River Street Restoration Inches Forward

The City Plan Commission Wednesday night gave the city the green light to enter into a lease agreement at 198 River St. with Bigelow Square LLC, a company looking to rebuild rather than demolish a piece of Fair Haven’s riverine history.

Bigelow Square is an affiliate of Capasso Restoration Inc. The restoration company wants to tackle more projects on the one-time bustling street of now long-gone factories and help the city save historic parts of its industrial past in the 53-acre River Street Municipal Development Area.

Established in 2002, the MDP is made up of nine redevelopments parcels that consists of 25 acres of vacant or underutilized property within the 53-acre area, according to a City Plan staff report. City economic development staffer Helen Rosenberg has patiently shepherded the project since then.

The state has sent the city $2.8 million to clean up and demolish properties on River Street as part of the long-running River Street Municipal Plan. Those properties were deemed beyond rescue. But some can be rescued.

Capasso already has restored a 13,200 square-foot building at 34 Lloyd St., which is part of Parcel I of the redevelopment parcels, according to the report. It has been operating out of the restored building since 2008 and has grown to 15 employees to between 40 and 50.

This new lease agreement would allow the city to transfer control of 198 River St., the remaining portion of Parcel I, to Bigelow Square/Capasso for similar restoration activities. The lease agreement would be for the annual rent of $1 until it can purchase the property after necessary environmental remediation.

“This is the city’s best chance to save the most historic building in the Bigelow complex,” staff wrote as part of its report recommending approval. ​“Capasso has the experience and the motivation to renovate those buildings in a thorough and timely manner and work with the City on bringing attractive uses, new employment and taxes to the community.”

Hobart Bigelow, who became mayor of New Haven in 1879, started his factory in 1873 on the site of an abandoned army barracks. He created the National Pipe Bending Company about 10 years later. The boiler factory reached its productive peak in World War II.

During the World War II, Bigelow boiler made units that were as big as a room in a house. Workers would put them together to test them, then take them apart to ship them out of the harbor on barges. But before they’d break them down, the workers would line up 10 or 15 of the huge boilers, stand in front with American flags, and have a photo taken.

When Bigelow died, the business passed to his son, then on to the Barnum family, which finally sold it in 1963.

Eventually, in the 1980s, Bigelow went out of business. The city later bought the Bigelow complex