Montgomery Mill is the adaptive use of a historic, long-vacant mill building in downtown Windsor Locks, Connecticut, that has been transformed into 160 units of mixed-income housing. The project required a complex financing structure involving multiple public and private sources and creative design solutions to restore a dilapidated, highly visible historic building. Its location offers an exceptional transit-oriented development opportunity and its transformation is the catalyst to a broader revitalization effort in the downtown area.

Windsor Locks is a formerly industrial town between Hartford, Connecticut, and Springfield, Massachusetts. The Montgomery Mill building stands at the gateway to Windsor Locks, with the Connecticut River to its east and Main Street to its west. The surrounding neighborhood is a mix of residential, industrial, and limited commercial activity. Those entering the town are immediately greeted by the historic mill, which for years sat vacant and deteriorating. For the last several years, the town of Windsor Locks had been working toward a revitalization of downtown and recognized that Montgomery Mill was the first key piece in those efforts. The transformation of this defining, blighted building in the downtown area was the catalytic event in bringing new life to Main Street.

The main structure consists of three adjoining five-story red brick and reinforced-concrete buildings, the oldest portion of which was built in 1891. A second red brick portion was erected in 1904, and a concrete addition was completed at the complex in 1920. As a whole, the residential building measures about 225,000 square feet (21,000 sq m). The property is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and received both federal and state historic tax credits. All rehabilitation work was done in keeping with the Secretary of the Interior’s standards and strove to maintain the historic character of the buildings. Original historic features were maintained to the extent possible, and the design team incorporated additional historic artifacts and information about the mill’s history into the project.

The building was transformed into 160 mixed-income apartments and also contains a property management office, two community rooms, a fitness center, a pet washing station, resident storage space, and bicycle storage.

Because the project is located in a floodplain, the site needed to be configured so that sufficient parking was available outside of the floodplain area, and a pedestrian walkway was designed to provide emergency access in and out of the site in case of a flood or other emergency. All residential units and mechanical systems were built outside of the 500-year floodplain, and any functional uses in the basement within the floodplain were designed to withstand floodwaters.

The town’s support and vision for this site were critical aspects in making this project successful. The town’s advocacy fostered local support and made for a smooth permitting and zoning process. They also provided financial support by minimizing sewer connection fees, creating a tax increment financing district that allowed for additional debt, and served as a nonprofit recipient of project-specific state funds that were then lent to the project.

The state of Connecticut also was critical in the project’s success. The project meets many of the state’s priorities: the property is a transit-oriented development, located on the town’s main street and adjacent to a planned train station that will provide commuter services to Hartford, New Haven, and other regional destinations. The mill is an integral part of the master-planning efforts associated with the train station, which also include a pedestrian walkway over the existing bridge and a multiuse trail. The site project reused an existing structure and remediated a brownfield site (and allowed for the use of state brownfield funds). The property also scored highly on the state’s metric measuring “opportunity characteristics” of a municipality based on its school districts, jobs-to-population ratio, and low poverty rate.

Location: Windsor Locks, Connecticut
Developer: Beacon Communities LLC