Electric Boat says it hopes to start training new employees at the campus it’s building at the old Crystal Mall in Waterford by the end of the year.
The submarine builder hosted a groundbreaking ceremony at the campus Friday, although it says design development is well underway at the 814,000-square-foot building, and renovation has begun.
EB, which is owned by General Dynamics, estimates that 4,000 to 5,000 employees will be on-site by the middle of next year. That number will make the company the largest employer in Waterford.
The Waterford campus will be the site of EB’s new training center dubbed the Shipbuilding Advanced Institute for Learning, or SAIL. When the unit is fully operational, it will include 73 welding booths, tripling the capacity of EB’s current weld school. The company says SAIL will have the capacity to train 400 people each day across three shifts.
It will also include 40 classrooms and submarine mockups, as well as augmented and virtual reality learning labs.
In addition to training, the Waterford campus will also host accounting, procurement, IT, human resources, finance and contracts staff.
It will also be home to teams that develop, test and troubleshoot shipboard equipment.
The defense contractor is in the midst of a massive hiring push, and says it’s on track to meet its previously stated goal of 8,000 new employees in Connecticut and Rhode Island by the end of 2026.
The surge is aimed at supporting an increasing build rate across two submarine programs, the Virginia class and Columbia class. EB President Mark Rayha said the yard is now building at a rate of three Virginia class boats per year, and aims to exceed that.
“We’re producing now at levels right about the Cold War buildup, we’re going to move to levels way above the Cold War buildup,” he said.
Last month, EB was awarded new Navy contracts totaling $76.6 billion — one of the largest shipbuilding contracts in modern history.
The deals include $42.1 billion for the construction of nine Virginia class and $29.5 billion for five Columbia class submarines. There’s also $5 billion to cover shipyard enhancements.
Matt Pugliese, the deputy commissioner of the Department of Economic and Community Development, said Electric Boat has solved a major problem for Waterford and the state by stepping in to redevelop the mall site, which the shipyard acquired in stages last year.
“This may be the largest and most successful adaptive reuse property in the state’s history,” Pugliese said.
When EB acquired the property, the mall was about three-quarters empty, with just 25 remaining stores. Retail activities ceased in March of this year.
The shipyard’s hiring boom is squeezing local housing and traffic infrastructure in Groton, which hosts its waterfront, as well as Waterford and New London.
Waterford has completed 475 units of new housing on the border with New London, and First Selectman Rob Brule said more is on the way.
The town recently approved a change to the industrial zoning of a 300-acre site at 140 Waterford Parkway S., to accommodate up to 700 new units of housing.
“We’re going to do our part,” Brule said. “There’s places where you can have housing, we have the infrastructure to do it, we have a responsibility to do it.”
The town is also in talks with the state to extend an existing road to provide additional access to the mall site and relieve traffic congestion.
Rayha said that the Waterford campus redevelopment will involve around 600 construction jobs.
He also addressed the fate of the mall’s historic crystal chandelier, which he described as part of Waterford’s heritage. He said the 2,000-pound chandelier, made in Waterford, Ireland, will remain at the site.
