Walk along Depot Street in Collinsville today and you will pass Bridge Street Rustics, one of roughly 50 small businesses tucked into the old Collins Company Axe Factory complex, a 19.3-acre run of brick, clapboard, and stone mill buildings pressed against the Farmington River. Some of the buildings are condemned. Parts don't meet current code. And yet plan after plan for this site has come and gone without a shovel in the ground.
That history matters if you're looking at homes in Collinsville right now, because it explains something the median price can't: why a project this visible hasn't moved the neighborhood's pricing yet. The answer isn't that buyers don't know about it. It's that every previous version of this deal has collapsed, and the reason the current one hasn't is structural, not cosmetic.
A Site That Has Eaten a Dozen Plans
The Collins Company opened here in 1826 making axes and edge tools, grew into an international operation, and built the housing, church, and bank that became the village of Collinsville. The Flood of 1955 damaged the complex badly enough that it never fully recovered, and the factory closed for good in 1966. It landed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976. Since then it has passed through a handful of owners who leased space to artists, craftspeople, and light manufacturers while the buildings aged around them. As of 2021, Canton town officials counted roughly a dozen redevelopment proposals for the site over the preceding 25 years, and not one of them had broken ground.
The most recent serious attempt before this one came in 2021, when New York developer Ranger Properties pitched a roughly $50 to $60 million plan for about 200 apartments plus retail, with the firm's Sheldon Stein presenting to the Board of Selectmen and hoping to close on the property and start construction the following year. It didn't happen. According to Hartford Business Journal, the developer backed out after a neighbor filed a lawsuit.
That pattern, a promising pitch followed by a stall, is why longtime residents around Canton tend to shrug at Axe Factory news. They've heard it before.
What Actually Changed in October 2024
What makes the current attempt worth tracking isn't the size of the plan. It's who is behind it and what they've already gotten approved.
Collinsville Redevelopment Company is run by sisters Lisa and Merritt Tilney, whose father Rusty Tilney has owned the complex since 2002. Their plan, filed first with the Inland Wetland Commission and then brought before the Canton Planning and Zoning Commission, calls for renovating roughly 24 of the 28 buildings, demolishing four, and constructing three new residential buildings alongside a conversion of the historic Granite Building, adding up to as many as 290 housing units across the site along with retail, office, and light industrial space, according to the October 2024 filing reported by Valley Life Extra.
On October 16, 2024, the Planning and Zoning Commission unanimously approved the site plan. That's a milestone none of the earlier proposals reached. Lisa and Merritt Tilney called it out directly in a statement the following day:
"We are buoyed by last night's unanimous vote by the Canton Planning & Zoning Commission that our site work plans conform with the town's land use regulations... The revitalization of this property has been long awaited here in Canton, and this is another important step in what will be a long process and ongoing local and state review."
The state has also put real money behind the site. In December 2024, Governor Ned Lamont announced $20 million in brownfield remediation grants across 21 properties statewide, with $200,000 earmarked specifically for the Collinsville Axe Factory to fund an environmental assessment, remedial action plan, and infrastructure needs study, according to a report from Patch. A separate GZA Environmental report estimated the actual remediation cost, covering roughly 10,000 cubic yards of contaminated soil, at $2.2 to $3.4 million.
The Part the Renderings Don't Show You
Here's the mechanism worth understanding if you're weighing a purchase near this site. Every prior attempt required an outside developer to line up financing and, in most structures, close on the purchase before or during the years-long approval process. That exposed the deal to exactly the kind of risk that killed the Ranger Properties plan: a single neighbor lawsuit was enough to make the numbers stop working for an outside buyer with capital on the line.
The Tilney sisters aren't in that position. Hartford Business Journal reported that they hold an option to purchase the property contingent on necessary approvals, meaning they can spend years grinding through wetlands review, zoning hearings, and brownfield remediation planning without committing to close until the regulatory path is actually clear. Their father already owns the site. There's no outside capital sitting exposed to a stall.
That's a genuinely different risk profile than the one every earlier proposal operated under, and it's a reasonable explanation for why this attempt reached a unanimous zoning vote when a dozen others didn't get that far. It doesn't guarantee the project finishes. It does mean the biggest single point of failure in the last serious attempt, financial exposure to litigation risk, isn't built into this one the same way.
What the Timeline Actually Means If You're Buying Near It
None of this means Collinsville is about to look different next year. Based on the developers' own estimates reported by Hartford Business Journal, the realistic sequence looks something like this:
- Remediation begins, potentially sometime this year, pending final grant funding and approvals.
- Remediation runs 14 to 18 months.
- Construction follows, phased across the 28 buildings, and is expected to take another 6 to 8 years.
Run that math forward from today and a full build-out lands somewhere around 2033 to 2035, not next spring. The project is also designed to happen in phases, with the stated goal of keeping current tenants like Bridge Street Rustics in place as long as possible, so this isn't a single demolition event. It's a slow trade of construction disruption for amenity upside, building by building, likely stretching across most of a decade.
That has a direct implication for anyone comparing listings near Main Street and the river to homes elsewhere in Canton or the broader Farmington Valley. A listing that leans on "future retail district" or "next to a major redevelopment" language is describing something real, but it's describing a decade-long process, not a finished neighborhood. If you're buying for the next three to five years, you're more likely to experience the early remediation and construction phase than the payoff. If you're buying for the long hold, this is one of the few visible catalysts in the region with an actual regulatory record behind it rather than just a rendering.
Not everyone in Collinsville was rooting purely for scale. Back in 2021, when the Ranger Properties plan was on the table, Bridge Street Rustics owner Chris Corso told NBC Connecticut he'd rather see a mix that kept more small shops than the apartment-heavy version on offer at the time. Canton's then First Selectman Bob Bessell struck a bigger-picture tone in that same 2021 coverage, calling the site a potential regional draw. That tension between village-scale character and regional-scale redevelopment is worth watching as the current plan moves through its remaining approvals, especially if you care about what Collinsville feels like ten years from now, not just what it's worth.
What This Means at the Table
If you're evaluating a home near the Axe Factory site, ask your agent or attorney to check the status of pending applications with the Town of Canton directly rather than relying on the last news cycle. A unanimous zoning vote is a real signal, but remediation funding, state grant timing, and further approvals can still shift the calendar. Price the property for what it is today, a village with genuine character and a real river, not for a finished redevelopment that is realistically years away.
If you're a seller near the site, the same history cuts the other way. A dozen failed proposals mean buyers have learned to discount Axe Factory hype, so don't lean on it as a selling point without being specific about the actual milestone, the October 2024 approval, and honest about the timeline.
FAQ
When could construction on the Axe Factory site actually begin? Based on the developers' own estimates, remediation could start sometime this year and take 14 to 18 months, with construction following for another 6 to 8 years, putting a realistic completion window somewhere around 2033 to 2035.
Will the small businesses currently on site, like Bridge Street Rustics, have to leave right away? The stated plan is to redevelop in phases and keep current tenants in place as long as possible rather than clearing the site all at once.
Does this project affect areas beyond the factory site itself? The approved plan is centered on the 19.3-acre parcel at 10 Depot Street, though the stated goal includes strengthening the connection to Collinsville's Main Street and the Farmington River.
Should I wait to buy in Collinsville until the redevelopment is finished? That depends on your time horizon. Given a realistic multi-year construction timeline, buyers planning to hold for a decade or more are better positioned to see the eventual upside than buyers expecting a quick turnaround.
If you're weighing a purchase or sale near Collinsville and want a read on how this specific project, and the broader Canton market, should factor into your pricing and timing, Laurie Kane Real Estate can walk through the current picture with you, from what's actually been approved to what a realistic value range looks like on your street today.
