New Haven’s last Winchester gun factory has lost its face — and the ground around it is being dug up and transported — to make way for the newest project in fast-changing Science Park.
Work crews from Testa Construction have been excavating the grounds around the former United States Repeating Arms plant at 344 Winchester Ave. as part of an environmental clean-up expected to be completed by the end of the month.
Meanwhile workers have removed the facade of the modern factory building, which USRAC built with taxpayer help only 15 years ago in a desperate final bid to keep some gun-making jobs in New Haven. USRAC inherited the old Winchester rifle brand that not only “won the West” but also kept up to 19,000 New Haveners working in an array of factory buildings at the crossroads of New Haven’s Dixwell and Newhallville neighborhoods in the mid-20th century. The Belgian-based company closed the plant in 2006 and laid off the last 186 workers.
As the former Winchester complex gradually closed up over past decades, a tech-oriented complex called Science Park gradually took its place with the hope of creating jobs of the future. That effort has recently taken off with new investments by Massachusetts developer Carter Winstanley (pictured). Winstanley bought and improved the 25 Science Park building, which has been filling up fast. The company is far along in construction of a new garage, and now is renovating the abandoned 230,000-square foot USRAC factory at 344 Winchester for office space for, among others, Yale University. Winstanley’s building a chiller facility for Yale, too.
(Meanwhile, another developer, New York-based Forest City, has putative plans for a mixed-use development at the old main Winchester building at Henry and Winchester.)
The factory at 344 Winchester Ave. occupies the corner of Winchester and Division. It opened onto Munson. Winstanley is moving the entrance to Winchester Avenue.
More dramatically, the company has torn down the outside walls to replace them with a 95 percent glass facade, according to Ted DeSantos, vice-president of Fuss & O’Neill, the engineering firm overseeing the project for Winstanley.
“The building was pretty ugly before,” DeSantos said this week. “It was one solid wall with no window in.” He said the project’s move-in date is this coming Jan. 1.
First there’s clean-up to do. A lot of clean-up. DeSantos said he expects crews to remove “hundreds of thousands of cubic yards” of contaminated soil. (Click on the play arrow to watch.)
The work is being undertaken under the state Department of Environmental Protection’s Property Transfer Program. Thomas RisCassi, a supervising environmental analyst in DEP’s remediation division, said it’s common to find a host of contaminants on old factory land. “I would expect to find everything there,” he said.
“They don’t even have to have originated there; if they’re traveling with ground water they might have migrated there.” DeSantos said the pollutants include “petroleum type products” and asphalt mixed into the dirt. Neither he nor DeSantos had a dollar estimate for the cost of the clean-up.
DeSantos said the company is working with DEP to identify in-state relocation facilities and landfills where the dirt can be transported.
Now we need to figure out a way to populate Dixwell and Newhallville with these workers. It is unacceptable to allow people from outside New Haven to come in to get a pay check then have them turn around and spend all their money in the burbs. Offer them incentives to buy a house or a lot in Newhallville to fix up or to build upon; doesn't Yale do something like that?