Edited 6/29/26: This story has been edited to remove outdated and conflicting information.

With the unanimous approval of the leases between the town and Winn Development for Shelton House, the town has made yet another gradual step towards getting a decaying Fairfield Hills campus building off of the list of town property and onto the tax rolls.

These are buildings that have been falling further and further into disrepair for decades, targeted by vandals and broken into by people hoping to see ghosts because of unsubstantiated rumors of hauntings, and may eventually degrade to the point where there is no hope of renovation.

While there may be concerns about the eventual final project, those concerns are for the future and outside of the purview of the council's approval of the lease.

The lease mainly just gives the developer the right to enter the property for various inspections that need to be done by any prospective property owner, for insurance and financing purposes as well as their own protection as a buyer. While it is known there are substances like asbestos on the property that need to be abated, it would be important for the buyer to know if there are other hazardous materials or unforeseen structural problems with the building.

But for now, the lease approval is a win, not just for Winn, but for the town. No one wants to demolish those old historic buildings if it can be avoided — preserving them in a way that keeps their historic facade, which is a Winn Development specialty, as they have a past history of developing abandoned skills into repurposed residential or mixed use commercial and residential buildings, is the goal. The repurposed buildings keep the original facade, and often interior things such as lockers at a school for historic presentation, working those items into a broader functional use for the building.

The company completed its most recent adaptive reuse project in Connecticut in 2020, when it transformed the former East Haven High School building into mixed-income housing — an effort that earned multiple national awards for development, environmental sustainability, and community impact.