From "mass-level instruments of death" to homes and community: Matt Pugliese, Alder Kim Edwards, Alder Troy Streater, Eric Steinberg, Alex Twining, Arlevia Samuel, David Silverstone, Jake Pine and Mayor Justin Elicker break ground on Winchester Green.
As excavators pushed dirt from side to side at 315 Winchester Ave., city officials and housing developers dug shovels into a picture-planned pile of rocks to symbolically break ground on the mixed-use development that will one day be called the Winchester Green.
“We’ve taken three million square feet of dilapidated factory and turned it into housing and jobs,” said David Silverstone, the president of the Science Park Redevelopment Corporation.
The Science Park Development Corporation — a nonprofit corporation established by Yale, the City of New Haven, the Olin Corporation, and the State of Connecticut — is just beginning construction on the so-called Winchester Green. That project will see a long-vacant parking lot transformed into 12,800 square feet of retail space as well as a five-story apartment building featuring 283 rooms, 57 of which will be reserved for households earning 50 percent of average area median income.
The green will operate as a plaza with two restored historic streets running through it where concerts, festivals, and farmer’s markets may take place.
The $90 million project is just one phase in the broader redevelopment of Science Park. Read more here about that plan to build up affordable housing stock while revitalizing the Dixwell and Newhallville neighborhoods.
To date, the so-called “Winchester Campus” includes 158 units of housing and 150,000 square feet of fully leased lab and office space. Ultimately, more than 1,000 apartments and 500,000 square feet of lab space are planned for the area alongside shopping centers and parks.
Mayor Justin Elicker noted that some talk of the former Winchester Arms Factory “nostalgically,” remembering “this time where so many people had working class jobs.” The development represents the transformation of a “place that produced on a mass-level instruments of death into a place that will be an unbelievable beacon of life and vibrancy,” he said.
In the past four years, Elicker said the city has built 1,900 new units of housing. There are currently 3,500 apartments “in the pipeline,” he said, 40 percent of which are affordable.
Construction on the Winchester Green, meanwhile, is expected to conclude in 2026.
Naive children posing.
Olin still makes dangerous chemicals and ammunition. Just because they stopped doing it in New Haven it's ok???