Contributed photo
188-206 and 218-222 Bassett St.
The city has closed on a $900,000 purchase of a long vacant Newhallville office building that it plans to convert into a worker-owned laundry.
According to Stephen Press of Press/Cuozzo Realtors, a Hamden firm that brokered the sale, the city purchased the 46,119 square-foot vacant office building at 188 – 206 and 218 – 222 Bassett St. from the New York City-based holding company Bassett Properties Inc. for $900,000 on Wednesday.
The site used to house the state Department of Social Services area welfare office, but has been long dormant ever since the state moved those services to Fair Haven in 2013.
Mayor Toni Harp announced earlier this year that her administration plans to purchase and convert this large, derelict property in the heart of Newhallville into a worker-owned laundry designed to serve some of the area’s largest employers, like Yale University and Yale New Haven Hospital.
The idea came from a similar operation in Cleveland, Ohio, run by the Evergreen Cooperative Initiative, which is serving as a consultant on the project.
According to testimony given at an aldermanic committee earlier this year by Livable City Initiative (LCI) Executive Director Serena Neal-Sanjurjo, the laundry is projected to generate between 40 and 150 jobs that start at $15 an hour.
Thomas Breen photo
LCI ED Serena Neal-Sanjurjo.
She said at that committee hearing that the $900,000 used to purchase the property, which was last appraised as worth $2.9 million and which the previous owner had hoped to sell for at least $1.6 million, came from two different sources: $500,000 from the Community Block Development Grant Acquisition fund and $400,000 from the Economic Development Land and Building Fund.
“We are very excited about the opportunity to move forward with the plan to bring the Evergreen Concept for a worker-owned facility to the site,” Neal-Sanjurjo told the Independent in a written statement on Thursday.
“On a recent visit to Cleveland, we were able to meet and engage with members of the cooperative and were very impressed with what they’re doing there. It’s an opportunity for New Haven to create employment opportunities for local residents and build wealth in neighborhoods that have struggled with disinvestment.”