A developer behind several major apartment conversions in Hartford is planning to transform part of Manchester’s historic Cheney Brothers silk mill complex into housing. WW Manchester LLC, an affiliate of Brooklyn, New York-based Spectra Construction & Development Corp., has applied for an inland wetlands permit to convert the roughly 30,000-square-foot Clark Building at 160 Hartford […]
A developer behind several major apartment conversions in Hartford is planning to transform part of Manchester's historic Cheney Brothers silk mill complex into housing.
WW Manchester LLC, an affiliate of Brooklyn, New York-based Spectra Construction & Development Corp., has applied for an inland wetlands permit to convert the roughly 30,000-square-foot Clark Building at 160 Hartford Road into 40 apartments.
Spectra has become one of Connecticut's most active developers of adaptive reuse multifamily projects, converting numerous historic commercial buildings into apartments, particularly in Hartford.
The affiliate purchased the Manchester property for $1.7 million, according to a June 3 land record. The Planning and Zoning Commission received the application at its July 6 meeting.
According to the Manchester Historical Society, the building dates to about 1870 and once held the folding and inspection rooms where finished cloth was packaged for shipping across Cheney Brothers’ sprawling campus.
The company’s private railroad ran along the western wall, drawing freight from a dedicated loading dock. In more recent decades, the mill served as office space and was folded into the neighboring Fuss & O’Neill campus.
Fuss & O’Neill has since
moved its headquarters to Hartford’s Gold Building.
Spectra is developing the project while Farmington architecture firm Schadler Selnau Associates is handling the redesign.
Plans call for reworking the structure across three floors plus a loft level, with 15 apartments on each of the first two floors and 10 above. Four units would be fully accessible, and the remaining 36 would meet a secondary accessibility standard.
The plans also seek a change of use from the building’s historic silk-mill designation to residential.
Because the site sits near a watercourse, the project needs wetlands approval to move forward. The town separately issued a permit in early July covering interior demolition only, clearing non-bearing partitions and wooden stairs.
The commission will consider the application at a future meeting.
