From Technology Success To DeveloperAVTECH Leader Found More Than New Home In Warren's Cutler Mill
Written By Chris Barrett, Providence Business News - Vol. 25 Issue 19
In past centuries, workers toiled here making rope and twine, and later linens. Then they produced Matchbox toy cars by the thousands. Later a car dealership arrived but sped away into the history books almost as quickly as it came. Many years and a more than $1 million renovation later, Cutler Mill in Warren hosts technology company AVTECH Software Inc. and retail shops. And it holds a new lease on life.
The four-story red brick mill appears much the same on the outside as it did when retired sea captain Charles Cutler built the structure in 1868 as a home for Cutler Industries. But inside the building AVTECH owner Michael Sigourney removed the pulley systems lingering from another century, sanded and polished the cherry wood floor beaten down by decades of heavy equipment and replaced the air conditioning of prior centuries – open windows – with a state-of-the-art, energy-efficient system.
And although AVTECH moved in during July 2009, it has taken 13 months for Sigourney to feel comfortable about holding an official ribbon cutting, scheduled for Sept. 15.
The devil, of course, was in finalizing the details, and Sigourney is a stickler for them. He wants the carpet perfect, the air conditioning units hidden and the office entrances aligned so employees can shout to each other without leaving their chairs.
Oh, and he wants to be different. Very different. Sigourney threw out almost every traditional way of renovating a roughly 40,000-square-foot mill that has suffered from years of dust collection. He opted for period-correct lamps recovered from a local mill rather than traditional fluorescent lighting. He used doors from a post office as wainscoting in his office and hired people to sit with needle-nosed priors and remove hundreds of tacks from the old doors (used to put posters up). He substituted real plaster for plasterboard in the interior walls. And the employee bathrooms feature church doors and sinks set in wooden cabinets.
Sigourney constructed 22-foot-wide central hallways that resemble something more akin to a large bowling lane than an office. He filled the main hallways and their attached conference areas with heavy wood tables saved from the mill, a couch pulled from the basement of the Hotel Viking in Newport and resembling something found in a 1950s diner and a wood filing cabinet recovered from the bowels of Warren Town Hall.
“We want an environment that’s unique and different where people enjoy coming to work,” Sigourney said.
Sigourney calls employee turnover expensive and said keeping people comfortable keeps them happy and the balance sheet healthy. He is also dressing the building to impress. AVTECH designs and manufactures software and equipment that monitors hundreds of millions of dollars of electronic equipment critical to everything from firing a missile to making a cell phone call. The building must reflect the company’s quest for perfection.
“When they come in, we’re on trial,” Sigourney said. “They’re judging us for our commitment to quality and our attention to detail.”
Sigourney never set out to redevelop one of the Rhode Island’s historic mills. Searching for a place to move the expanding AVTECH he initially settled on the Sheffield School in Newport shut by the city in 2006. But the city wouldn’t sell, and Sigourney wanted his own building after 20 years as a nomad constantly paying to upgrade to larger offices.
In 2008, he took his wife, Anne, to tea at the Basically British Tea Room that sat on the ground floor of a largely vacant, run-down mill in Warren with a for-sale sign out front. Sigourney bit and in December 2008 closed on the mill and its outbuildings for $1.2 million and quickly turned developer.
"Buying the building was basically about us buying a playground that was big enough for us to do what we needed to do,” Sigourney said.
He took over some of the first floor and all of the second and third floors for AVTECH. He set aside the attic – really a fourth floor – for future growth. He met with the tenants, relocated some of them, asked one to leave and swapped the Yoga Loft from the hidden rear of the building to the front. He did it without any tax deals from the town or state.
He spent hours trying to persuade a market to locate in his vacant mill outbuilding after reading a 2007 survey that found Warren residents wanted a grocery store. After facing multiple rejections, he finally persuaded Tom’s Market to open a location.
“I like doing what I think is the right thing for the community,” Sigourney said.
That includes plans to let local nonprofit organizations use a 2,400-square-foot event space for free. Sigourney also talks about letting employees facing tough times convert the room into a wedding hall or the like. And most importantly it allows him flexible space to set up for a meeting with clients without the hassle of renting a hotel or conference center. His go-to caterer is Tom’s Market 50 feet away.
To keep all the meetings, tenants and software progress straight, Sigourney designed himself a seven-room, 2,700-square-foot office with not one but three desks and soon to be a fourth. He splits his time among the desks, playing developer, landlord and software company president. And he says he loves it.
Sigourney is mulling pursuing more development. He has his sights on an apartment building next door to convert to retail on the first floor and office space on the second. Someday he may consider purchasing and rehabbing the mill next door.
“It’s fun, and I think we now know how to do it in a way that makes a high return,” Sigourney said.
In past centuries, workers toiled here making rope and twine, and later linens. Then they produced Matchbox toy cars by the thousands. Later a car dealership arrived but sped away into the history books almost as quickly as it came. Many years and a more than $1 million renovation later, Cutler Mill in Warren hosts technology company 
AVTECH Software, Inc.