In addition to the relocation of offices, the society has also opened the CSCPA Education Center at the same address, a 3,500-square-foot professional meeting center available for rental to the public.

The society entered into a lease with Winstanley Enterprises, LLC. The brand-new facility is down the street from the former office at 845 Brook St.

The education center is central Connecticut's newest professional meeting facility. It is only five minutes from Interstate 91, Exit 23.

It offers a large room that can seat 114 people that can also be divided into three smaller 40-seat rooms using state-of-the-art sound walls.

Rooms are rented in full-day increments. The room rental rate includes wireless Internet access, LCD projector and screen, professional sound system with wireless lavaliere microphone, white boards, flip charts, lecterns, on-site facility staff support, and ample free parking.

The center also features a food and beverage service area; catering can be arranged through the CSCPA for an additional fee with New York Pickle Deli, a local caterer.

"We believe our members and their audience will find our new training center to be a more efficient and comfortable classroom layout," said society spokesperson Lisa Bugryn.

"We look forward to our new space; we believe it will be beneficial for members on all levels - financially, educationally, and functionally," executive director Art Renner said.

Earlier this month, the plan and zoning commission approved an application to expand the 26,000-square-foot building by 13,850 square feet. Beacon will move once the work is complete, Doug Pelham, the attorney for building owner, Winstanley Enterprises, said Thursday.

One Beacon is consolidating three Connecticut sites into the nearly 40,000-square-foot location, said Courtney Hendricson, the town's economic development director. Initially, 125 to 150 employees will be based at the site, but plans call for as many as 200 at that location, she said.

The building is one of several in Farmington Business Park. Beacon One is the latest in a succession of insurance companies to either expand or relocate in Farmington during the past decade. One - health insurer ConnectiCare - has headquarters just east of the business park.

The building containing Crazy Bruce's Liquors, currently located at 178 Newington Road, will be demolished and the liquor store will become another of the shopping plaza's retail tenants.

The building has been vacant for about five years.

- Loretta Waldman

Winstanley Enterprises of Concord, Mass., is proposing to place three small retail buildings, an office building, a bank, gas station, supermarket, and free pad for a future building on the 16.1-acre parcel at 176 Newington Road owned by Crazy Bruce's Discount Liquors, Inc.

A Town Planning and Zoning public hearing and vote on the application was scheduled for May 4.

The plaza, if approved, will include a 40,000-square-foot Stop & Shop Supermarket and a Stop & Shop gas station, where shopping at the grocery store will translate into savings at the pump.

The building containing Crazy Bruce's Liquors, currently located at 178 Newington Road, will be demolished and the liquor store will become another of the shopping plaza's retail tenants.

The proposed shopping plaza is just the latest news in the revitalization of the Elmwood area of town, a section which has been bolstered by the opening of restaurants such as Elements Bistro, the 144-unit Quaker Green Condominiums, and the approval of a 28-unit condominium complex across the street from the proposed shopping plaza, according to Community Services Director Rob Rowlson. "Elmwood really has come into its own," he said.

According to developer Adam Winstanley, Winstanley Enterprises specializes in cleaning up sites and has developed at least 40 of them in the state. The 176 Newington Road site, which Winstanley says has "gross environmental contamination," contains pollutants, including benzene, that exceeds the state Department of Environmental Protection's pollutant mobility criteria, waste plastic shavings believed to be associated with a former on-site machining operation, and elevated levels of PCB from an old waste scrap-metal pile, according to the TPZ application.

The developer has filed a remedial action plan with the state DEP and is also working with the Region 1 office of the Environmental Protection Agency in Boston to remediate the site, he said.

The six-month cleanup process, which involves demolition of the existing building's superstructure, removing parts of the contaminated underlying slab, and removing the solvent and PCB contamination from the soil, started last week, he said.

Rowlson said that were it not for its development, the land would remain contaminated. "The way you clean up sites is to reuse them with an economic use that allows you to afford to clean it up," he said.

Winstanley hopes to start construction in September.

Developer Carter Winstanley plans to transform a "very large, dark" "fortress" into a glass-fronted, light-filled, bustling office center now that he has approval to rescue yet another old Winchester gun factory building.

Plans for a $10 million to $12 shopping plaza and office building project on a 14-acre brownfield site in Elmwood moved one step closer to fruition this week, as West Hartford town council accepted a recommendation by its Inland and Wetland Commission to give the proposal a green light.

Massachusetts-based Winstanley Enterprises, which has significant development interests in Connecticut, is proposing to build a plaza anchored by a 37,000-square-foot, neighborhood-style Stop & Shop at 176-178 Newington Road.

The lawyer for Winstanley Enterprises, Attorney James Joseph of Levy & Droney in Farmington, said when complete, the project will include a Stop & Shop gas station, additional retail storefronts and a two-story office building. The property will also have a building pad, offering room for future development. That site that would be ideal for a bank, he said.

The building containing Crazy Bruce's Discount Liquors, currently located at 178 Newington Road, will be demolished, and the liquor store will relocate right next door to the supermarket as one of the shopping plaza's retail tenants. The current Crazy Bruce's site will become a landscaped parking lot providing room for about 500 vehicles.

The storefronts that are not yet spoken for may include a restaurant "and some other retail uses compatible with what ever else is going on in the center."

Joseph said while the center has not yet been officially marketed to tenants other than Stop & Shop, "there has been a good amount of interest from [potential retail occupants], and I think this will be a desirable location for folks to be. It's heavily populated, we've got a great anchor tenant, and I think we'll be able to get some quality tenants in there."

The developer still requires a permit from the state traffic commission, which it expects to have early this summer. But Joseph said with all of its municipal approvals either in hand or expected over the next few weeks, Winstanley is already clearing a portion of the site in preparation for construction.

"We are moving ahead in many respects right now. We're actively demolishing the existing 150,000-square-foot facility (at 176 Newington Road). Then there's a large slab floor that will have to be demolished. That whole process is going to take until July."

Because that property is a brownfield site, a two-month environmental remediation process will follow. As a result of decades of previous industrial uses on the property, "the site is grossly contaminated," Joseph said.

"This is a classic brownfield reclamation project. The environmental people will be out there in late July and August conducting the remedial process, and we hope to put shovels in the ground in September. If things keep progressing as they are, that would be our goal."

The construction phase for "Elmwood Square," as the plaza will be known, will take approximately one year, with completion expected in late 2010.

The project will be a boon for Elmwood, which not long ago had no grocery store but, with the completion of this project, will soon have three. The town has already granted approval for a 28-unit condominium complex across the street from the new shopping plaza, so condo tenants there will have easy access to many needed services.

Winstanley purchased the site last June, Joseph said, "so we have been working very hard on the property for well over a year. The most involved aspect was really the environmental portion."

The property at 176 Newington Road is currently contaminated with PCBs, solvents and petroleum. "The contamination is largely from historical uses going back to the 1930s." The most recent operation on that portion was Jacobs Vehicle Systems, which owned the site until 1986, when it was purchased by Bonk Realty Associates.

Winstanley purchased that property from Bonk, but Joseph said that Adam Winstanley "was able to bring Jacobs back to the table and hammer out an agreement pertaining to the remediation. In the eyes of the DEP, they're the certifying party. We have a contractual agreement with Jacobs which divides the responsibility for certain elements of the remediation among Winstanley and Jacobs."

With the acquisition of the adjacent 178 Newington Road from Crazy Bruce's, along with another parcel containing a one-story storage facility at 10 Jacobs Road, separate parcels will all become part of Elmwood Square. The storage facility will be the subject of a "ground up" renovation into a two-story office building that will double in size from 5,000 to approximately 10,000 square feet.

Joseph said the grocery store will be modeled along the lines of a new "neighborhood" supermarket concept. It will be smaller than the "Super Stop & Shop" that people have become familiar with. Instead, it will be similar in size to the new 40,000-square-foot Stop & Shop recently built in Unionville.

"The idea for Elmwood Square will be that it's a pedestrian friendly neighborhood center," Joseph said. "And so if people just need milk and eggs, they won't get stuck for 35 minutes walking around the aisles of a huge store." The supermarket will also issue cards that accumulate points as shoppers buy groceries. "When you take your card to the pump, you'll get a discount on gas, so that will be another nice thing."

Asked why his client chose the former Jacobs and Crazy Bruce's sites to develop, Joseph said as Adam Winstanley drove through Elmwood one day, "he realized that it's a vital and vibrant area of town, and there was a need for this kind of center. It's heavily populated, and we hope this becomes a nice centerpiece of the community, as a one-stop shopping center for them."

Westbrook, ME - WE 100 Larrabee Road LLC, an affiliate of Winstanley Enterprises LLC, announced its purchase on March 6, 2009 of the Larrabee Complex, a 101,250 SF, single-story commercial property located at 100 Main Street in Westbrook, Maine. The Larrabee Complex is an established, multi-tenanted, retail and office complex located at the intersection of Main Street and Larrabee Road, close to Exits 47 & 48 of the Maine Turnpike. Some of the national and regional tenants at the Larrabee Complex include Advance Auto Parts, Sherwin Williams, NAMCO, Spa Tech, Northeast Paging, Rent-A-Center and Big Wings, to name a few. Gregory Boulos and Craig Young, CCIM, both partners of CB Richard Ellis / The Boulos Company brokered the transaction.

Winstanley (pictured) appeared in front of the City Plan Commission on Tuesday night, seeking a green light for his conversion of 344 Winchester Ave. into a modern office building. With the support of the city and Yale University, which will be the building's principal renter, Winstanley got the approval he came for.

It was the latest step down a path of renewal of the old Winchester rifle complex at the crossroads of the Dixwell and Newhallville neighborhoods, which employed up to 18,000 factory workers in its heyday. Part of the complex was reborn as the tech-oriented Science Park, while other abandoned hulks, like 344 Winchester, awaited demolition or resuscitation.

Winstanley is an owner of Massachusetts-based Winstanley Enterprises and the developer behind the revitalization of 300 George St. and 25 Science Park, which is occupied by Yale and several tech start-ups. He's also building a new garage at Winchester and Henry, while a separate developer is transforming the old main Winchester gun plant across the street into apartments and shops. (See coverage of his expanding domain in Science Park here, here, here, and here.)

The developer was initially hesitant Wednesday night to discuss the price tag for his new project, then predicted that the work would cost in excess of $20 million. No public funding is involved.

It's a big undertaking in the midst of a steep economic downturn, but Winstanley said that he has always worked on "contrarian" projects.

Chrissy Bonanno, the city's deputy economic development administrator, called the project a win for New Haven, since it will expand the tax base and bring in more jobs.

A Great Feel

Winstanley began his presentation to the board by recounting his record of recent achievements in New Haven, especially in Science Park. He said that 25 Science Park, at the corner of Winchester Avenue and Munson Street, is now 85 percent leased and home to over 700 employees. Among the high-tech tenants is Higher One, which Winstanley boasted is one of the 80 fastest-growing companies in the country.

With these successes under his belt, Winstanley said, "it would be easy to sit back and rest easy." Yet when he stands on the sixth floor of 25 Science Park and looks north, he looks past the parking garage his company is building and sees - at 344 Winchester - a way to continue his vision even further.

Winstanley purchased 344 Winchester a little over a month ago. He plans to convert the 245,000 square foot building - a former gun factory - into a large print shop and upscale offices for Yale University. He said that he does not have any signed agreements with tenants yet, but that he has "firm commitments" on most of the building. There is still 18,000 square feet for which he has not found renters. Yale University sent a letter of endorsement to the commission.

Central to his vision is a redo of the entire facade of the building, which is now blank and windowless makes the building into, in Winstanley's words, "a very large, dark presence." Winstanley plans to "put as much glass on the front as possible."

As part of an effort to create a "successful pedestrian environment," the whole area will be landscaped. The existing fence along Winchester Avenue will be removed. The sidewalks will be redone, "so that people feel this continuum" as they walk north from 25 Science Park.

The factory's high ceilings will give the office building "a ton of natural light," said Architect Chris Bockstael (pictured), from Svigals and Partners, the firm that has taken on the project. "It's going to have a great feel to it."

David Silverstone, head of the Science Park Development Corporation, is ready for a makeover for 344 Winchester. "This building looks like a fortress," he told the board. He praised what Winstanley had done with 25 Science Park and said that "the neighbors can't wait for this building to receive similar treatment."

Jobs and Taxes

"We're very excited to build it," Winstanley said, during a break in the meeting. He said that the office building will ring in customers for the retail and restaurant operations that will open in the parking garage now being built nearby.

Asked about the risk of taking on such a big project in a shaky economy, Winstanley said, "We've always taken on projects that are contrarian in nature." He explained that his company often buys vacant properties that "other people are largely not successful with." He mentioned 300 George St., one of his company's projects. "A lot of people didn't think it could be leased... This will be the same."

Winstanley partly credited his partnerships with the city and with Yale for his past and future success.

City Plan Department Executive Director Karyn Gilvarg said that the having Yale as a tenant in the building will bring in tax revenue from the university that the city would otherwise be unable to collect, since Yale is exempt from taxes on land that it owns.

"That is kind of our solution to the tax problem with Yale. Have them rent," she said.

Pricetag

City Plan commissioners had a number of questions for Winstanley (pictured) and Ted DeSantos, the project's engineer. The two men allayed all their concerns about parking and lighting, answering all questions promptly until City Plan's Joy Ford inquired about the projected cost of the project.

"Do I have to answer that?" Winstanley asked.

"We like to have the value of the building," said Gilvarg.

Winstanley sighed and said, "I think it's probably in excess of 20 million."

Asked if that number includes the cost of any environmental remediation, Winstanley replied, "I hope so."

An online database lists the assessed value of 344 Winchester Ave. at just over $8 million.

The board voted unanimously to approve the proposal.

Asked after the meeting why he had been reluctant to discuss the cost of the project, Winstanley said, "I donŐt think it should be a public figure."

"We're a private company," he continued. "We don't usually disclose that info."

Winstanley said that the construction on the project could begin as early as the spring and would be completed in one to three years.

Carter Winstanley told two dozen people at a Newhallville neighborhood management team meeting Tuesday night that his company is removing the asbestos. By the time it's finished with a clean-up of the property bounded by Winchester and Argyle that when it's finished, "It will be as clean as it's ever been since people touched it, or industry touched it."

He talked about the history of the site, which sounded like an archaeologist's dream. "This building sits on top of urban fill, which has some contaminants, which sits on top of rubble from older, demolished buildings, which in some cases sits on top of contamination that leaked out of the original building." The derelict red brick building was demolished a week ago.

He said his company did more exhaustive testing of both the soil and the water under the property than any previous owner, making a hundred test bores. They found some TCE (trichloroethylene) and some petroleum contamination. He told residents to keep their eye on the spot where soon a "monstrous" 28-foot-hole will be dug in the corner of the property by the Farmington Canal rail trail, to take out the toxic soil and water. It will all leave the site, Winstanley said, under supervision by the state Department of Environmental Protection. Meeting attendees seemed satisfied with the details he provided.

Then he'll fill the hole and a 1,186-car parking lot will rise on the site by next October, to serve the hundreds of new employees who are coming to Science Park and its environs. He owns 25 Science Park, which he said had about 120 employees until recently, when 630 more came, mostly Yale employees. When the Yale Health Plan moves into its new building nearby, many more workers will arrive. The parking garage will have street-level retail, and he has outlined plans for neighborhood beautification, including the planting of trees. Click here for a previous story.