The city has seen a spur of development, even as a handful of long-standing businesses closed their doors for the last time.
Justin Malley, executive direc-tor of the Bristol Development Authority, said that Amazon opening its delivery station at 71 Horizon Drive in August was one of the most high-pro-file gains for the city. Mayor Ellen Zoppo-Sassu agreed, but said that this was not the only progress the city made. She compared the city’s strategy to “connecting the dots.”
“There is a lot of work being done with percolating business-es on the cusp of expansion, providing them with equipment grants,” said Zoppo-Sassu.
Curtis Products and Winchester Industrial Controls are two manufacturers that relocated to Bristol’s industrial park and expanded, both hiring or several new positions.
Zoppo-Sassu also celebrated the recent sale of Parcel 10 of Centre Square, on the Main Street side of the former mall site in what is now the city’s temporary parking lot. Developers Wesley Cyr of Harwinton and Oliver Wilson of Westport have said in their letter of intent that they will have a mixed-use building with commercial space on the ground floor and 12 to 15 “estimate market rate apartments” on upper floors.
“This is a reaction to what Bristol Hospital is doing,” said Zoppo-Sassu. “It is a physical rep-resentation of what is happening downtown and other people have also expressed interest, though they aren’t as far along. We have seven remaining parcels, which will be a topic of more sophisticated discussion in 2019.
”Malley said that the sale of Parcel 10 is a sign that Bristol “does it right.”
“The word is getting out that we have these development projects and if people are relocating to Bristol we must be doing some-thing right,” he said. “This breeds interest from other developers.”