The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Swift Factory business incubator gets fed grant
The Swift Factory closed its doors permanently in 2005. The former factory was donated in 2010 to Community Solutions.
HARTFORD — A local business incubator will use $3.7 million from the American Rescue Plan to develop a workforce training center and support program for its tenants, according to an official with the non-profit that operates the facility out of a former gold leafing factory in the city’s North End.
The business incubator has been in operation for about a year in the 65,000square-foot Swift Factory, according to John Thomas, assistant project manager who is in charge of community engagement and social media for Community Solutions. Members of Connecticut’s federal delegation visited the business incubator this week to celebrate the grant.
“In the short time we have been operating, we have been able to secure nearly full tenancy,” Thomas said. “This funding will allow us to expand our footprint for our tenants. It also allows us to fill those remaining spaces as well as increase commerce and business in the community.”
Some of the money will be used to fund the training center, which will be run through the Hartford Public Library’s newest branch, which was launched in March in the business incubator, according to city officials. When its expansion is completed later this year, the 15,000square-foot branch will have space for library services as well as an innovative learning center.
Among the workforcerelated services the branch will offer are entrepreneurial classes as well as technical workforce and technology training.
“Swift Factory has once again become a job-creator and economic engine in North Hartford,” Mayor Luke Bronin said in a statement. “This new EDA grant will allow us to build on that momentum and double-down on the efforts to support local entrepreneurs and jobseekers in North Hartford.”
Thomas said the business incubator has about a dozen tenants, including Harriott Home Health Care that has already expanded twice within the business incubator. Another tenant operates a “ghost kitchen,” which is a professional food preparation and cooking facility that is created to make deliveryonly meals.
Before the business incubator opened, Thomas said Community Solutions officials “went around and asked people what the thought the neighborhood needed.”
Thomas said the training program will used to help train workers for tenants who are expanding their operations as well teaching members of the North End community the basics of what it takes to get a business off the ground.
“I always like to tell people that if you dream it, you can do it,” said Thomas, who is a Hartford native and a former Marine. “This community has been inundated with services and entitlement programs for a generation. But true communities are built around businesses and this is a way that people in our community can see people who look like themselves running businesses.”
The Swift Factory closed its doors permanently in 2005. The former factory was donated in 2010 to Community Solutions, a national, nonprofit organization focused on ending homelessness and the conditions that create it, began a fundraising effort to renovate the building, which cost $34 million to complete.
“This federal grant to spur minority-owned business growth and train workers is a force multiplier for economic growth in this neighborhood, community and greater Hartford area,” U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said in a statement.
U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said the Swift Factory “could have become a post-industrial wasteland when it was abandoned, but thanks to federal funding, it is turning into a vibrant hub for nonprofits, schools, and minority- and womenowned businesses in the North End of Hartford.”
“This infusion of almost $4 million from the American Rescue Plan will help bring in even more tenants, create new jobs, and provide a major boost to local economy,” Murphy said.
U.S. Rep. John B. Larson, D-1st District, said money from the American Rescue Plan “was designed to spur job growth in communities that were hit hardest by this pandemic.”
Bridget Quinn, president and chief executive officer of the Hartford Public Library, said the federal money is “crucial to achieving our goal of creating a space where North Hartford residents of all ages can have access to life-changing educational and job training opportunities.”