West Hartford land-use agencies are moving an idle brownfield site in the Elmwood section toward a $12 million makeover as a retail-office development, Elmwood Square.
The town’s inland-wetlands commission recently approved developer Winstanley Enterprises’ plan to remove two buildings and contaminated soils at the 16-acre former factory site at 176 Newington Road.
The town planning and zoning department was expected to approve the site plan at a meeting last week.
“At this stage, things are falling into place pretty rapidly,’’ said Farmington attorney James Joseph, of law firm Levy & Droney, Winstanley’s project counsel.
When completed, perhaps in 2010, a 37,000-square-foot Stop & Shop could anchor Elmwood Square — similar in size to the “neighborhood store’’ the chain recently opened in the Unionville section of Farmington, Joseph said. Winstanley and Stop & Shop are in lease talks, he said.
One retailer certain to occupy the center is Crazy Bruce’s Liquors, which currently has a 12,000-square-foot building on the property and has signed a lease, Joseph said. It plans to occupy 15,000 square feet at one end of the proposed shopping square.
In all, Elmwood Square will have about 73,000 square feet of retail space, plus gasoline pumps operated by Stop & Shop, Joseph said.
Pad space on the property will be set aside for an additional tenant, perhaps a bank, he said. A third building, used mostly for storage, will be refurbished as a two-story office building.
“It is a ground up reclamation of a property that really needs it,’’ Joseph said.
People’s United Bank is providing construction financing for the project, he said. Permanent financing has yet to be found.
State and federal environmental protection agencies are overseeing the scheduled cleanup of the site, the lawyer said.
The site, in a mostly industrial area of Elmwood, most recently was home to Industrial Safety and Supply Co. and before that, Jacobs Vehicle Systems.
Contamination of the concrete floor in the main building and adjacent soils consists of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and petroleum-based solvents, Joseph said. Also, asbestos was removed from the interior of the Industrial Safety Building, to prepare for demolition perhaps as early as summer.
The final step is a traffic study under way by the state Department of Transportation, which should be completed in June or July.
With demolition likely to take two to three months, construction would begin in the fall, Joseph said.
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Greg Seay is the Hartford Business Journal Web editor.
