🔒Shifting Demand: Science Park’s latest evolution — a neighborhood

Like a grown-up Lego set, Alex Twining’s scale model of New Haven’s Science Park allows for quick alterations. He can pick up a miniature plastic lab building and flip it over to make it a residential building, and vice versa.

That kind of flexibility has been essential for developers working in Science Park, an 80-acre swath of former industrial land in the central Newhallville neighborhood. Evolving over the decades from factories to industrial wasteland to offices to labs and housing, the district may finally be reaching an inflection point. 

In May, New Haven’s city planning commission approved “Winchester Green,” a new 287-unit apartment building with a courtyard in the heart of the complex at 315 Winchester Ave., with frontage of street-level retail. Twining and his partners also got the OK to build two new streets and a public plaza, transforming a parking lot into the nexus of a neighborhood. 

“The concept is kind of urban design 101,” Twining said.  “Let's get more people living here and working here.” Blueprints are in progress and Twining said he plans to break ground on the project next year. 

Twining and his partners expect to spend about $300 million to develop the rest of Science Park over the coming years, depending on market conditions.

Twining is currently seeking an anchor tenant for a new laboratory building planned for another parking lot, this time across the street from the former Winchester complex on Munson Street. If a major biotech tenant doesn’t sign on, he is prepared to construct a residential building — illustrated by flipping the model building over to reveal an alternate use. 

“Depending on the marketplace, we'll either put 400 or 500 apartments here, or we could put probably a half-million-square-foot flat building,” Twining said. “Having worked on a lot of these long-term mixed-use projects, you need to have optionality because you want to get life happening as soon as you can.”

Evolving with the times

“Optionality” was a guiding principle for Sam Chauncey Jr., who formed the original Science Park Development Corp. in 1981. He and his successors have had to adapt to changing markets, shifting demand and economic ups and downs. 

Now 88 and retired, Chauncey contacted Twining early this summer after hearing about Winchester Green, eager to see the site and hear about the project. 

“When I walked over the other day and I saw Alex’s plans for the additional stuff he’s doing, I came away a pretty happy guy,” Chauncey said. “I think what’s happened is wonderful.”

Chauncey has watched Science Park evolve over the decades into an embryonic form of what he originally envisioned — a bustling neighborhood where residents can live, work and shop. 

The sunny images from Winchester Green’s proposal are a far cry from the derelict, rat-infested expanse that confronted Chauncey in the early 1980s, when ammunition maker Olin Corp., which succeeded Winchester Repeating Arms Co. at the site, offered to donate the land to Yale. 

At the time a top-ranking administrator at the university, Chauncey took a look at the landscape of abandoned buildings and contaminated land and realized that Yale (relatively poor at the time) didn’t have the money to transform and use the property.

Chauncey also saw that the Newhallville neighborhood needed jobs and opportunity, and he figured the former factory complex could be better used as a site for training, business incubation and startup space. 

Science Park was born as a nonprofit development corporation in 1981, with seed funding and support from Olin, Yale and the city of New Haven. Millions in state and federal grants were later tapped to level abandoned buildings and clean up the site. 

One of Chauncey’s first Science Park startups was Alexion, a Yale spinout that grew into a pharma superstar and was acquired by AstraZeneca last year for $39 billion. The campus has since launched Arvinas, Valisure and other companies that have gone on to grow and prosper. 

In recent years, Science Park has also drawn interest from office and residential developers, eyeing the historic factory buildings for rehab and occupancy. In 2015, Ohio-based Forest City Residential Group debuted the 158-unit Winchester Lofts at the heart of the complex, rehabbing a main section of the old Winchester factory.

The lofts remain fully leased, Twining said, although Forest City pulled out of Science Park in 2018, after the company was sold to Brookfield. 

Higher One, a once high-flying New Haven tech company,  spent $46 million to renovate another section of the Winchester factory building, moving into a 140,000-square-foot space in 2012. Soon after, however, the company was hit with allegations of illegal business practices and eventually shut down. The last team of banking officials unwinding Higher One left Science Park only a few months ago.  

Bioscience and tech companies remain a presence at Science Park, with quantum computing and drug companies occupying lab space across the property. Halda Therapeutics and Artizan Biosciences are growing their footprints inside the former Higher One offices, now called "Winchester Works.” 

Quantum-Si, a biotech company focused on a protein-sequencing platform, announced earlier this year it would relocate its headquarters to 65,000 square feet inside Winchester Works, but has since decided to sublease the space, Twining said. 

When asked about its real estate plans, a Quantum-Si spokesperson said, “The company has no announcements to share with regards to its facility plans.”

In tandem with LMXD (an affiliated company of L+M Development Partners) and Goldman Sachs Urban Investment Group, Twining is also building and leasing three, 5,000-square-foot lab and office suites at Winchester Works to be available for occupancy later this year. 

“Winchester Works has become a leading hub for the life science community and these new cutting-edge spaces are ideal for biotech firms looking for move-in ready space within New Haven,” said Jake Pine, senior director at New York-based LMXD.

The market for laboratory space can be unpredictable, Twining said, drawing on his own decades of experience developing in Boston’s Kendall Square and Seaport clusters and watching New York City’s bioscience cluster evolve. It can be quiet for years, and then all of a sudden a growing company wants millions of square feet, ready for immediate occupancy.

That’s why Twining said he is ready to pivot as the market dictates. 

“It’s tough real estate, biotech — it’s sexy to everybody, but it's very lumpy, and that's nothing new,” Twining said. “I mean, that’s just the way it is. So that's why our bigger plan is that you really want to create an ecosystem.”

Building Science Park as a mixed-use neighborhood will also help grow New Haven’s economy in the long run, he added. 

“I can tell you from having been out there presenting to office and lab tenants, they get a lot more excited when they hear there's going to be more people living here and more retail,” he said.

As the district evolves, Chauncey sees his original vision for Science Park slowly coming to life.   

“I am a bit of a dreamer, and I had a dream that we could really do something there,” Chauncey said. 

On a recent visit, he was enthusiastic about the improved housing stock in the surrounding neighborhoods as well as new construction along Winchester Avenue and Munson Street.

“I couldn't believe how beautiful the neighborhood is becoming,” he said.