Funds In Place For Colt Gateway Project

June 10, 2005
By JEFFREY B. COHEN, Courant Staff Writer

The owners of the historic Colt facility closed on their $28 million mortgage with Sovereign Bank Thursday, bringing construction at the complex's south armory one step closer to reality.

"The paperwork is signed and we're just waiting for the transfer to come in," said Rebekah MacFarlane, director of communications for the Colt Gateway project Thursday.

The bank and the Colt's owners, Homes for America Holdings Inc., announced in late March that they had reached an agreement on the mortgage deal. The $28 million is to be used to renovate the south armory and the east armory - the latter of which is the building visible from I-91 beneath the blue onion dome.

Together, the two Hartford buildings make up more than 70 percent of the remaining unrestored square footage at the complex, Colt officials have said.

Major construction on the south armory will start in about 30 days, MacFarlane said.

The first "draw-down" of the mortgage should be in the bank Friday morning, she said. "A lot of that is being paid to contractors [for work that is already completed], and the remaining is for the construction," she said.

"The whole thing was committed to, but they're not going to borrow the whole thing on day one," said Kevin Flaherty, a market president for Sovereign Bank. "They'll borrow it as they need it."

Colt soon will send notices to tenants in the south armory, letting them know that they will have to vacate their apartments, MacFarlane said. The notices will also inform tenants that they can either occupy one of the new apartments, which will have been completed, or that they can get help from the company in finding a new apartment elsewhere, MacFarlane said.

Upon completion, the two armories will have up to 300 loft apartments and roughly 100,000 square feet of commercial space, Colt officials have said.