Sam Gurwitt Photo
After sitting vacant for a decade and a half, a notorious eyesore has gotten a makeover, and is now ready to attract a new surge of business activity — and youth — to southern Hamden.
Last week, the Hamden Economic Development Corporation (HEDC) received a certificate of occupancy for the newly renovated building at 496 Newhall St., at the corner with Morse Street. After about a decade of planning and renovation, the building is finally ready for use as Hamden’s shiny new business incubator: Borough 496.
Dale Kroop.
HEDC Executive Director, and Hamden Director of Economic Development and Neighborhood Revitalization Dale Kroop gave a tour of the newly renovated facility to Legislative Council President Mick McGarry and this reporter this past Friday.
As they stood in the entryway, where afternoon sunlight streamed through floor-to-ceiling glass, Kroop pulled out his phone to show a video. He requires everyone who visits to watch it, he said.
It is a slideshow of photos from before the renovations juxtaposed with photos from after. Plaster peeling to reveal the brick beneath and wall paper curling from a series of gashes give way to clean, white walls, and rooms strewn with large chunks of ceiling become clean white boxes with sunlight streaming through large windows onto ordered rows of sleek desks. The asbestos and mold are gone. In their place are spotless, almost sparkling walls and floors.
Ten years and about $10.5 million later, Borough 496 is opening its doors to businesses and individuals looking to work in a collaborative environment with the support of business experts, lawyers, and other mentors that the incubator will provide to its members. Businesses can rent full rooms, varying in size. Individuals can also just rent a desk in a co-working room, or they can pay a smaller fee ($50 for students and seniors, $100 for everyone else) to access the incubator’s programming and communal spaces five times a month.
“This is a business incubator,” said Kroop. “This is not just a building we’re leasing and saying ‘good luck.’” He called Borough 496 “a place with a value system.”
Ready for a business.
The incubator’s website lays out those values. It aims to reinvest in the neighborhood. It’s in Hamden’s federal Opportunity Zone, where investors can get tax breaks if they invest. The incubator also provides job training and education in entrepreneurship.
Kroop said he and HEDC developed the value system with a younger generation in mind. Millennial entrepreneurs, he said, “want to be successful in business but [they] also want to do something of value.”
Justin Farmer, who represents the Hamden Legislative Council’s Fifth District , where the incubator is located, said he is hopeful about the incubator, but also wary. “It has the potential to be a great staple in the community,” he said, “or it has the potential to gentrify the area.”
“Maybe this is an opportunity to bring jobs and job training to the area,” he said. “I’m hoping it can bring communities together from all different backgrounds.”
Included in the price of membership is the chance to consult for free once a month with a number of different mentors. Kroop said he sought local experts for these partnerships. Richard Pearce of Evolution Enterprises, LLC, which is based in Hamden, will be the business mentor. Parrett, Porto, Parese and Colwell will answer legal questions, and Joseph McDonagh, who is an expert on health insurance, will help businesses navigate the insurance world. Incubator members will also have access to a web designer, IT experts, office layout experts, investment mentors, and the Guilford Savings Bank. Members can pay to enlist the help of any of those advisors beyond the free monthly meeting.
The Tour
Kroop’s tour began in the gym. A few rows of stacked chairs, which Quinnipiac University donated, sat in the corner. Clean beige brick rings the room up to just under half the height of the walls and then gives way to white. Large windows line one wall, and on one end of the room is a stage. Everything looks clean and new, except for the two basketball hoops that punctuate the ends of the room. They’re the originals, Kroop said.
Kroop said the space has enormous potential for a variety of uses. It could be used for performances, job fairs, classes, conferences, or just to shoot some hoops, he said. If an event is too large for the nearby Keefe Community Center it could instead use the gym at Borough 496.
Kroop leads tour of repurposed building.
Next, Kroop and McGarry headed downstairs. First, they stepped into a hallway that has yet to be finished. This is what the whole place looked like, said Kroop. Part of the basement and the third floor are still awaiting renovations. Kroop said he just needs to raise the money to do so.
The renovations have been financed mostly by grants and donations. It’s a part of a larger remediation project of the area, which includes the old middle school and Villano Park. During the 19th and early 20th century, waste from Winchester Repeating Arms was dumped in the wetlands on the property where the incubator now sits, contaminating the soil.
The building that now houses the incubator was built on the site in 1917, and Hamden’s old middle school followed in 1956. The incubator building was originally a school, and then served a number of other town functions until the early 2000s, when it was abandoned after the soil contamination came to light. The middle school was abandoned in 2006. The Regional Water Authority has remediated the property, and one by one, pieces of the once-contaminated area are reopening. First came Villano Park and Rochford Field across the street from the middle school and Borough 496. Now, it’s the incubator’s turn. Next, the Mutual Housing Association will build mixed-income housing where the abandoned middle school now stands.
The old middle school.
In 2010, the town and HEDC received a $450,000 state grant to evaluate the property and do roof repairs, according to the HEDC’s website. The town and HEDC then received another $400,000 from the Federal Environmental Protection Agency to clean out the building.
In 2013, the HEDC bought the building from the town. It received $5.5 million in grants from the state, $1.5 million from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration, and $1.9 million in Connecticut historic tax credits.
The town, said Kroop, “never put in any money for the construction of this project at all.” That responsibility fell solely on the HEDC. Since HEDC is a non-profit, it will not pay taxes to the town. However, said Kroop, the incubator can generate revenue for Hamden by creating jobs, raising home values, and through taxes on the property of for-profit tenants.
One large lower-level room, for example, will soon be home to an anchor tenant that Kroop preferred not to reveal to avoid jeopardizing negotiations. He said it hopes to move in in December. Property in spaces like this room that will house profit-bearing tenants, he said, can be taxed. He said the town will have to work out the details once the building in occupied.
Up two flights of stairs, Kroop showed McGarry one of the building’s co-working rooms. Tall windows line the Morse-Street-facing wall and late-afternoon sunlight poured through the glass. A full desk along the windowed wall (background in photo) will cost $300 per month (which includes access to the incubator’s mentors, events, wifi, heating, air conditioning, and electric). A seat at a high table (foreground in photo) in the middle of the room will cost around $200, and a desk in a closed-off cubicle might be $400, though those prices are still up in the air.
Members will have access to a seminar room at one end of the hallway for free at regularly scheduled intervals. Non-members can also rent the room to hold events there.
If members need to meet with clients, they can do so in the conference room. The room’s white walls are lined with paintings by Hamden’s Betsy DeMarco of Blue Dodo.
Next to the conference room is the office, where mentors can meet with members in private, and where Kroop and other leaders of the incubator will work when they’re in the building. The desk is a light gray, with metal buttons studded around one corner.
It used to be brown, said Kroop, until Leslie Slater of Simply Staged painted it gray to give the room a more modern aesthetic that will appeal to younger business owners. Kroop said that Slater has helped him design rooms in Borough 496, and she will also advise members once they move in.
Once Kroop had shown McGarry the rooms upstairs, he brought him to the café area on the entry level. Windows serve as walls from floor to ceiling, and from one of the sturdy stone tables or soft leather armchairs you can look out at the corner of Morse and Newhall Streets. Any member can use the café, said Kroop, and it can also be rented for events.
Monday through Friday, Eddie Torres, whom Kroop said he met at the Hamden Farmer’s Market, will serve his renowned coffee in one corner of the room.
Kroop pointed out the window at the houses on Newhall Street. “I’ve been communicating with them since day one,” he said, referring to the neighbors. Many, he said, just wanted to get rid of the blight on the property.
As McGarry sat looking around the café, he remarked: “It’s a blank canvas. And you’re providing the paint and the artist in residence.”