Workers pouring a concrete foundation Thursday at 201 Munson.
Paul Bass Photos
Erick Morris: Making change on home turf.
Erick Morris went to work on Munson Street Thursday just as his grandfather did for three decades, albeit with different tools.
Grandpa William “Leather” Welfare made rifles at the old Winchester rifle plant, once the beating industrial heart of the Newhallville neighborhood. Welfare has long since retired. The plant has long left town, replaced by Science Park’s tech labs and offices and housing.
That’s where Morris came in. He is a member of a 75-member construction crew beginning to construct a new community with hundreds of new apartments on leveled-factory land in the former Olin-Winchester complex. The project at the 12.7‑acre 201 Munson lot has advanced from the clearance/environmental remediation phase to actual construction. (Click here for a previous full story on the project.)
Armed with a jackhammer, Morris entered a four-foot trench at the corner of Ashmun and Munson to put in a connecting pipe.
“We’re connecting our sewer lines from inside the area that’s being built to the sewer lines that run through the street outside the job site,” Morris, who is working for Giordano Construction, explained during a conversation on the “Word on the Street” segment of WNHH FM’s “LoveBabz LoveTalk” program.
Morris grew up in Newhallville. He attended Martin Luther King School.
“I’m very proud to be a part of this project,” he said.
Morris has worked as a construction laborer for the past two decades, ever since he saw a crew at Schiavone & Co. working on a highway. “I said: ‘I want to do that kind of work.’ So I did the footwork to find out who the company was and what I had to do. Lo and behold, they gave me a shot.”
He’s proud as well to have worked on the last two years of construction of the new Q Bridge.
“All those big concrete pillars? I poured a lot of those pillars,” he said.
“After the iron workers set the rebar, we go inside to pour the concrete. You climb inside, throw on harnesses. I enjoy it. I enjoy the work.”
When he’s not working, Morris hits the gym or grabs a fishing pole; his most recent catch was a largemouth bass.
The crew’s work on this first construction phase of 201 Munson has just begun. In addition to moving dirt and connecting the sewer line, Morris and his colleagues have been busy erecting frames and pouring concrete. A ceremonial groundbreaking is planned for next Wednesday. The end goal is a new six-story, 398-unit apartment complex replete with 474 surface and garage parking spaces and a green expanse of lawn.
Click on the video to watch the conversation with Erick Morris on the “Word on the Street” segment of WNHH FM’s “LoveBabz LoveTalk” program.
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Click here for previous “Word on the Street” episodes and write-ups.
This is great! 398 new apartments means that 398 families who currently live in New Haven will be able to stay where they live now ---- instead of being pushed out by other families who are looking for housing and bidding up the price of the existing housing stock.
Dixwell/Newhallville easily could fit 10 more new complexes like this one.