CitySeed Starts Pitching HQ/Commercial Kitchen Plan

The state’s top agriculture official walked into an empty Fair Haven factory Monday and reached for his wallet.

Well, metaphorically.

The official, Department of Agriculture Commissioner Bryan Hurlburt, joined other state and local officials for a tour of the former Gant shirt factory and Connecticut Illuminating Factory military ID-badge printing plant at 162 James St. He left committed to returning with financial help.

CitySeed, New Haven’s 20-year-old pioneering grassroots food-justice organization, bought the two-story former factory in March. It plans now to renovate it into headquarters for CitySeed’s farmers market and Sanctuary Kitchen immigrant-culinary program, as well as a planned commercial kitchen/food incubator for emerging small businesses.

State economic development dollars footed much of the building’s $1.385 million purchase price. Now CitySeed will be looking to raise millions more from both the state and federal governments as well as private donors.

CitySeed is preparing a community fund-raising plan and has started obtaining bids from general contractors and working with architects in hopes of beginning reconstruction in mid-2025 and opening the new complex by the end of 2026, according to board Chair Christine Kim.

Hence Monday’s tour, the second such open house showing the space and describing the plan to potential supporters.

Sarah Miller, CitySeed’s new executive director, led dozens of state officials (including Hurlburt and Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz) and state legislators and supporters through the vast empty first floor. Then, out back where CitySeed hopes to partner with Peels on Wheels to create a composting operation in conjunction with the public schools, and upstairs to where commercial kitchens could be located for cooks starting up food enterprises.

“There were over 100 people” working here in the past, Miller, who’s also a Fair Haven alder, told the visitors. ​“They were all working for somebody else in a factory setting. What we want to do here is for them to have tools to work for themselves to make something healthy that enriches our community.”

As he took in the space and heard about CitySeed’s growth plans, Hurlburt told the Independent he definitely plans to seek ways to contribute money from some of his department’s programs to the effort.

At a press conference before the tour, he said CitySeed is pointing the way to ​“future of agriculture in our state”: More places (including cities and indoor facilities) to grow more kinds of food, grown by people from diverse backgrounds, and made into ​“value-added” products that can then be sold and create jobs in the process. (Watch him and others speak in the video above in this story.)

He was talking about participants like Hazel Lebron. She started a restaurant called Madeline’s Empanaderia on Spring Street in the Hill. She changed it to take-out and added a wholesale and catering company called Caribe Soul, from which she produces frozen vegan and vegetarian empanadas that she sells at farmers markets. She added a ​“ghost kitchen” area she rents to other budding food entrepreneurs, working in conjunction with CitySeed until its larger space is finished. She has received grant money and is seeking more to expand the business to sell to grocery stores and develop a meat and poultry line.

“CitySeed is a leader in this space,” Hurlburt said, vowing to ​“see how we can take the lessons from New Haven so we can elevate all corners of the state.” While also helping CitySeed to keep growing from the ideas it planted in the Elm City’s economic soil.