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October 30, 2023 Deal Watch

State grant, new train station spur $42M Windsor Locks mixed-use apartment development

HBJ PHOTO | STEVE LASCHEVER Windsor Locks First Selectman Paul Harrington near the site of the town’s new train station.
By Hanna Snyder Gambini

Windsor Locks has been awarded a $4.8 million state grant, helping secure a developer’s commitment to build a $42 million mixed-use apartment project near the town’s new planned train station.

Half of the grant — provided by the state through its Community Investment Fund program — will go toward converting the town’s existing vacant and historic 2,300-square-foot train station into a visitor’s center, which will feature bathrooms, Connecticut-made products and grab-and-go food and beverages.

The welcome center will be located a stone’s throw away from the town’s new $65 million train station, which broke ground last year and is expected to be completed in 2025. The new station will be served by the CTrail Hartford Line, which connects New Haven to Springfield, and four Amtrak lines.

The other $2.4 million in state funding will go toward acquiring the Windsor Locks Commons property at 255 Main St., adjacent to where the new train station is being built. The property is currently home to an underutilized retail complex.

Boston-based real estate development firm Trinity Financial plans to build a mixed-use development at the site, which will include 75 affordable and market-rate apartments over ground-floor commercial space. The transit-oriented project is designed to engage with Main Street and connect to the new train station.

Contributed
This sketch shows the proposed mixed-use building on the Windsor Locks Commons property, with the new train station seen at right.

The Community Investment Fund is an economic development program created by the Lamont administration to invest up to $875 million in distressed communities over a five-year period.

So far, there have been three rounds of CIF grant funding. The latest round, approved in September, allocated $76.4 million to 20 projects.

‘Blank canvas’

Trinity Financial has been negotiating to purchase the Windsor Locks Commons property for the last eight months, according to Dan Drazen, the firm’s vice president of development.

“Between the relocation of the new train station, the proposed redevelopment of the historic train station, this site and the improvements to Main Street, I started to see a really compelling narrative starting to be woven together in terms of all these different threads,” Drazen said.

“Trinity does a lot of transit-oriented development projects, and this site could not be closer to transit. I think that was really what piqued our interest.”

Windsor Locks First Selectman Paul Harrington said he approached Trinity to collaborate on the proposed redevelopment. Acquiring the state funds to purchase the land clinched the partnership and project, he said.

“We had this blighted property that’s been an albatross,” Harrington said of the Windsor Locks Commons plaza, “and no one wanted to spend that kind of money to buy the land.”

Harrington said stalled negotiations over the purchase of the property initially killed the redevelopment plan, but the new state funding “resurrected” the deal.

Once Trinity acquires the property, it will demolish the existing plaza, which is owned by Locks LLC and John Lombard. The 29,400-square-foot retail center was built in 1987.

More detailed designs of the new apartment complex, including layout of the residential units, will be completed once a development team has been pulled together and the plan goes through the town’s land-use approval process.

Drazen said he anticipates 85% of the apartments will be affordable, and 15% market rate. The property will also include two or three ground-floor commercial tenant spaces.

“It’s really a blank canvas,” Drazen said. “There are a lot of different directions we could go, and I think we need to work closely with the town to understand what they’re looking for and what the market will support.”

Harrington said he expects Trinity to close on the property by the end of this year, with a groundbreaking in 2024, and project completion in 2025.

Project financing will likely come from a mix of public and private sources, including the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority and state Department of Housing, Drazen said.

Trinity Financial isn’t new to Connecticut. The company has projects in Stamford, New Haven, Norwalk and Meriden. This will be the development firm’s first project in Hartford County, Drazen said.

TOD sparks development interest

Harrington said the new train station and nearby Montgomery Mill Apartments — a 160-unit mixed-income development on Canal Bank Road that debuted in 2020 — have spurred significant interest in the town, as evidenced by the Windsor Locks Commons plan.

Harrington said he’s held meetings in recent weeks with three different development teams looking at potential projects on the other side of Main Street.

“There’s a lot of interest in our town right now, even up on the Route 75 corridor,” he said, adding that there’s more room for public-private partnerships, as well as grants, incentives, and other funding options for future development.

“It’s all on the table, we’re using as many tools as we can to entice developers,” Harrington said.

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