Enfield Development Projects Remain on Track

Community Spotlight

Aaron Marcavitch says Enfield residents tend to take a wait-and-see approach to development, but they’ll soon be seeing some shovels in the ground.

Development projects — whether for much-needed housing, a transportation hub, or the reimagining of a long-dormant retail center — aren’t done in a day, or a year. That’s certainly true in Enfield, Conn., which is looking forward to all of that and more. The good news is, progress in evident across the board.

“Enfield is kind of ‘we’ll believe it when we see it.’ There’s always a little bit of hesitancy to celebrate something until they see a shovel in the ground,” said Aaron Marcavitch, the city’s Economic & Community Development director.

“These projects are either in their permit process, or they’re moving through different gyrations. But the redevelopment of the mall is still moving ahead, the North River Street project is still moving ahead, and the MassMutual site is still moving ahead,” he added, referring to three projects that all involve new residential units. “They’ve not stopped for any reason — they’re just moving through their process.”

“The redevelopment of the mall is still moving ahead, the North River Street project is still moving ahead, and the MassMutual site is still moving ahead.”

In 2024, most of the Enfield Square property — one of the region’s most notable dead malls — was purchased by Woodsonia Acquisitions, which proposed a $250 million project that will feature retail and restaurant businesses and 465 residential units. Site work on what will be called Enfield Marketplace could begin this spring.

Woodsonia will serve as the project’s master developer and seek other developers for the various components. “There’s a set design to the overall layout, and they’ll come in with each piece — the housing piece, the retail piece, the outparcel pieces — over time. So that will take some time,” Marcavitch explained.

“The overall concept has not changed dramatically,” he added. “They did a market study and found that a hotel really wasn’t going to work. So that’s the biggest dropout from the plan. And then they ran into a few issues with agreements that already existed on the property between other tenants that are staying, so that caused them to move the design around a little bit. But the overall concept of a housing component, a retail component, and an outparcel component still remains the same.”

The former MassMutual site on Bright Meadow Road is being redeveloped for hundreds of residential units along with some commercial space.

For this issue’s Community Spotlight, we update not just that project, but several others in various phases of progress, most emphasizing a key priority for many towns these days: new housing.

Home Sweet Home

The wait-and-see mindset of many in Enfield is why Marcavitch is especially excited about a project on North River Street that will add 140 units of housing, perhaps with more to come.

“They’re expecting to put shovels into the ground in quarter one — soon. So people will say, ‘oh, there is actually something happening in Thompsonville right now. People have shovels in the ground.’”

The project is being developed by HGRE Ventures, a partnership between Avon-based Honeycomb Real Estate Partners and GRAVA Properties of West Hartford. HGRE plans a $100 million, two-phase project that could eventually bring more than 300 units to the riverfront section of Thompsonville, near the much larger Bigelow Commons apartment complex.

Meanwhile, South River Realty, which owns a series of parcels on South River Street, has proposed a 160-unit residential building there, while MB Financial Group is looking to develop a 464-unit housing project, with some commercial space, at the former MassMutual site on Bright Meadow Road.

The housing element is especially intriguing at a time when most cities and towns in the region need more of it. At the same time, Enfield officials are eager to see more progress at the train stop project taking shape in the Thompsonville neighborhood, not far from the North River Street development.

The Enfield train station aims to connect the town to Springfield, Hartford, New Haven, and beyond. The $45 million project includes Main Street bridge work and new track, and ties into broader revitalization efforts for the riverfront and other areas of town. The station is expected to be more than a metro stop, bringing locals to work; it will also be a larger Amtrak hub for more distant destinations, while a planned spur off the Windsor Locks stop will bring people to and from Bradley International Airport.

Late in 2023, the Connecticut Department of Transportation attached dates to the project, including the summer of 2024 for the final design to be completed, the winter of 2025 for the construction bid to be awarded, the spring of 2027 for accompanying rail and bridge work to be completed, and the fall of 2027 for completion of the station and platform. But those dates have shifted — more than once.

“We had some recent meetings with the folks at DOT. And the train station is still on track — those are the only words that ever come to my head when I think of it,” Marcavitch said with a laugh. “They were saying maybe the end of ’28, but now they’re somewhere in ’29 for being finished.

“I don’t think we were surprised by that in any way; that’s sort of standard for these types of projects,” he added. “Seeing how long it’s taken to finish the Windsor Locks station, I have a feeling it may even shift another couple of months, but that’s just the way it goes.”

A few components have added to the complexity, including creating a service road from Route 5 to the station, determining a new spot for commuter bus service, and altering an undersized Main Street underpass at the train station, Marcavitch explained.

“But it’s continued to move. They’re done with their design process, and they hope to go out to bid sometime soon for the construction part of this. So in theory, we’re going to see shovels in the ground sometime in 2026.”

He said the combination of more public transit and more housing should create more mobility and economic opportunities for people in town. “People who may be working in Hartford, or working in Springfield, and taking the train to those locations — they’re not going to need a vehicle as much. Maybe they only need one car; maybe one person is working from home, and the other person is taking the train.

“So it’s going to be important for us to not only have that, but then also have our own local bus connections that somebody could pick up at the train station and take to the mall, take to Costco. And we have to work on our bike connections so that people can use their bikes to do that. We want to try to reduce car dependency for folks who live in that area,” he added. “It really is going to be beneficial in that way. Once we start to get some momentum, that’ll be really good.”

Setting Down Roots

The town has been making progress on other fronts as well, from an Amazon distribution facility moving ahead on Bacon Road to continued streetscaping in North Thompsonville.

Efforts like the latter, Marcavitch said, “aren’t huge projects, but they’re really going to impact how people perceive Enfield as a place they want to bring their business to. And we’re going to continue to work with commercial retail and food options in town to make sure we’re bringing in stuff that people in the town want.

“We’re very driven, in many ways, by the traffic on 91, where people are coming off the highway, grab food quickly, and jump back on the highway and head off to Vermont or wherever they’re going,” he noted. “We tend to be a very good rest stop in that way, but we also want to make sure we’ve got diverse retail and diverse food options for people in town.”

He said town officials appreciate that travelers and residents of local communities are coming to Enfield to use its services and enjoy its restaurant and shopping offerings. But he wants it to be seen as more than a drive-through community; after all, more than 42,000 people live there.

“If we’re going to have businesses moving in, we need to make sure that they’ve got the services and the experiences they need to stay. We want to keep them here. We’re going have new people moving into the community with these apartments. What kind of activities are there for them? So I think the natural next step is a big conversation about that. We’ve got to make sure we’ve got community amenities.”