An illustration that was distributed while the project was under review in Seymour.
SEYMOUR – Nearly two years after getting the green light from the town, construction is expected to begin this spring on a 100,000-square foot storage facility at the former Housatonic Wire Co. property on River Street.
The planning and zoning commission approved the facility in June 2022. The site has been vacant since 2010 when a fire consumed most of the historic building.
“We are in the building design phase, and we anticipate breaking ground when the weather warms up,” said Steve Valentine, a partner with Florida-based Willow Partners Redevelopment.
Willow Partners purchased the 4.5‑acre property at 109 River St. from its former owner, Alex Budzinski, for $1.2 million in March 2023.
Valentine said Willow is planning to invest about $9 million to $10 million into the storage facility. Once construction gets underway this spring, Valentine said it should take around 15 months to complete. The four-story building will be built on just under two acres of the 4.5‑acre site. Each of the four floors would contain individual self-storage units.
Valentine said Willow chose the Seymour location due to its proximity and easy on and off access to nearby Route 8.
“We don’t impact the town at all, people put their stuff in storage with an average stay in storage of approximately three years,” Valentine said. “People aren’t coming and going into the facility daily like a Dunkin Donuts. We require no town resources from police or fire, and there’s no impact to the schools. We are a passive tax base for the town that doesn’t require municipal services.”
An attorney representing the Florida developer, Mark Ziogas, estimated the facility would generate upwards of $315,000 a year in taxes to Seymour’s tax base.
Soil Clean-Up Efforts
Valentine said once the sale of the property was closed last year, efforts got underway to clean the soil. The site was considered a Brownfields site, with contaminants dating back to World War II, according to Budzinski, the former property owner.
“We worked together with Alex and got everything done,” Valentine said. “The site remediation was a lengthy process, and all remediation has now been completed. All contaminants have been removed and we learned it wasn’t as bad as initially anticipated.”
Valentine said the company worked with the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection’s voluntary remediation program to rid the place of contaminated soil.
“It took about six to seven months to remediate the site, do soil tests and have the dirt cleaned and moved to a landfill,” Valentine said, adding the efforts cost about a half million dollars.
Budzinski had tried for more than 14 years to sell the property, with no success, except for some interest from Wendy’s, which never materialized.
