the GOP pulled out of a debate organized by the LWV saying the group had lost its objectivity.

The report was drafted by a bipartisan group of 11 LWV volunteers who spent months conducting interviews with elected officials, municipal finance experts and government officials in other parts of Connecticut.

The town itself has identified nearly $1.6 billion in future financing needs through 2038, which the LWV report said may be difficult to fulfill in a timely manner given the current practices at town hall.

“The Town’s current decision and financing processes need to improve if we are to meet the requests of Town officials, administrators and the public prudently,” a LWV statement read.

First Selectman Fred Camillo said he appreciated the work that went into the report, but felt the town’s current five-year financial planning and preference for short-term financing are working well.

“Believe me, there's a lot more projects that I have in mind that I want to get done," Camillo said. "But I also know there's order to everything. And I know that I don't want to violate what has worked in Greenwich. Why would you switch to something else when what you’ve been doing has worked?”

The committee found that the BET has been reluctant to borrow money by issuing bonds, despite having a AAA bond rating — the highest possible rating, achieved by only 16 towns in Connecticut.

The high rating means Greenwich is able to borrow money at lower interest rates to undertake more projects in town, but the BET has historically been reluctant to borrow, especially on longer financing terms.

Greenwich tends to “pay-as-you-go” with its debt over short terms, but a longer term bond of 20 years, for example, may help the town access more money and do more work without adding major debt, the report says.

The pressing need for building work is on display in town now. Both the Central Middle School and Old Greenwich School are in need of major repairs and both will cost the town tens of millions. 

Additionally, the Dorothy Hamill Ice Rink needs to be replaced along with other less time-sensitive fixes around town.

“The modified pay-as-you-go debt funding model can limit the ability of the Town to fund all its infrastructure needs,” one unnamed town finance official told the LWV committee. “It would be difficult to build or do a major renovation of three schools, the ice-skating rink and the civic center simultaneously with this funding model.”

Waters, the committee co-chair, said the town’s financial policies are “among the more restrictive in Connecticut” during the July presentation and that the town has the capacity to borrow more money to fund needed work without significantly raising taxes, should it choose to.

The LWV said it drafted the report, in part, to start a conversation about how to reimagine some of the government's processes ahead of the election on Nov. 7.

Laura Erickson, Democratic nominee for the office of first selectman, said the current process appeared to put the cart before the horse.

“The project should dictate the financing model," she said. "It seems like we have it backwards on the finance board under this majority leadership. It seems as though, to me, the model is driving the projects. That means that not everything is being funded. It's being deferred or eliminated or reduced in scope, what have you, in order to squeeze it into this model.”

Erickson is a member of the BET now and was previously chair of the board of education. She said that the refusal to borrow more money in Greenwich makes the town different than its peers.

“It's not a partisan issue, it's just finance 101. And it's not like if we were to adopt some of these recommendations that we'd be outliers. Right now, we're the outlier. Many of our surrounding towns and communities with AAA ratings use these tools.”

Camillo, the Republican incumbent who is seeking a third term this fall, said that Greenwich's financial position is an advantage and that keeping the mill rate low is important.

“We don't have that debt that a lot of towns do. You don't want to lose that advantage. And yes, the lowest mill rate in the state does mean something. It does,” he said. “Somebody who's working two jobs to live here, to pay rent or mortgage, it means a lot. You don't want to lose that advantage. And I'll fight to the end on that.”

Camillo said he liked some of the ideas in the report, such as trying to reduce the budget cycle time or increase public participation even more than he already has, but, in general, things are already working well in Greenwich.

Still, Camillo said he welcomed the report as an opportunity to talk about how the government works.

Camillo and Erickson will both be on the ballot in November, as will two partisan slates of BET members. The party that secures more votes for their slate gets to choose the board chair and the chair has the power to break 6-6 ties on the 12-member body.

“In a situation where the parties are not working well together, that means that the ultimate decision making belongs to one party,” Waters said of the BET on July 25.

In the most recent budget cycle, most votes were split 6-6, which meant most budget items went to the chair of the BET, not the first selectman, to decide. Dan Ozizmir, current chair of the BET, is not seeking another term this fall. 

Greenwich Avenue water main replacement was originally set for spring. When will it actually start?

Andy Blye

GREENWICH — Aquarion Water Company was planning to start a major water main replacement project on Greenwich Avenue this spring, but work has yet to start.

The company is now saying that the water main replacement work, which is expected to take about a year to complete, should start in September.

Aquarion spokesperson Peter Fazekas said they are awaiting final permit approval and the start was delayed to ensure less disruption for people on the Avenue.

“It is a lengthy approval process that only gets more complicated by the fact that the construction is occurring on a busy road,” Fazekas wrote in an email. “A lot of time and effort has gone into the coordination of this project, both by the Town and Aquarion, to minimize disruption.”

Fazekas said temporary restoration will be in place before Thanksgiving and work will pause during the holiday season.

The Department of Public Works confirmed that it is working with Aquarion to get permits to start the project, but did not say when work would begin.

Working on a water main is a big job. Crews have to rip up the asphalt, dig down to the pipe and replace it before burying it again and repaving the street top. 

Snyder Civil Engineering, which is working with Aquarion to replace the mains, first presented these repair plans to the Board of Selectmen in April.

The full project area spans about 1,500 feet of the Avenue. Crews will be replacing old six-inch and eight-inch water mains with new 12-inch lines, according to plans Snyder shared with the selectmen in April.

The repairs will take place between Elm Street and Grigg Street on the Avenue, running past the Havemeyer Building and many stores and restaurants. Work crews will work on different parts of the water main line during the course of the project, so the entire section will not be closed all at once.

Aquarion said it would coordinate any temporary shutoffs with affected customers and provide 48 hours notice. 

Both the town of Greenwich and Aquarion are expected to release more information closer to the project's start.

This CT plaza could become a future model for shopping centers

Liese Klein

Turn down a partly-cobblestoned road called Main Street in Oxford to see the future of downtowns ‒ and perhaps the potential future of retail in Connecticut.

Drive past American and Pride flags and a yard sign in support of Ukraine to enter the $70 million Quarry Walk development. You’ll pass by a Priority urgent care center, a Five Guys and a Newtown Savings Bank fronting Oxford Road, also known as state Route 67, along with a cluster of restaurants and Quarry Coffee and Craft Kitchen. At Main Street’s end stands a group of storefronts that includes upscale grocery Market 32, an Ace hardware store and wine shop.

A 54,000-square-foot medical building with offices for Griffin Health and Hartford HealthCare sits in the middle of the plaza, bordering a  “green” surrounded by boutiques and restaurants. A sprawling apartment complex lines one side of the parking lot, with rents starting at $2,000 a month and offering an easy walk to the stores and restaurants.

“It’s a micro community… it’s an ecosystem within itself,” said Kathy Ekstrom, development manager for Quarry Walk’s developer, Seymour-based Haynes Group. “It’s a simple formula: You build what people need and want. And that’s exactly what we did.”

Quarry Walk’s last available apartments are expected to be leased up this month, even as its developer moves forward with plans for two new versions of the Quarry Walk model in Naugatuck and Beacon Falls/Seymour. 

When all the boxes are unpacked, Quarry Walk will house about 300 people, employ 1,500 more and generate at least $1 million in annual tax revenue for Oxford. The development has also brought in visitors from around the region: Traffic on Route 67 in Oxford has nearly tripled, much of it heading to Quarry Walk, according to town officials. 

With four of the state’s 10 largest shopping malls changing hands in recent years and many of Connecticut’s shopping plazas aging and emptying out, talk of a “retail apocalypse” has been widespread.

But some retail experts have argued that the “town center” model exemplified by Quarry Walk and many newer developments in the Sunbelt is the future of shopping ‒ and dining and living. With older generations downsizing and younger generations less willing to drive, in-person retail can thrive in a walkable cluster of housing, shops and services.

The town center concept is working for Quarry Walk businesses, Ekstrom said, citing low turnover and frequent requests from retail tenants to expand their storefronts. Chains are doing well in the complex along with smaller businesses that relocated from elsewhere in Oxford, she said. In the medical building, a decorative staircase and “living wall” is being extended to a third floor, where a dermatology practice is setting up shop.

“The number one complaint from throughout Quarry Walk is ‘I didn’t take enough space,’” Ekstrom said. “This is proof of concept for what Haynes came up with.”

Transit draws first town centers

Connecticut’s town center-like developments first emerged in recent decades around train stations in densely-settled Fairfield County, with Wilton Center in particular providing inspiration for town planners in Oxford when Quarry Walk was first proposed. A mix of retail and residential, Wilton Center continues to attract new development activity. 

Developer Tom Haynes, a second-generation builder from Seymour, saw the potential for creating a town center from scratch at a 32-acre stone quarry owned by his family in Oxford. Once a small mountain mined to the ground for sparkly gneiss and other rock, the quarry came with development rights when Haynes acquired it in 1999.

Without a traditional town center, Oxford’s retail community was sparse and residents had to navigate plazas along Route 67 to visit what stores there were — or travel miles to other towns. “This is going to be an opportunity to bring goods and services and opportunities to Oxford,” Ekstrom said of the early pitch on the Quarry Walk project.

Haynes’ eventual plan to add rental apartments to his development was opposed by many Oxford officials when he first approached the town around 2008, said Jeffrey Luff, economic development director. Luff was on the town’s planning commission at the time and recalled that concern about increasing population was one issue, along with the novelty of a mixed-use development. 

“They’d never seen it before; they didn't know how it was going to react or work,” Luff said. He took his fellow commissioners on a road trip to see Wilton Center and educated them about complexes in Florida that mixed retail and residential. 

“So it was a little fight for Tom [Haynes]. But to make the long story short, he did win the day,” Luff said. “At the end, the motion to approve was unanimous.”

With town and state approvals in hand, ground was broken on the first buildings at Quarry Walk in 2015, with grocery and hardware stores opening in 2016.  By 2019, much of the commercial space had been built and construction began on the first phase of what ended up being 162 apartments.Stone from the former quarry was used in building facades, cobblestones on the roads and as decorative elements throughout the development. 

With the completion of the second residential building this June, Tom Haynes celebrated the realization of his vision of a ready-made community. “Our philosophy is rather simple…we focus on making people’s lives better by providing access to a lifestyle that supports healthy living,” Haynes said in a statement. 

Quarry Walk sparks new projects

With Quarry Walk completed, its developer is now advancing plans for a similar project at a former quarry in Naugatuck and much more ambitious plans for a property that straddles Seymour and Beacon Falls. Located near the Metro-North train station, that development could house as many as 2,000 housing units, along with retail, services, a community center and pickleball courts or other recreational amenities. 

Tom Haynes was among the group announcing $3 million in federal funding this June to build a 2-mile road connecting Route 67 in Seymour and Route 42 in Beacon Falls that would open up 200 acres for the potential Quarry Walk-like development

“We intend to have a lot of housing that anyone would want to live in, and mixed in with an entire community,” Haynes said at the June event, held at Seymour Town Hall.

Lessons learned from Haynes Group’s first major project in Oxford? Build more bike trails, Ekstrom said. Future projects will incorporate bike lanes on campus and connect to regional trails. With the aid of state funding, the town of Oxford is also connecting Quarry Walk to its civic center via pedestrian and bike paths and plans a 7-mile trail that spans the town. 

For Luff of Oxford, developments like Quarry Walk are a lifeline for local businesses in an age of remote work, online shopping and homeowners looking to downsize. Younger people are also looking for walkable and bikeable areas where they can live, shop and access services like dog grooming and medical care.

“My advice for a town is get with the new program, or you’re going to be out,” Luff said. “This is the wave of the future. I think this is definitely the future, because you can literally hop on your bike and get anywhere.”

East Hartford approves first cannabis cultivator facility

Joseph Villanova

EAST HARTFORD — Park Avenue will be home to a new location for a budding Connecticut industry.

Michigan-based C3 Industries had its plans for a $12 million facility approved by the town's Planning and Zoning Commission on Wednesday, paving the way for East Hartford's first approved cannabis facility.

The PZC approved cannabis facility regulations in November and revised some regulations for retailers in June.

C3 Industries operates six cannabis farms and 21 retailers across in four states, with three of its dispensaries located in Massachusetts. The company is currently planning to open two retail outlets in Connecticut.

The planned facility at 221-241 Park Ave. in East Hartford was approved unanimously Wednesday night by the PZC as a cannabis cultivation facility, prohibiting any retail sales by C3 Industries from the location.

The building at 241 Park Ave. was previously owned by Hartford Freezers, a cold-storage facility that provided a climate-controlled environment for trucking operations. A self-storage facility currently occupies 221 Park Ave., with C3 planning to take part of the building for its cannabis operations. 

C3 Industries did not provide a timeframe on when the facility could open, but the company was licensed by the state to grow cannabis in late 2022, a process that has proven difficult for many.

The company must have the police and fire departments sign off on the plan before work can begin, in addition to acquiring approvals for a lot line subdivision.

Meghan Hope, an attorney with Alter & Pearson representing the applicant, said that the roughly 72,000-square-foot facility would create 70 jobs, with officials planning to hire "the lion's share" of its employees from the local community.

"I think we can not only revitalize the property, but bring a lot of high-paying jobs to the area," Hope said.

C3 Industries CEO Ankur Rungta said the company will employ industry-proven odor mitigation technologies in the planned facility, as it has with its other growing operations.

"This is a common topic of discussion when we're going through building these facilities," Rungta said.

Rungta said the facility must also meet strict "bio-security" requirements in order to ensure the product is safe and meets the standards for sale. He said air is controlled both in and out of the facility, water is purified in-house through reverse osmosis before use, and employees must shower and sterilize before entering.

"We're really trying to control the environment in these buildings," Rungta said.

Rungta said Connecticut also holds cannabis facilities to a high standard for building security, including requiring video surveillance, access control outside and inside, and intrusion detection.

Hope said the town's assistant police chief had no issues with what C3 proposed in its security plan.

PZC Vice Chairman Hank Pawlowski said the project would be a great way to renovate and revitalize an old building in East Hartford.

Residents and other interested parties spoke during public comment at the meeting to voice approval of and concerns with the project.

Eric Prause, a Manchester resident, said during public comment that he hoped the town would keep C3 to a high standard for odor emissions, as he would be downwind from the facility and odors have been known to have a variety of negative effects.

Marc Okun, council representative for Carpenters Local 326, said the developer has a project labor agreement requiring that local carpenters work on the project, and that C3 has proven to be a great partner.

"All 60 of us agree with this project" at the union, Okun said.

Resident Linda Chamberlain said she felt strongly about the health concerns from the use of cannabis by young people, and felt that she could not support construction of the facility.