Squatters Set Up In Almost-Sold Factory

Housing has finally come to the old Hamilton Street clock factory — in the form of a parked RV occupied by a homeless former construction worker.

Time is ticking, however, for the temporary residents of the dilapidated industrial complex, now that the city’s housing authority has finalized an agreement to buy the blighted property out of tax foreclosure.

That’s the latest with the former New Haven Clock Company building at 133 Hamilton St.

On Thursday, Housing Authority of New Haven Executive Director Karen DuBois-Walton told the Independent her agency has signed a long-awaited purchase-and-sale agreement with the complex’s current owner, an affiliate of the Oregon-based development firm Reed Community Partners. 

Reed had long planned on converting the 150,000 square-foot site into 130 affordable apartments — but never followed through on that plan, instead neglecting the property’s upkeeping, falling behind on $230,000 in back taxes and interest, and letting it fall into tax foreclosure.

The newly inked housing authority agreement gives the current owner six months to ​“complete the site clean up, secure the building, clear it of any squatters, etc,” DuBois-Walton said in an email comment. The agency expects to close on purchasing the property by the start of next year.

This purchase-and-sale agreement comes nearly a year after the housing authority board voted in August 2023 in support of purchasing the former New Haven Clock Company complex for $4.5 million in order to turn it into 100 mixed-income, mostly-affordable apartments. DuBois-Walton confirmed that the final sale price is $4.5 million.

The property itself, meanwhile, now boasts new red-lettered ​“DANGER” signs, as posted on Tuesday by city Building Official Bob Dillon. Those signs warn passersby not to enter the building ​“except for the purposes of making the required repairs or demolishing the same.” 

Dillon told the Independent he put up the signs in response to a ​“neighborhood complaint” that the factory was ​“open to trespass.”

True enough, as the Independent saw on Wednesday and Thursday, the complex is open to trespass. 

It is currently occupied by a number of informal residents — including Franklyn Gallo.

Gallo, a former construction worker and military veteran, said he has been living in an RV camper in the clock company’s back courtyard since May.

Before then, he was staying at one of the city’s winter warming centers, which stopped offering places to sleep for the summer two months ago. 

Gallo is clearly not the only one residing at the ex-factory on Hamilton Street. A shed in the same yard as the RV contains clothes, a mattress, and a cooking set-up. Gallo said he regularly sees people coming through the complex — mostly to explore inside or climb to the roof. 

As recently as last March, the gates to the back of the factory complex on Wallace Street were padlocked shut, as were each of the doors to the factory building itself. Now, the gate is open, and several doors have been taken off their hinges.

“It’s better than living out on the street,” Gallo said about his courtyard RV, though he’d rather have a more permanent place to live. 

Gallo said he became homeless last October for the first time in his life. ​“I don’t like it,” he said. With the help of Section 8 housing assistance, he had been living in a Mandy Management apartment on Quinnipiac Avenue since 2022.

Gallo was evicted from that apartment last October, following what he described as a rent increase he didn’t know about and the resulting accumulation of monthly late fees. 

He said he tried to pay off his debts with a voucher, but his landlord declined. ​“They took away my life,” Gallo said.

Now he sleeps in the RV and spends his days going to daytime shelters to charge his phone and get coffee. ​“They serve a horrible lunch every day,” Gallo said, ​“but I eat it.” 

When the Independent interviewed Gallo on Thursday, he was sitting at a table in the central kitchen portion of the van. A portable radio played WPLR 99.1, mid-90s Beck. 

Gallo said he’s been a motorcycle fanatic since he got his first Yamaha RD60 when he moved from Connecticut to Florida at the age of 14. Before then, he grew up mostly in Southington and Cheshire. 

His motorcycling even brought him to the very clock factory where he now camps out in an RV. ​“I came here 12 years ago when it was a bar,” Gallo said. ​“Things were very different,” he added, ​“there was a lot of parking.” Gallo didn’t recognize the place until someone who came to explore the factory told him there used to be a biker bar in the building.

The RV is owned by a US Marine Corps veteran named Joe (who asked the Independent to only be identified by his first name). 

Gallo, Joe told the Independent, is a friend of his. 

Joe said his RV had gone missing for two years before he recovered it in a tow yard. After finding his lost vehicle, he decided to park it in the clock company’s courtyard. He said Gallo had been sleeping in the shed in the factory’s yard, and so Joe invited Gallo to sleep in the parked RV in exchange for looking after it. 

Both Gallo and Joe, the RV’s owner, claimed that a man named Bill gave them permission to leave the RV at the factory complex and to let Gallo sleep in it. They said Bill is an owner of the property.

While there does not appear to be a Bill among the current owners of the clock shop, there is a Bill Kraus who has for decades been involved in trying to remediate and convert the factory into housing — and was a booster of the previous plan spearheaded by Reed Community Partners.

“It’s absolutely not true. I encountered [Joe] on a site visit and absolutely gave him no permission” to park the RV or let anyone live in it on the clock factory property, Kraus said. ​“My understanding,” Kraus added, is that the owner is ​“taking action soon” regarding the property’s new residents.