Chewy backing away from $135M Windsor distribution center

Michael Puffer

Pet products retailer Chewy is backing away from plans for a $135 million fulfillment center in Windsor.

Even so, the developers that lined up to erect the giant e-commerce company’s planned 750,000-square-foot building said they are going to proceed with construction anyway.

The logistics market is so hot that representatives from Winstanley Enterprises and NorthPoint Development said they will build a distribution center in the Great Pond Village mixed-use development district on a speculative basis.

“The commitment from Chewy was placed on hold, but the Winstanley/NorthPoint team is very confident in the market and therefore are marching forward with building the warehouse,” Winstanley spokesperson Matthew Watkins wrote in an email to the Hartford Business Journal. “They feel that the tenant demand will be there.”

Winstanley and ABB Group — owner of the former Combustion Engineering nuclear-boiler production and testing facilities that once occupied the Great Pond site — are the master developers of the 625-acre Great Pond district, which is targeted for large-scale residential and industrial development.

Winstanley teamed with NorthPoint on the distribution center because the Montana-based developer has repeatedly built for Chewy.

Winstanley Principal Adam Winstanley said the plan is to break ground on the distribution center project in June or July. It is also possible that Chewy might revisit plans to inhabit the space, he said.

Windsor’s Town Council, on Feb. 7, granted Chewy a tax abatement and building fee waivers worth about $3.1 million.

Jim Burke, who recently retired as Windsor’s economic development director, said Chewy communicated to the town it is not prepared to move forward but didn’t go into specifics.

Chewy and Windsor Town Manager Peter Souza would have had six months to sign a deal based on the conditions agreed to Feb. 7, Burke said. In theory, this gives the company a window to return to the project.

Attempts to reach a Chewy spokesperson were not successful.

Windsor Town Planner Eric Barz said the development still needs site plan approval. He anticipates design changes based on Chewy’s withdrawal.

“Chewy is on the fence,” Barz said. “[The developers] are going to build the warehouse regardless of whether Chewy occupies it or not. I think they are still holding out hope Chewy might pull the trigger.”

Demolish historic part of Farmington High School? Here’s why that’s a question.

Don Stacom

As Farmington residents are surveyed about what to do with the historic section of the existing high school, a retired community leader is suggesting it should become the new town hall.

Instead of demolishing the oldest section of the sprawling high school, the town should remodel it, Bea Stockwell told the town council in a letter last week.

Combining municipal offices and school administrative offices in that space would solve several problems in one move, Stockwell wrote.

“As a former chairman of the Board of Education and the Town Council, I have had the unique opportunity of working on ‘both sides of the fence’! The way to make government work efficiently and in harmony is to put them together,” Stockwell wrote.

Her suggestion is among numerous ideas that a special committee will consider this year as Farmington prepares to raze its high school and build a modern replacement.

The current high school is a sprawling patchwork of additions and enlargements built over many decades, and taxpayers agreed last year to build a replacement alongside it for up to $135.6 million. The town will put in as much as $110 million, with the state expected to contribute $26.3 million.

That plan envisions demolishing a dozen separate sections of the building constructed or remodeled between 1952 and 2003.

But there has been no decision about the original 1928 portion, which is a high-profile feature of town to passing motorists on Route 4. It stands at the top of an embankment, and its brick facade and cupola dominate the landscape.

Estimates last year were about $10 million to fully modernize it. Some residents support demolishing it along with the other 12 sections, but others are pressing to reuse it for other town needs and to preserve an iconic part of Farmington’s history.

The ad hoc committee studying what to do with it has sent a survey to all Farmington households to get public opinion.

“We’ve been getting a good response. There are about 700 replies already in — the survey company says we have a legitimate number, but we’re hoping to get more,” said C.J. Thomas, town council chairman. ‘We’re just waiting to see what the public thinks.”

The survey, administered by the Center for Research & Public Policy, asks residents whether they’d prefer to keep the 1928 section or demolish it.

Some of the options are to use it for the regional probate court, or for consolidating town social services and recreation offices.

“The probate court needs more space, and our recreation department and human services offices are spread through town,” Thomas said.

The survey notes that the town might be able to use federal American Rescue Plan Act funds to pay for part of the renovation, and asks residents if that would change what they think about whether to tear it down instead.

The survey also asks about relocating town hall offices there, and possibly keeping the 1952 and 1978 sections of the high school to provide more community gym space, a recreation center and storage.

That plan could also generate new community meeting space, event space and room for nonprofits, art groups or possibly business incubators, according to the town.

Thomas noted that the council needs to reach a decision by early next year at the latest. The plan and zoning commission in late March approved the site plan for the new high school, and construction is to begin this fall.

That will require running drainage systems and other infrastructure work on the 1928 property, Thomas said, so contractors need to know if it is being razed or retained.

“Keeping it would be a big project but could help a lot of needs throughout the town,” Thomas said.