In the six years since buying a small manufacturing business there, Scott Gillette has watched the northern end of Blue Hills Avenue in Bloomfield evolve into one of the region’s hotbeds for commercial space and industrial development.
“A lot of that farmland is gone,” said Gillette, owner of Fabricated Wall Systems. “It’s really booming around here. Something is really happening.”
Fabricated makes floor-to-wall partitions used in office spaces, which Gillette markets under the Herman Miller brand. The manufacturer supplies all of the partitions the company sells in the Northeast, from New England as far south as New Jersey. Gillette in recent years has put partitions up in offices all around Metro Hartford, including in Advo in Manchester and at 20 Church St. in Hartford, more commonly called the “stilts” building.
Taking advantage of the explosion of industrial space in the area, Gillette moved his nine-employee company from nearby Old Windsor Road shortly after buying the manufacturer in 2001. He took up residence in one of the smaller industrial building alongside West Dudley Rd., a side street off of Blue Hills.
Other small manufacturers have had good luck there as well, like Discovery Wireless, which remanufactures plastic cell phone cases and covers, or nearby Nutmeg Futon Co., which makes and sells its own futons.
The area continues to be a magnet for manufacturers of all sizes. Earlier this month, Woodworks Retail & Arch, a wood- and millworking company, moved to a 16,000 square foot space on East Dudley Town Road., from its previous location on nearby East Newberry Street, according to Colliers Dow & Condon, the commercial real estate firm that coordinated the lease.
“For a long time, much of that area was just farmland,” said Deborah Davis, economic development director for the town. “It’s going through some transition within the past seven or so years, because there were a number of businesses that were relocating to the area.”
In particular, that means some home bases for quite a few major manufacturers and distributors who have recently set up shop in the area.
Pepperidge Farm, for instance, will celebrate its fourth anniversary of moving from Norwalk to Bloomfield next month. The company makes about 1 million loaves of bread at its 270,000 square foot factory each week. It employs about 270 people and makes Pepperidge Farm bread for all of New England.
There were two good reasons, said Erin Lamanna, human resources director for the factory. “It’s got easy access to the highway, which is really important for us, since we’re centrally located. Plus, there’s development all around and lots of open land.”
Other big firms have followed suit, landing major operations there. HomeGoods, owned by Framingham, Mass.-based The TJX Cos. Inc, has a distribution center right across the street. They have plans to double its size to nearly 800,000 square feet, and add almost 300 employees.
A little farther down the street, is a manufacturing site for Coherent Deos, a Santa Clara, Calif.-based laser maker, which moved to Bloomfield six years ago. They make Carbon-Dioxide lasers, employ about 187 people and have plans to add another 40,000 square feet to their factory there.
Lasers? Cinnamon bread? Wall partitions? Not bad for a bunch of farmland.
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Kenneth J. St. Onge is associate editor of the Hartford Business Journal.
