Thomas Breen photo
An industrial-use pump manufacturer has purchased Radiall’s former factory buildings on John Murphy Drive in Fair Haven for $3.2 million — with plans eventually to hire enough people to replace many of the New Haven jobs lost there.
According to the city land records database, that sale took place on Dec. 11 last year, when IFS Real Estate LLC bought the 25,000 square-foot industrial building at 90 John W. Murphy Dr. and the 40,300 square-foot industrial building at 104 John W. Murphy Dr. (pictured above) from Radiall USA Inc.
IFS Real Estate LLC is a holding company owned by the Chicago-based Industrial Flow Solutions.
According to the company’s website, IFS designs, manufactures, sells, and services “highly effective pumping and fluid management solutions for harsh, rugged environments” — also known as, industrial and commercial-use pumps.
Deputy Economic Development Director Steve Fontana.
City Deputy Economic Development Director Steve Fontana and IFS President John Wilson said that IFS decided to purchase the recently vacated industrial buildings just on the eastern banks of the Mill River as an opportunity to relocate three Connecticut-based companies IFS owns, along with several dozen employees, to a single New Haven site.
Wilson said that IFS will employ around 50 to 70 people to start once it moves into the New Haven buildings later this spring. Fontana added that the company plans to expand its business nationally and make significant investments in both equipment, staff, and repairs at the John Murphy Drive locations.
“We are beyond excited to be a part of the New Haven community,” Wilson said. “New Haven’s just got a great base of talent. It really fits with our growth expectations.”
Radiall, a Paris-based manufacturer of coaxial connectors, antennas, and fiber optic cables, has moved its industrial and office work and its nearly 100 employees to a former Webster Bank call center building in Wallingford.
Wilson said that the day-to-day work that will take place at the IFS-owned New Haven site will involve the design, development, manufacture, and testing of industrial-use pumps.
These pumps are used for services ranging from disposing of chicken waste on poultry farms to helping utility companies keep transformer bolts dry to pumping out hot, corrosive waste waters and liquids for everything from pharmaceutical companies to microbreweries.
Wilson said that IFS will over the next few months start phasing in the relocation of employees and equipment from its current Old Saybrook, Prospect, and Monroe offices and plants.
“This is a very exciting development,” Fontana said about IFS’s purchase.
“We want to have jobs at all sorts of skill levels,” he said. While New Haven’s bioscience and biotech economy is currently booming, he said, the city’s economy should also include plenty of “blue-collar manufacturing jobs” open to workers with a variety of educational backgrounds. IFS represents just such a hiring opportunity.
Click here to download a presentation that city staff gave to alders last fall about IFS’s purchase of the former Radiall property.
That presentation notes that IFS will make $385,000 in real or personal property investments across the two buildings and adjacent lot on the 1.84-acre site over the next three years. It says it will add up to 14 jobs to the New Haven site over the next four years, and that IFS will work with the city to adjust its property fence lines to accommodate the nearby Mill River Trail.
104 Murphy Dr.
Radiall Vice-President Bill Neale told the Independent Wednesday morning that his company decided to leave New Haven after 12 years at the John Murphy Drive site not because of any problems with the city, but because the company simply found a better fit at a former call center building in Wallingford.
‘We didn’t move out of New Haven for any negative reasons about New Haven,” he stressed. He said Radiall needed a “bigger clean room” as well as a “much more lab-like atmosphere.”
Neale said that Radiall also wanted to lease rather than own its regional site. “You take the sale price that we got an invest in new products and then expense the lease every month,” he said.
Neale added that Radiall prioritized retaining its nearly 100 employees when deciding where to move from New Haven. When looking for a new building, the company drew a 15-mile radius around New Haven, and ended up at the Wallingford site.
It's funny to watch economic development take credit or pose with any business real estate or relocation transaction. One wonders how much they had to do with it or did it just come in over the transom?