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CT to redevelop 21 blighted properties to boost housing and business growth

Daniel O'Keefe, Commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development speaks at a press conference in Enfield announcing a series of state grants totaling $20 million that will be used to support remediation and redevelopment of blighted properties on December 4, 2024.
Tyler Russell
/
Connecticut Public
Daniel O'Keefe, Commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development speaks at a press conference in Enfield announcing a series of state grants totaling $20 million that will be used to support remediation and redevelopment of blighted properties on December 4, 2024.

A 3-acre site on the banks of the Connecticut River in Enfield, where a successful carpet manufacturing power plant once resided, will soon be given new life.

With a $4 million state grant, the former Bigelow Carpet Manufacturing plant on North River Street will become a 160-unit apartment complex near a future train station. Twenty percent of the apartments will be affordable.

Enfield is one of 18 towns and cities in Connecticut to receive state grant funding that will be used for brownfield remediation.

Brownfields often remain abandoned for decades, until programs like this come along, according to Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development Commissioner Dan O’Keefe.

“That is why programs like these, like brownfields, are so incredibly important,” O’Keefe said. “It is what gets that movement, and it allows us as a community, as a state, for our economy, to move on from the mistakes of our past."

The grant funding, which totals $20 million, will be spread among 21 blighted properties statewide.

“They become abandoned, and then they just sit there,” O’Keefe said. “They sit there because the private profit motive to remediate these things is oftentimes unknown, and it becomes a challenge to get these things to move.”

Brownfield remediation efforts involve cleaning the soil and water where former factories may have caused pollution.

The funding ranges from $4 million to about $150,000.

Stamford received one of the higher awards, with about $950,000 to excavate and remediate contaminated soil on a nearly 4-acre site on Woodland Avenue.

It will be turned into a mixed use development with new housing, parks and a walkway to the city’s transportation center.

One property to be developed into housing is a private lot to the right of this decommissioned building which used to provide power to the Bigelow Carpet Factory across the tracks. The building, currently owned by Eversource, is planned to be addressed later.
Tyler Russell
/
Connecticut Public
One property to be developed into housing is a private lot to the right of this decommissioned building which used to provide power to the Bigelow Carpet Factory across the tracks. The building, currently owned by Eversource, is planned to be addressed later.

Many of Connecticut’s nicest pieces of land are along waterfronts, previously developed to power industrial plants and transportation, according to Gov. Ned Lamont.

“When it comes to development, I don't want to take people's backyards or anything,” Lamont said. “I want to redevelop what we can right here. And that's what brownfields is all about.”

The remediation will clean about 150 acres of land and result in about 1,400 new housing units.

“We have to do everything we can to reclaim this, to make sure we get maximum value for our people here,” Lamont said.

Abigail is Connecticut Public's housing reporter, covering statewide housing developments and issues, with an emphasis on Fairfield County communities. She received her master's from Columbia University in 2020 and graduated from the University of Connecticut in 2019. Abigail previously covered statewide transportation and the city of Norwalk for Hearst Connecticut Media. She loves all things Disney and cats.

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