It’s a cause for celebration that Colt moved another step closer to being named a National Historical Landmark last week. There is no question that the blue-domed landmark is a treasure for the state and the nation. And it should be recognized as such.
The Colt Armory is a monument to Connecticut’s industrial greatness and provides visitors and residents with a sense of place in that regard.
Samuel Colt envisioned Hartford as a hotspot more than 150 years ago and created a community where people worked, lived and played. He did this by creating good-paying jobs at his firearms factory for highly skilled mechanics, providing the best benefits and working conditions in the area for the times, and constructing quality worker housing.
Coltsville was much more than a factory. Hopefully, it will be so once again.
But although the armory will likely be recognized by the federal government for its contributions, the project’s developer, Homes For America Holdings, is experiencing extensive financial troubles. It is facing foreclosure on its nearly $9 million mortgage. It owes its prominent architect, Tai Soo Kim, about $300,000, and it hasn’t paid on $500,000 in back taxes.
While these financial woes seem to put Colt’s rebirth out of reach, it shouldn’t. Public and private partnerships will be necessary to complete the renovation.
Notably, such partnerships have worked effectively in the past. Look to the north, in the Thompsonville section of Enfield, where the former 1 million-square-foot Bigelow-Sanford Carpet Mills was renovated in 1988.
Located on 23 acres along the Connecticut River, six massive former factory buildings were renovated into a multi-use complex that now houses offices, a health club and 471 apartments.
The Carpet Mills had been vacated in 1972 and were in considerable disrepair when former U.S. Rep. Nancy Johnson, town leaders and a private developer got together during the early 1980s to embark on what was then the largest preservation effort of a factory complex in the Northeast.
Renovating Bigelow Commons wasn’t easy. The project’s champions experienced three major setbacks—including a time when replacing its historic windows seemed out of reach—and federal and other funding was threatened.
There are often countless problems that come with the territory when renovating an historic structure. Developers can’t simply shop at a local hardware store when keeping true to a building’s historical integrity.
And then there are always unwanted surprises lurking behind walls and below the structure that can run up costs considerably.
To the credit of Colt’s developer, lots of proposals came along before Homes for America Holdings did. But few moved the Colt project as far ahead as it did. Colt’s historic Sawtooth Building, one of the largest in the nation of its genre, was completely renovated from a barren, unheated building with broken windows into a modernized gem of a workplace for Insurity.
The same story goes for the renovation of a Colt brick structure that now houses CREC. The developer breathed life back into these landmarks.
Renovating an historic structure is a lot like college; it’s easier to get accepted to a university than it is to graduate. Now, Homes For America Holdings needs to graduate, fix its fiscal problems, reach out to state and federal partners and get the job done.
