Brownfields
Success Story
Swift Factory
HartfordConnecticut
A former gold-leafing factory sprawling over 82,000 square feet in
Northeast Hartford, the Swift Factory brownfields site is being turned
into a community center focused on health care and innovative
enterprises in the food industry. The Swift Factory, which operated for
more than a century and hired over 300 people at its height, has been
revitalized using green technologies and sustainable designs. It will
create about 250 jobs in one of the city's most challenged
neighborhoods and by helping to improve health outcomes and
providing economic development opportunities, this $34 million
project can spark a turnaround to help revitalize the community.
Studies of Northeast Hartford have shown health challenges here
related to life expectancy and diabetes as well as cardiovascular,
respiratory, and infectious diseases. The area also faces high levels of
unemployment and poverty and low levels of education. The Swift
Factory project capitalizes on Northeast Hartford's proximity to
downtown, its rich history, and its role as host of one of the country's
largest urban parks, the 694-acre Keney Park and golf course.
Priming the Property for Redevelopment
The Swift industrial building at 10 Love Lane, once an economic driving
force in the neighborhood, was acquired in 2010 by Community
Solutions, a non-profit that aims to achieve a lasting end to homelessness
that leaves no one behind. At the time of the purchase, contamination
from the site's industrial past as far back as 1887 remained a challenge.
Asbestos in building materials as well as lead, petroleum, and volatile
organic compounds in soil and groundwater needed to be addressed. In
2010, the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community
Development used $3,000 of its EPA Brownfields funding to help assess
the types and amounts of contamination at the site. In 2018, the state
provided $205,000 from its EPA Brownfields Revolving Loan Fund to
address ground water and soil remediation at the factory. The state also
provided its own funding with a $600,000 grant and a $3 million loan to
help finance the remainder of the site cleanup and redevelopment. The
DECD loan was used to repair and replace the roof in 2015 followed by
demolition and building abatement In 2018. Demolition, abatement and
remediation activities were complete in the summer of 2019 with final
project completion expected in the spring of 2020. Tenants are expected
to move in in early 2020, all of whom align with Community Solutions'
mission to create a just and equitable society where homelessness is
never inevitable, inescapable, or a way of life.
1 - Picture ofSwifl Factory After Redevelopment
Credits - SwiftFactory.org
EPA Grant Recipient:
Community Solutions
Grant Types:
EPA Assessment Grant
EPA Revolving Loan Grant
Former Uses:
gold-leafing factory
Projected Uses:
health care facility, food service and
manufacturing, commercial and business
space
v>EPA
United States
Environmental Protection
Agency

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I
3 - Picture of the original Swift Factoiy
Today
Credits: swiftfactoiy.org
This exciting redevelopment at the Swift Factory will create jobs in
health care, food service and food manufacturing. Tenants include a
food manufacturing hub with a shared commercial kitchen available to
individual and small businesses, health care clinic, and nutritional, health
and educational programs. Swift Factory will house a commissary
kitchen for the locally owned, Missouri-style BBQ Smokehouse, which
will produce its own line of condiments and spices and put Hartford on
the map for trendy cuisine. An indoor hydroponic farming company will
lease almost 50% of the building. The food business incubator offers 10
food production spaces with shared facilities encouraging
entrepreneurship. Shared office space is available for community-
oriented. The community Health Hub will provide health care and
prevention services to address the specific needs of the neighborhood.
Local and visiting artists, chefs, story tellers, and farmers will be able to
use the community art space to share experiences, crafts and creativity.
With significant financial investment from EPA's Brownfields program
and more than 40 other organizations, the Swift Factory has been
restored to create a better quality of life, including better health care
options, in a well-deserving neighborhood.
The new use of the historic Swift Factory considers the economic,
health, social and cultural, and environmental conditions of North
Hartford and creates a sustainable, yet innovative model for improving
the quality of life. Community Solutions has worked with neighborhood
residents, city leaders and organizations in the community to help
remake the factory into something that creates much-needed jobs,
improves community health and brings new life to the neighborhood.
"The Swift Factory was once an
economic engine for the northeast
neighborhood of Hartford, providing
over 300 jobs at the height of its
operation as one of the world's largest
gold leaf manufacturers. Thanks to the
generous support of the US EPA
through the CT DECD, Community
Solutions has been able to transform
this long abandoned and blighted
building into an engine for jobs and
entrepreneurship for the community,
particularly in the food industry. The
funds provided by the US EPA were
used to remediate the soil and
groundwater around the factory
building, which now host rain gardens
and bioswales demonstrating
sustainable rainwater management
practices to the region."
Rosanne Haggerty, President
Community Solutions
For more information:
Visit the EPA Brownfields website at
www.epa.gov/brownfields or contact
Dorrie Paar at 617-918-1432 or
paar.dorrie@epa.gov.
EPA 560 A 19-001
September 2019

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