Allan Appel Photo
Colony Hardware headquarters at 15 Stiles St. in the port district.
Colony Hardware has told the city that it will no longer pursue its long-contemplated move to River Street.
Economic Development Officer Helen Rosenberg, who has been negotiating the move of the port-based hardware supply firm to the River Street Municipal Development district for four years, received the news in a letter dated the day before Thanksgiving.
“Based on current and anticipated conditions for construction-related supply business, we will not be moving forward given the costs involved,” the letter stated. The letter is signed by Mark Patton, the chief operating and chief financial officer of the 100-plus employee company.
Rosenberg’s interpretation: at least the company is “staying put” in New Haven due to general economic conditions and not on the lookout for other suitors or locations.
But Colony’s Human Resources Director Bob Balasco made no such guarantees.
“We’re exploring options, it’s true,” he said in a conversation, then added: “I don’t believe River Street is dead.”
Balasco said that Colony, which was founded in Meriden more than a half-century ago, has 154 employees, with branches in Boston, Albany, and Maryland. It’s been in the port district for 17 and a half years.
Because of the many New Haven workers the company employs, he said, “We would like to stay close to home. Nothing is done at this point. We’re just trying to move forward.”
Attempts to reach Mark Patton to confirm details of Colony’s next moves were unsuccessful.
Click here for a look at the 165,000-square-foot building Colony was proposing to build on the site along the water at River and Blatchley in Fair Haven.
Colony Hardware proposed riverine site at River and Blatchley is now available again.
The time spent on the project was not all lost, said Rosenberg. “We’re hoping to find another business to create jobs and locate there. We will be looking aggressively, both businesses in town and elsewhere.”
“Anybody who stepped in at this point would be far ahead in the process. If someone comes in with another building, it shouldn’t be much of an approval process. Things could be expedited if someone is looking for a 7.5 acre site, or it could be subdivided,” she said.
In 2001, the city began meeting with the Hess Company about the site. In 2005 the city agreed to purchase the property for future development and Hess would do the clean-up.
“Colony came along in 2007,” Rosenberg said. “We incorporated their plans into the Hess clean-up.” One roadblock that was resolved was that the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection agreed that a building, like the one Colony proposed, could constitute a “capping” of the contamination at the site, according to Rosenberg.
In 2008 city officials chose economic development through Colony over a harbor panorama. They approved the Colony plans, even though some City Plan commissioners had wanted to preserve the Blatchley site for an extension of the avenue to the water. The city is still moving forward with a plan to build walkways connecting Criscuolo Park and Quinnipiac Park, but Rosenberg did not address the question of extending Blatchley to the river.
“I’m looking to the future and thinking…. sometimes…. something better comes along,” said Rosenberg. “That’s the attitude we have to take because we can’t control the economy or what individual people do. We have a resource. Everything is set up for something positive to happen.”
This is the best news to hit New Haven since Yale announced its residential college expansion about 15 years ago. Now the site won't be utterly wasted.
NYC tried to develop its waterfront with light industry & commercial 30 years ago and it was a failure. The waterfront should be reserved for high class offices and residential, not wasteland big boxes.
The city says people in the neighborhood get jobs from projects like this. The reality is that most if not all jobs go to folks in the suburbs. To create jobs, build the neighborhood in a healthy and sustainable manner - not as a strip mall waste.