Thomas Breen photo
Anthony Allen and Michelle Stronz, the founders of A Tipping Point (ATP), at Monday night’s meeting.
A new not-for-profit committed to economic development with a social impact is looking to convert a vacant industrial building near the Mill River into the new home for a brewery, a coffee roaster and an indoor mushroom farm.
On Monday night in the John S. Martinez school’s library, local entrepreneurs Anthony Allen and Michelle Stronz held a community meeting about the plan, called A Tipping Point (ATP). They offered vision for how to create sustainable, environmentally-conscious economic development that directly benefits the neighborhoods in which that development takes place.
Thirty people came out to show their support and learn about the new project.
Allen, a social entrepreneur from East Rock, and Stronz, Allen’s former business school professor at Quinnipiac University, are planning on bringing three new businesses into a 25,000 square-foot former plate-glass factory at 20 Mill St. in the next few years.
The crowd at the gathering.
Under the auspices of ATP, Allen and Stronz will coordinate among the three for-profit businesses so that they can best share their employees, equipment and training; minimize their waste and environmental footprint; and serve as a readily accessible educational resource for the Fair Haven and Mill River communities.
Allen said that ATP is close to signing a lease with the property’s owners, Steven and Julie Bernblum.
He and Stronz have also already identified someone to run the brewery, which they hope will be open and operational by the end of 2018. They did not share the name of the brewer Monday night, though they did say that he has roots in New Haven and currently works at a craft brewery in Colorado.
Allen said that he and Stronz plan to present their project to the Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA) in early 2018.
He said that they will likely need two special exceptions in order to bring ATP and its associated brewery, coffee roaster and indoor mushroom farm businesses to fruition at 20 Mill St.: one special exception related to use, since the building is currently zoned as heavy industrial (IH) and was last used by Bernblum for archival storage; and the other special exception to reduce the required amount of parking, which Allen said the building does not currently have much of.
Fontanta expresses support for the project.
City Deputy Economic Development Director Steve Fontana, who was in attendance on Monday night, said that he is working with Allen, Stronz, and the Bernblums on their plans for the site. He confirmed that they would need to seek only special exceptions, as opposed to a use variance, from the BZA for the project as it is currently envisioned.
Brimming with inspiration and enthusiasm at the prospect of using economic development for social and environmental good, Allen said that the inspiration for ATP came directly from his observation of three macro-economic trends and countertrends: an imminent environmental crisis, balanced by the development of new technologies for sustainability and a willingness to use them; rampant economic inequality and corporate consolidation, balanced by a growing desire to buy local; and a rising tide of “conscious consumerism” that places great value on where goods come from, how they are made, and what happens to them after they are discarded.
“How might we build thriving local economies,” Allen asked the group, “that more closely resemble natural ecosystems in which no material or human potential is wasted? That’s a big question.”
The answer, Allen said, lies somewhere in what ATP is trying to accomplish: a venture where businesses hire locally, provide meaningful and socially significant work to the communities they serve, and recycle each other’s waste so that nothing is left unused and one business is made sustainable by the work of the other.
He said that the brewery, the coffee roaster and the mushroom farm will all work towards sustaining each other. He said that the chaff and grounds from the roaster, the spent grain from the brewery, and sawdust from other businesses in the Mill River district will be used to create the fertile substrate for growing the mushrooms.
He also said that ATP would require the three prospective businesses to hire from within the neighborhood through New Haven Works for all jobs that do not require highly developed skill sets, like the brewer.
“I do believe that there’s a way to build an economy where everyone can have work that means something to them and that means something to the world and gives them purpose,” he said. “And I don’t believe that the best that we can do is the way that we’re doing things right now.”
Stronz confirmed that ATP’s goal is not just to transform a small, underused slice of New Haven along the Mill River, but to come up with a model for how to responsibly and sustainably undertake economic development projects in mid-size cities throughout the country.
“If we’re successful here,” she said, “ that success looks like three really strong, viable, interconnected businesses who use each other’s inputs and outputs, who train their workers across all the systems, and who work with ATP to generate educational opportunities and research opportunities that we can share with people in New Haven and beyond New Haven.”
Wooster Square Aaron Greenberg, David Weinreb, and Mike Uhl.
For the second half of the meeting, Allen and Stronz divided the attendees into groups of five and asked them to talk about what they liked most and least about what they had just heard.
Wooster Square Alder Aaron Greenberg praised the project for its commitment to hiring locally. Fair Haven school teacher David Weinreb said that he was encouraged by Allen’s eagerness to listen and learn from members of the community. He also said that the project could be a perfect venue for teaching his students how well-integrated ecosystems work.
Fair Haven activist Lee Cruz said that he was most excited about what this project could mean for the newest members of the neighborhood.
Fair Haven advocate Lee Cruz.
“I personally loved the social entrepreneurship nature of it,” he said. “We have a growing international community from Ecuador, Mexico and other places, and many of those newcomers are very entrepreneurial. I can see you sparking some new ideas from some of the new blood that’s coming into our city.”
Allen agreed, and said that he valued the Mill Street space as sitting in a kind of “bridging location” between the Fair Haven, Downtown and Wooster Square neighborhoods, accessible via foot, bike and bus, as well as by car.
Reflecting on his commitment to the city, Allen told the group that, soon after graduating from business school and moving to New Haven, he quickly fell in love with what he thought was going to be just a “stopping off point.”
“The creative energy, the entrepreneurial energy, the strength of community and pride of place, the size,” he said. “It’s just such an amazing place. And that’s when I realized that this city has everything that you would need to become a leader in this kind of work, in re-envisioning and reinventing how local economies work.”