Be a part of Preservation Connecticut's effort to help communities in need.
Through tax credit assistance, we are helping turn a once thriving mill back into essential space for the community.
Preservation Connecticut staff provide historic tax credit assistance to the owner of the Hilliard Mills complex in Manchester enabling him to rehabilitate and return to productive use several buildings in succession. The project is an example of the incentive’s versatility in encouraging not only large-scale conversions by developers with complicated funding stacks, but also small-scale adaptive reuse in stages with more streamlined budgets.
The E. E. Hilliard Co. and its predecessors manufactured woolens along the Bigelow Brook for well over a century until 1940. The State Register listed factory complex today reflects both the evolution of operations and changes in building technologies across seven free-standing and interconnected buildings with seven different dates of construction.
Over time and under different owners, some of the buildings were used, others neglected, and the original property was divided into two parcels. By 2009, Hilliard Mills LLC had acquired the entire site. Under the leadership of Peter Bonzani, whose passion for history, engineering and architecture has informed his decisions, the buildings are being rehabbed one by one to create a vibrant mixed-use community with offices, music studios, artists, small businesses, and a brewery.
Since 2019, the Preservation Connecticut fee for service team has been assisting Mr. Bonzani with the Connecticut historic tax credit application process. The first application, for rehab of the former dye house into an event space, has been approved and the tax credit voucher was issued in December 2022. The photos above and to the right show this building at various stages of completion. Find out more about the building’s use here. The incentive provides an important source of capital toward rehab work on three other buildings at the site for which tax credit applications are in various stages of completion.
