Pet products retailer Chewy is backing away from plans for a $135 million fulfillment center in Windsor. Even so, the developers that lined up to erect the giant e-commerce company’s planned 750,000-square-foot building said they are going to proceed with construction anyway. The logistics market is so hot that representatives from Winstanley Enterprises and NorthPoint […]
Pet products retailer Chewy is backing away from plans for a $135 million fulfillment center in Windsor.
Even so, the developers that lined up to erect the giant e-commerce company’s planned 750,000-square-foot building said they are going to proceed with construction anyway.
The logistics market is so hot that representatives from Winstanley Enterprises and NorthPoint Development said they will build a distribution center in the Great Pond Village mixed-use development district on a speculative basis.
“The commitment from Chewy was placed on hold, but the Winstanley/NorthPoint team is very confident in the market and therefore are marching forward with building the warehouse,” Winstanley spokesperson Matthew Watkins wrote in an email to the Hartford Business Journal. “They feel that the tenant demand will be there.”
Winstanley and ABB Group — owner of the former Combustion Engineering nuclear-boiler production and testing facilities that once occupied the Great Pond site — are the master developers of the 625-acre Great Pond district, which is targeted for large-scale residential and industrial development.
Winstanley teamed with NorthPoint on the distribution center because the Montana-based developer has repeatedly built for Chewy.
Winstanley Principal Adam Winstanley said the plan is to break ground on the distribution center project in June or July. It is also possible that Chewy might revisit plans to inhabit the space, he said.
Windsor’s Town Council, on Feb. 7, granted Chewy a tax abatement and building fee waivers worth about $3.1 million.
Jim Burke, who recently retired as Windsor’s economic development director, said Chewy communicated to the town it is not prepared to move forward but didn’t go into specifics.
Chewy and Windsor Town Manager Peter Souza would have had six months to sign a deal based on the conditions agreed to Feb. 7, Burke said. In theory, this gives the company a window to return to the project.
Attempts to reach a Chewy spokesperson were not successful.
Windsor Town Planner Eric Barz said the development still needs site plan approval. He anticipates design changes based on Chewy’s withdrawal.
“Chewy is on the fence,” Barz said. “[The developers] are going to build the warehouse regardless of whether Chewy occupies it or not. I think they are still holding out hope Chewy might pull the trigger.”
