Aaron Kelsey shows Von Roll factory building to visitors from China; the space was later snapped up by a Brooklyn manufacturer.
Thomas Breen photo
The old Von Roll factory at Chapel Street and Blatchley Avenue.
From electrical insulation to custom art frames.
A Fair Haven factory is about to make that transition as a Brooklyn-based frame manufacturer moves to town and a heavy industrial manufacturer rolls out, in the city’s latest property transactions.
According to the city’s land record database, Art CT 770 Land LLC, a holding company owned by Art To Frames CEO Schneur Minsky, bought the Von Roll factory building at 128 and 166 Chapel St. for $640,000 on Jan. 28.
The compact industrial complex stands at the corner of Chapel Street, Blatchley Avenue, and River Street, not far from the Quinnipiac River and the Ferry Street bridge.
Local attorney Ben Trachten, who represented Minsky in the recent property transaction, said that Art To Frames plans on opening an assembling facility in the Fair Haven factory, where employees will take long pieces of wood and cut them to size to assemble custom-designed frames and decorative furniture, like lamp shades.
The factory will create 50 new, local jobs, he said. The new owners will bring millions of dollars of equipment and invest millions in renovations in the property.
The assembly plant is scheduled to open in April.
“It’s pretty big,” he said.
Trachten said he is currently working on a special exception application to be sent to the Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA) to request permission for a manufacturing use in an Industrial Light (IL) zone.
Art To Frames is a family-owned, Brooklyn-based business that was founded in 1929. The company builds and sells picture frames, canvas prints, mats, and other custom-designed decorative furniture, like lampshades. Minsky also holds a patent for a technology that allows customers to upload a digital image of art works to the Art To Frames website. The company then prints and frames the image, and sends it back to the customer.
Aaron Kelsey shows Von Roll factory building to visitors from China; the space was later snapped up by a Brooklyn manufacturer.
Minsky’s company plans to move into a factory building recently vacated by Von Roll USA, the American wing of a Swiss industrial giant that manufactures electrical insulation materials for high-voltage motors and generators.
“I think the property’s sale is a positive development for River Street specifically, Fair Haven generally, and the City as a whole,” city Deputy Economic Development Administrator Steve Fontana told the Independent by email.
“First, it illustrates that, under the Mayor’s leadership, New Haven has established firmly its reputation as a redevelopment-friendly place that can attract all types of investment. Second, to build and sustain a vibrant 21st-century economy, New Haven needs to secure companies like this one that will create jobs at all skill and education levels, and we understand that the business that plans to locate here ultimately may create dozens of light assembly and manufacturing jobs over the next few years.
“Given that the Von Roll building is a former factory in an industrial district, this business is a natural fit for this site and the Fair Haven job market. Finally, this company buying the Von Roll building represents the kind of investment on River Street that we hope and expect will prompt other, similar companies to look more closely at the area as a fit for their needs, thereby potentially catalyzing even more economic development there.”
Representatives from Von Roll did not respond to requests for comment by the publication time of this article.
The River Street loading docks for the old Von Roll factory.
Von Roll’s Chapel-Blatchley-River Street factory building was one of the sites that the city showed off to a Chinese manufacturer called Hunan Boom last fall in an attempt to lure that company to relocate to New Haven.
During that visit, Von Roll employee Aaron Kelsey walked the visitors through the 50,000 square-foot heavy manufacturing plant, where Von Roll was still in the process of decommissioning many of its industrial-sized instruments like its warehouse-filling laminator and oxidizers. Kelsey told the Independent then that Von Roll was shuttering its New Haven location and consolidating its American workforce at its American headquarters in Schenectday, N.Y.
As for Hunan Boom, Fontana said the city remains hopeful that the Chinese manufacturer will still set up shop in the Elm City. “But they have not shared with us the status of their internal discussions or timeframe for making a decision,” he said.
According to the city assessor’s database, the Von Roll factory complex in Fair Haven was built in 1929. The city last appraised the property in 2017 as worth just under $1.6 million.
Is this business getting any tax breaks? City or State?