New hearing coming for planned post-COVID distribution center
A trio of developers will meet with city planners next week on their plan to convert half of the sprawling NordenPark complex in Norwalk into a distribution warehouse just off Interstate 95, with the goal of businessto-business deliveries in the Fairfield County area.
Under ownership of Benerofe Properties, Dune and KABR Group, the Norwalk Logistics Center would employ about 100 people.
The city’s Planning and Zoning Department has scheduled an online hearing next Monday at 6 p.m. to gather information on the proposal, including how many vehicles would traverse the neighborhood of East Norwalk to and from I-95.
In a city filing last week, an outside consultant determined the project would increase weekday truck traffic between 3 percent and 7 percent on East Avenue, Route 1, Strawberry Hill Avenue and other nearby roads. But the estimate of 175 truck trips daily would represent far fewer than the car traffic the site would generate as an office or manufacturing center.
In filings with the city, the developers vowed to refrain from converting the site to a last-mile center for deliveries to consumers which would result in a sizable increase in van traffic.
KABR Group’s Adam Altman describes 10 Norden Place as “an unbelievable structure” with an industrial footprint ideal for mushrooming opportunities in product distribution, as the COVID-19 pandemic accelerates a shift to direct deliveries to businesses and homes.
“For us, it was how do we come in and preserve what’s here? How are we going to be able to use it for what it basically was intended to be used?” said Altman, a managing member of KABR which has its main office in Ridgefield Park, N.J. “Most cities in the country would die and go to heaven to have a site like this, that can accommodate so much of what is needed right now. Everyone’s saying, ‘How do we get stuff quicker, faster’ — whether it’s paper towels, vaccines or N-95 masks.”
Amazon has been on the lead on that front, corralling warehouse space in Connecticut as last-mile distribution points to customers, including industrial buildings in Danbury, Orange, Trumbull and Stratford. The company operates larger package sorting and fulfillment centers in North Haven, Wallingford and Windsor.
But despite 10 Norden Place’s size, design and location making it a logical candidate as a logistics center, Amazon has not displayed any interest to date in the facility.
The Norwalk Logistics Center proposal comes on the heels of a Stratford Logistics Center project in the Lordship Boulevard industrial park, at a site once eyed as a film studio.
At 650,000 square feet of space on more than 30 acres of land overlooking Interstate 95, NordenPark has long skewed upward the official vacancy rate for commercial space in Connecticut and Fairfield County. Despite the boom economy leading up to the 2020 pandemic, owner Fortis Property Group has had little success landing major new tenants for the building. An attempt was unsuccessful Monday to reach Fortis managers for comment on the company’s plans for the remaining half of 10 Norden Place.
The Norwalk Logistics Center is being designed by Kenneth Boroson Architects, which has never designed a major warehouse center before, but which otherwise has a number of local projects to its credit including The District in New Haven that is home to several startups.
“From a design standpoint, (they) wanted to maximize the rentable space (and) make sure it is efficient and create a functional, flexible and industrial space by keeping the rhythm of the structure,” Boroson said. “It’s just got to be flexible so it works for whoever the tenant is.”
The Norden Park structure was built in 1960 as a military radar development lab by Norden Systems, owned at the time by the predecessor company of United Technologies. Northrop Grumman acquired Norden in 1996 and operated the plant until 2013.
A Fortis Property Group affiliate spent $87 million for the property in 2005 and continued a redevelopment that had been started by Spinnaker Real Estate Partners, to include offices and for a period a campus of the defunct Gibbs College professional training school. Fortis lost a major tenant in 2015 after the global tour operator Tauck relocated its offices to Wilton, with Pepperidge Farm also having shut down a product innovation center at Norden Park several years ago.
A data center was built adjacent to the main building, with Avalon operating an apartment complex on the opposite side with one-bedroom units renting for $1,700.