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February 21, 2007 STAMFORD -- The historic Henry Street factory building on the Yale & Towne property may have a new life in time for its 100th birthday. The building, constructed in 1910 and most recently the home to artists studios, will be renovated and turned into loft condominiums over the next two years, if the Zoning Board approves a redevelopment plan by Antares Investment Partners. The real estate company, which is planning to redevelop the 20-acre Yale & Towne site with about 300,000 square feet of mostly big-box retail and about 1,000 housing units, confirmed yesterday that it plans to restore the building instead of tearing it down. Antares had said shortly after buying the property that it hoped to preserve the building, but first had to investigate how much restoration work it needed and how much it would cost. The conversion of the factory building and construction of the big-box stores is part of the first phase of plan to build 4,000 housing units, along with hotel and retail space on 82 acres in the South End. The first phase will likely go before the Zoning Board this spring. Converting the structure, which has four sections built in stages between 1910 and 1920, into 175 loft condominiums with views of the skyline and Long Island Sound will cost $50 million to $60 million, Antares Chief Operating Officer Bruce Macleod said. Construction would take 12 to 15 months after approvals, he said. "It's like building from scratch," Macleod said. "There's no economic benefit to recovering the building, except that it's part of the fabric of the South End." Large high-ceilinged lofts with brick walls, thick wooden posts and massive windows should command a price that makes the restoration worthwhile, he said. Preservationists applauded the decision to save the building, but lamented that the singlestory buildings in the rest of the complex -- one of which was gutted by fire last year -- won't be saved. Because it was built in stages, the Henry Street building provides an excellent lesson in the history of industrial construction and of Yale & Towne, said Renee Kahn, director of the city's Historic Neighborhood Preservation Program and an artist who once rented a studio in the building. "You can see the progression of factory construction in the buildings," Kahn said. Yale & Towne's history in the South End began to unravel after World War II. The decision not to expand, and eventually shrink, is visible in the load-bearing connections on the outside of the 1920 addition on the building's eastern end, Kahn said. The connections were built to accommodate future expansions. "And they never got built," Kahn said. "That's where they made up their minds they weren't going to go forward." Even the 1910 building was an addition to an earlier structure on the western side of the complex that has already been demolished along with others on the site, by the previous property owner, Samuel Heyman. "The dumbest thing Sam Heyman ever did in his professional life was tear down those six story mill buildings," Kahn said. "The density in there you could never get today." Had those buildings remained, the property could have been developed for a significant profit, she said, without needing to tear down some of the lower buildings. One of those, in the center of the complex, was destroyed by a massive fire in April 2006, displacing several businesses that rented space there. The prices Antares paid for the 82 acres it bought in the South End made intense development there unavoidable, she said. Antares is working to relocate artists who still rent studio space in the Henry Street building into another unidentified South End property it plans to buy soon. The developer has told tenants they have until June to move out of the Yale & Towne complex. The remaining factory buildings on the site, which is on the National Register of Historic Places as part of the larger South End Historic District, will be razed to make way for a bigbox retail complex and several buildings housing condominiums and apartments, possibly including a tower as high 20 stories, according to plans filed with the city. Another building, a former community center for the thousands of Yale & Towne workers who once lived in the South End, also may be preserved, but Macleod said the company hasn't made any firm plans for the building. That building, at Pacific and Market streets, now houses a police substation and community activities. The deputy director of the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation welcomed the decision to renovate the Henry Street building, but said saving more of the complex would contribute to an understanding of how the parts of a factory worked together. "I'm certainly glad that they're preserving part of it at least," Christopher Wigren said. "Manufacturing is incredibly important for Connecticut's history. To have those buildings around and standing really helps in understanding that history."
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