State Sends $2M Grant For Science Park Redev

Science Park’s redevelopers landed a $2 million state grant to help clean up and demolish a derelict section of the former Winchester Arms factory — and to advance plans to create hundreds of new apartments and tens of thousands of square feet of office, lab, and retail space.

Gov. Ned Lamont made that announcement in a Thursday midday email press release about $17.9 million in newly awarded grants from the state Department of Economic and Community Development’s Brownfield Remediation Program.

One of the 40 grants included in this latest tranche is $2 million to the Science Park Development Corporation to, as the press release put it, ​“abate and demolish the former Winchester Repeating Arms Company buildings located at 275 Winchester Avenue. This will allow for the construction of residential, office, laboratory space and/or retail buildings, and public open space on the 3.11-acre site.”

“Our Brownfield Remediation Program provides the critical funding needed to clean up contaminated properties, attract additional private investment and catalyze redevelopment,” Department of Economic and Community Development Deputy Commissioner (and New Havener) Alexandra Daum is quoted as saying in the press release.

Reached by phone on Thursday afternoon, Science Park Development Corporation President David Silverstone said called this $2 million grant a key ​“part of the financing puzzle” to allow for the development of the so-called ​“Winchester Center” plan.

That’s the latest vision for the ongoing overhaul of the factory complex that for much of the last century served as the sprawling industrial and economic anchor of the Newhallville and Dixwell neighborhoods.

As detailed at a community meeting held in April of last year at the Winchester Works Courtyard on Munson Street, Silverstone’s company is working with Twining Properties’ Alex Twining and with the Larchmont, N.Y.-based L&M Development Partners to convert surface parking lots and vacant industrial buildings along Winchester Avenue, Munson Street, and Division Street into hundreds of new apartments, labs, offices, and retail storefronts. (Click here to read more about that meeting.)

Silverstone said on Thursday that this $2 million grant will help in particular with the planned remediation and demolition of so-called ​“Tract A,” a vacant and derelict former Winchester Arms factory building at the corner of Munson and Mansfield Streets.

“Those are buildings that we were originally going to rehab,” Silverstone said, ​“but the oil contamination is such that the” state Department of Public Health said that they were un-salvageable.

So instead, the redevelopment company plans on knocking that structure down.

Silverstone said the total projected demolition cost for that Munson-Mansfield building is roughly $8 million. In addition to this newly received $2 million grant from the state, Silverstone’s company is also hoping to land a $6 million ​“Urban Act” grant that it has also applied to the state for. ​“We should know in the next few months” whether or not his company will receive that additional $6 million grant, Silverstone said.

So. What comes next? 

Silverstone said the first steps in this redevelopment plan are to knock down the Munson-Mansfield factory building and to construct roughly 400 new apartments on so-called ​“Tract D,” atop a surface parking lot nearby on Winchester Avenue.

He said the redevelopers are still figuring out what to build on the site of the soon-to-be-demolished Munson-Mansfield property. ​“That’s either going to be apartments or lab and office,” Silverstone said.

He said that the developers have met with City Plan Department staff and have had a traffic study done for the planned first phase of redevelopment.

And he said they plan on filing a proposed modification to the Municipal Planning District (MDD) for the area and a site plan for review by the City Plan Commission sometime in the first or second quarter of the year.