Fresh Start - Building Furniture, Rebuilding Lives

Fresh Start teams up with Community Solutions To Create Furnishings for the Swift Factory

It certainly was exciting when Patrick McKenna, Senior Project Manager for Community Solutions and licensed architect reached out to Anne O’Brien and Rich Carman from Fresh Start to build furnishings for this exciting, landmark project, the Swift Factory property conversion.

Working closely with Patrick’s team, the Fresh Start crew designed custom conference tables, dining tables, coffee tables and an impressive reception desk. These furniture designs incorporated the old wooden timbers found during the factory’s renovation as well as parts from the gold plating machinery. This afforded a creative way to have the history of the building to be usefully on display, a story that The Swift Factory intended to preserve. When the exterior courtyard was being built, McKenna ordered some Fresh Start comfort chairs and benches for its delightful atrium garden that allows tenants to relax & enjoy a meal in comfort. 

The Swift Factory, once the largest gold leafing manufacturer in the country and part of the City’s economic heart employing over 300 residents, fell to the late 20th century industrial decline. Closing in 2005, the 100 plus-year-old site sat vacant, facing demolition. The local NRZ community group with Hartford Preservation Alliance rallied to save the buildings. The Swift Family donated the entire campus to Community Solutions in 2010, which was later added to the National Register of Historic Places.

After an extensive community engagement, Community Solutions has now achieved its goal of transforming the Swift Factory into a multi-purpose community and entrepreneurial hub. 

Given our strategic goal to find community based human service partners we are proud to find another organization in our neighborhood that exemplifies how working together can make a difference in changing lives and improving disadvantaged communities.