The two-plus-year struggle to put a popular brewery on the site of an abandoned Savinn Rock building has come to an end. New England Brewing Company (NEBCO) has decided to vacate its plans for a facility at the former Savin Rock Conference Center site. NEBCO, meanwhile, will not seek another location in the city, losing a promising development and commercial taxpayer.
The city will go out to bid and request proposals to develop the vacant former Savin Rock Conference Center on the West Haven shoreline, Mayor Dorinda Borer announced.
The city-owned site at 6 Rock St. had been proposed for a taproom for the Woodbridge craft brewery, but a lengthy appeals process initiated by the owners of Jimmies of Savin Rock restaurant was one of the major obstacles in derailing the multimillion-dollar project.
“It is unfortunate that after many meetings and correspondence with the owners of Jimmies, there was no reasonable resolution, and NEBCO has indicated that the lengthy legal journey ahead does not fit into their timeline, nor does changing the footprint, which would eliminate the production component,” Borer said.
The mayor also indicated that while she connected NEBCO to developers interested in buying the 26-acre waterfront site formerly known as The Haven, the brewery indicated that building a brand-new facility does not work into their business model. This is a blow to the administration, which was hoping to keep the new business in town and on the site of Haven, a proposed upscale mall complex that was nixed by its developers more than a year ago.
Borer hopes the new request for proposal will spur interest in the location, which has eluded city officials since it was determined to close the site more than five years ago.
“We can no longer allow this dilapidated, vacant, eyesore conference center to sit on our beautiful shoreline when we know this site is a jewel waiting to be polished,” Borer said. “With its bountiful opportunity and incredible views, I’m confident this site will come back to life, but at the same time, we need to capitalize on the location to drive revenue to our bottom line.”
The mayor said she’s excited to see the various developers’ official proposals for the conference center building, as she has been inundated with interest in recent months.
The city will start requesting bid proposals from interested developers this month and “will work with any successful bidder from Day 1 to ensure the proposal does not run into similar challenges,” Borer said.
To enhance the redevelopment of the 22,000-square-foot conference center building, the mayor said she’s looking to expand parking for the site and has commissioned a traffic feasibility study for parking on Captain Thomas Boulevard, which also was a challenge for previous proposals.
According to city records, the building was originally constructed in 1971 next to the prominent Savin Rock landmark and previously housed Phyllis’ Restaurant, the original tenant, which was part of Restaurant Row in the heyday of Savin Rock amusement park. The Casino and Harbour Mist followed, but none were successful at the location.
It was eventually closed and sat vacant for a number of years until then-Mayor H. Richard Borer Jr. secured three grants — two federal and one state totaling $946,000 — in 1994 to purchase and renovate the building, which reopened in April 1997 as a city-owned banquet and meeting facility.
Through the years, the Savin Rock Conference Center was host to weddings, showers, birthday parties, professional conferences, charitable benefits, plays, concerts and more.
The administration of former Mayor Nancy R. Rossi closed the building in February 2019.
In 2023, NEBCO determined to opt out of the Savin Rock site, and look for other locations that fit it with its business plan. Several weeks after the announcement, a second attempt with pared down specifications was announced, only to have Jimmies, Inc. continue its litigation. That litigation has held up the project, frustrating the developers, and finally causing the company to bail on the project.
Earlier this year, Rock Street was closed to traffic from either the former Conference Center or Jimmies due to the possibility of the roadway being undermined. It was gated two months ago, and there is no word when, the access road will be reopened.