Even as Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. revealed a newfangled remotely controlled drone helicopter, the giant has quietly leased more than 100,000 square feet of space in Milford as a remote warehouse supporting its Stratford headquarters.
Sikorsky is the largest employer in Fairfield County with more than 9,000 workers in Stratford and satellite buildings in Bridgeport and Shelton. The Shelton property represented Sikorsky”™s most recent off-campus expansion locally, when it leased Dictaphone Corp.”™s onetime headquarters in 2007 as a design center for the CH-53K, a heavy lift helicopter in the works for the Marine Corps.
Sikorsky is also forging ahead with a high-speed helicopter it hopes to sell to the U.S. military and possibly for civilian uses such as medical evacuation.
Sikorsky is now leasing space at 500 Bic Drive in Milford, where Bic Corp. had its U.S. headquarters before relocating to Shelton in 2008. With Milford city officials initially reporting the lease at just more than 50,000 square feet of space, the online trade publication Costar reported that Sikorsky has taken 100,000 square feet in the massive industrial building.
Milford has had success since filling out the property with industrial tenants ”“ a Mount Vernon, N.Y.-based company called Donghia moved its own headquarters there, and other tenants include Subway (the company”™s world headquarters is down the street), 3PL Worldwide, Ebeanstalk and Milford Fabricating, with the last company founded in 1947 by a onetime Sikorsky welder.
If Sikorsky”™s newest facility represents a loss for landlords on the Fairfield County side of the Housatonic River, it nevertheless is a gain for the region in that it reinforces the manufacturer”™s commitment to its Shelton-area headquarters. Until 2011, executives at Sikorsky and parent company United Technologies Corp. bashed Connecticut”™s high costs of doing business and vowed to move work elsewhere. As reported by the Hartford Courant, however, UTC subsidiary Pratt & Whitney recently rehired workers that had been laid off from a Cheshire plant in a labor dispute that sparked a lawsuit. And now Sikorsky needs more space to support its ongoing work in Shelton, even as it contracts an upstate New York plant that custom-fits helicopters for military purposes.
At an August aerospace show in South Korea, Sikorsky showed off a drone it is developing with the Korea Aerospace Research Institute. KARI had originally worked on the HV911 Eagle Eye drone with Bell Helicopter before the latter company ended its work on the drone following flight mishaps, according to FlightGlobal, which first reported Sikorsky”™s involvement in the project. The aircraft features a tilt-rotor design similar to Bell”™s Osprey aircraft.
One of Sikorsky”™s myriad projects involves an attempt to fit its Black Hawk utility helicopter to be flown under remote control.
Sikorsky helicopter aids in David rescue
Former United Technologies Corp. CEO and Avon resident George David was rescued by a Sikorsky-built helicopter, after his racing yacht snapped a keel and capsized in heavy seas during the Fastnet regatta.
A British rescue helicopter plucked David and four crewmembers from the sea, some two-and-a-half hours after they were swept away from the stricken Rambler 100. All crewmembers survived.
Only last year, the British government delayed a multibillion-dollar contract to replace its aging maritime rescue helicopters, with a Sikorsky consortium considered the frontrunner at the time.
