Hartford Business Journal

10 Hartford Business Journal • March 5, 2018 • www.HartfordBusiness.com By Gregory Seay gseay@HartfordBusiness.com L ong before the first Texas oil gusher planted America firmly into the Oil Age and a century ahead of comput- er and technology innova- tions that birthed California's Silicon Valley, Connecticut's Farmington Val- ley was a manufacturing powerhouse. And its epicenter was gunmaker Sam- uel Colt's sprawling, 600,000-square- foot Hartford armory complex in the city's South End, where its legendary "Peacemaker'' revolvers and "Colt .45" semi-automatic pistols were designed and mass produced. Nearly 1,000 men daily coaxed steel gun chassis and com- ponents from steam-powered presses and belt-driven lathes. With its blue-onion dome, adorned with a prancing colt, visible to ships and barges ferrying raw materials and crates of finished guns up and down the Connecticut River, the Colt works' buildings today — though no longer churning out weapons — still stand as impressive, even as they assume a kinder, gentler mission in life. A century-and-a-half after Colt's armories were destroyed in a mysterious fire and two decades after successor Colt L.P. crafted its last weapons there, the 20- acre Colt works site is entering the final stages of a nearly decade-long, eventual $100 million makeover into apartments, and office, retail and classroom space. This spring, under the detailed eye of South Windsor investor-developer Larry Dooley and tens of millions of de- velopment dollars from Dooley's major- ity oil-company partner, the armories and adjacent tracts — now called Colt Gateway — will see the sixth phase of development get underway, with con- struction starting on 48 more market- rate apartments to go with the existing 129 units, which are 95 percent leased. That's on top of the late February debut of Tom & Sam's Cafe by the owner of Bloomfield's Thomas Hooker Brewing Co., which last spring opened a 75-seat tasting room in the same South Armory housing the cafe and upstairs office space and apartments. Thomas Hooker Brewing owner Curt Cameron said he had searched since 2008 for suitable space in Coltsville. "I probably looked at that thing three or four times over the years," Cameron said. Ultimately, he settled on a 3,000-square-foot former nursery school space, with its scenic outdoor patio. Since investing $350,000 to $400,000 to open the Coltsville tasting room, most of his patrons are from outside the city and are surprised when they see how the former armories have been redeveloped. "People say, 'when did this change?' '' Cameron said, adding Colt Gateway's free parking also is a draw. A chief reason Cameron chose Colt Gateway, and why he says it will be suc- cessful as a residential, workplace, lei- sure and tourism magnet, is due to the drive and conciliatory mien of Dooley and his CG Management Co. team. Dooley, 55, is a one-time carpenter who over the years honed his development skills working on or with local landlords/ developers, including Marc S. Levine, on various mixed-use projects, like down- town's The Lofts At Main & Temple. Colt Gateway is his first major devel- opment project, one that came his way when the original developer, Homes for America Holdings, in 2008 bailed on the project. Together, Dooley's CG Management Co. and his majority partner, Chevron Corp., acquired Colt Gateway in 2010 and resumed conversion of the vacant and underused armories into new spaces. Bloomfield's Bartlett Brainard Eacott Inc. has done much of Colt Gateway's restoration to date. When fully completed, Dooley said, Colt Gateway will represent an invest- ment of about $100 million, some of that funded with state loans and grants and millions in historic real estate tax credits bought by the oil giant. In addition to retail, housing and office space, Colt Gateway is home to a pair of schools totaling 206,000 square feet run by the Capitol Re- gion Education Council (CREC): The Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts, a magnet high school, as well as classrooms housing courses in English language and other adult courses. CREC previously was Colt's largest tenant, with administrative and other offices occupying about 200,000 square feet in a pair of buildings that it has since vacated. Space in those buildings eventually will be refitted and offered to other office tenants, Dooley said. Urban renaissance Touring the decrepit North Armory, Dooley giddily points to how sturdily it and the other steel-and-masonry ar- mory buildings were rebuilt by Samuel Colt's widow, Elizabeth Jarvis Colt, after the devastating 1864 fire. The nine-inch- thick reinforced concrete floors; ceilings high enough to accommodate 19th-cen- tury overhead belts and pulleys; and tall, broad windows for lighting the interior. Structurally, nearly every floor, beam and pillar is being incorporated into the remade buildings. On the ground floor of the East Armory, Hartford designer JCJ Archi- tecture occupies space studded with exposed cast-iron beams that support the upper floors. JCJ also white-washed the exposed brick, a nod to the space's gunsmithing days. The Hartford office of U.S. Sen. Christopher Murphy and in- surance-software and services provider Insurity also occupy the East Armory. Colt Gateway's office and apartment rents, Dooley said, are about 20 percent less per square foot than comparable downtown spaces. Currently, CG is talk- ing with three potential office tenants about taking on about 30,000 square feet of space. He declined to name them. Foley Carrier Services moved into Colt Gateway five years ago, said Mike Every, vice president for information technol- ogy and operations. Last fall, it increased its footprint in the South Armory. Preserving History An urbane, $100M visage for Sam Colt's ex-Hartford gun works HBJ PHOTOS | STEVE LASCHEVER

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