NOV. 2017 $4.95

HartfordMag.com

Wheaton is the executive directorof Billings Forge Community Works,a sprawling network of eateries,gardens, markets and trainingprograms that help Hartfordresidents with barriers toemployment gain job skills and workexperience.

When she was approached in 2006by the Melville Charitable Trust todesign a restaurant that could driveeconomic growth in a neglectedstretch of Hartford, Wheaton hadalready worked in, managed orowned seven restaurants in theBoston area. She had a house, ayoung daughter and co-ownership ofa restaurant in Cambridge, afine-dining spot with a kid-friendlytwist.

But this, she sensed, could be herlife’s work: the chance to marry theactivism of her post-college yearswith decades of restaurantexperience.

“I thought, ‘I have a non-profit sideof my brain. And I have a restaurant,entrepreneurial side of my brain,’”she recalled. “‘So maybe I can bringthese two together.’”

Prior to coming to Hartford,Wheaton had overseen a shared-usekitchen incubator in an old JamaicaPlain brewery. The 4,000-square-footspace was open 24 hours a day to

When a Connecticutcharity asked CaryWheaton to moveto Hartford and

open a restaurant in a formerwrench factory, she gave them ayear. It’s been 11.

“People were frightened by theneighborhood — this is a prettylow-income neighborhood — andthose who were not frightened by theneighborhood were not anybody thatwas going to be an add-on to thecommunity,” she said, adding thatone man pitched her a strip club.

And so she opened Firebox herself,a farm-to-table restaurant in a brickBillings Forge building on BroadStreet. Firebox, which recentlycelebrated its 10th anniversary,employs 40 to 45 people at a time, shesaid, about half of whom live inHartford.

“We really wanted to employ asmany people from the community aswe could,” she said. “We didn’t justopen a restaurant and hireeverybody from West Hartford andAvon.”

The line between revitalizationand gentrification is a thin one, attimes nonexistent. Wheaton said

aspiring chefs and restauranteurswho couldn’t afford the overhead ona kitchen of their own; they’d cook inthe old brewery, and either deliver orsell their food from trucks and carts.

“We had everything frompastry-makers to pickle guys tocaterers — all sorts of folks,” shesaid. “And the idea was they’d have asafe place to make their food. You’dincubate them up and out.”

The Boston Globe wrote a story onthe shared-use kitchen, whichcrossed the desk of the MelvilleCharitable Trust’s then-president.The trust had bought a cluster ofbrick buildings in Hartford that oncehoused Billings & Spencer Co.,toolmakers who’d stood alongsideColt, Pope and Underwood as thecity’s industrial giants. Wheaton saidshe’d find them someone with avision for a bold, socially consciouseatery in Billings Forge.

She tried, and failed, for months.

CARY WHEATONBy MATT ORMSETH

PROFILE

Activism And Acumen At Heart Of Billings Forge Leader’s Success

PATRICK RAYCRAFT

Tamarra Carson spruces up the plants on a Friday afternoon at The Kitchen at BillingsForge on Broad Street in Hartford, where she works as a chef.

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she’s always tried to lift up, andnever price out, local residents,but admits Firebox is “at a pricepoint that is by and large outsidethe range of folks who live in thiscommunity.”

“It’s always a challenge and astruggle,” she said. “But we alsoknew that we would needsomething pretty special to enticepeople to come into thecommunity, and hopefully investin the community.”

Aimee Hendrigan, vicepresident of programs at MelvilleCharitable Trust, said Wheaton’sbusiness acumen has kept BillingsForge solvent, but credits herheart with making it the catapaultinto employment and growth thatit is today.

“She knows how to look at thebottom line, and at the doublebottom line — which is social good

and social justice,” Hendrigansaid.

Once Firebox got going,Wheaton wanted to increaseaccess to healthy and fresh food inthe area surrounding therestaurant — “there isn’t really asupermarket here; people buytheir food at corner markets andbodegas” — and so Billings Forgestarted a year-round farmers’market.

Billings Forge also opened twocafes, one next to Firebox andanother at the Hartford PublicLibrary downtown. The cafesoffer job training for people withbarriers to employment — thehomeless, people just out of jail,kids who didn’t finish school.

Though Wheaton is arestaurateur by trade, BillingsForge’s socially conscious modusoperandi harks back to herpost-college years when sheworked with tenant unions inCambridge in the late ’70s andearly ’80s. As an activist for theanti-poverty program VISTA,Wheaton fought to keepapartments rent-controlled inCambridge’s Summervilleneighborhood. In the end, herefforts and Summerville’slongtime residents were sweptaway in an influx of new money.

“When you talk aboutgentrification, [Summerville] isthe center of gentrification inCambridge,” she said. She went onto work for Boston’s publicschools, and decided she’d go back

MONICA JORGE

Cary Wheatonleverages programsat The Kitchen toequip local residentswith culinaryexperience and jobskills.

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to school and become a childpsychologist.

That decision, strangely enough,was what pitched her into therestaurant world. At 26, she felt tooold to hit her parents up for tuitionmoney, and she started waitressing ata Tex Mex restaurant near TuftsUniversity to save up for school. Butin the meantime, she fell in love withthe culinary world.

“I loved the fact that it was energet-ic, that every day was a new day,” shesaid. “I loved putting on a show, thatit required you to multitask.”

After three months, she was“promoted” to assistant manager.

“I was green enough not to knowthat ‘assistant manager’ is basicallythe job you give to the stupid younggirl who’s going to work four times asmuch as she does as a waitress andmake half as much money,” she said,laughing.

But two months later, she waspromoted again — this time tobonafide manager. That was when

she wondered: Why not open arestaurant of my own? She had a chef— her best friend’s brother had justgraduated from culinary school.

The two opened East Coast Grill afew weeks later. The place servedSouthern barbecue and grilled food,with an open kitchen and wood-firedgrill. Six days after it opened, aBoston Globe critic gave it five stars.

“On Wednesday night we did 28covers. The paper came outThursday, and Thursday night we did228 covers,” Wheaton said. “We wereworking literally all the time.”

Wheaton and her partner lateropened a take-out barbecue spot and afine-dining restaurant, and started ahot sauce and spice rub company. For12 years, she juggled her culinaryportfolio. “And then I said, ‘A familylife would be nice. Or any life besidesthis,” she recalled. And so she adopteda 4-month-old daughter, and took abreak from the culinary world.

She grew restless, though — “I’m notthe stay-at-home type” — and opened

another restaurant with her sister. Shemanaged the place for 10 yearuntil theMelville Trust asked her to come toHartford.

Wheaton grew up in northern NewJersey, and always cut throughHartford on her way to Boston. “Idon’t think I’ve ever stopped here,”she said. “I think I might’ve gone tothe Mark Twain House when I was infourth grade. But I never thoughtthere was any reason to stop here.”

Eleven years later, though, shebelieves this place — Hartford, home— is on the up and up, buoyed by itspeople. Her employees at Firebox andthe Kitchen are driven, industriousand quick to learn, she said. Eighty-five percent of them find jobs aftercycling through Billings Forge’straining programs.

“Our job, my job, is to reach out topeople where they are, and to providethem with tools to succeed — and notto tell people what to do,” she said. “Igive them a tool or teach them a skill,and just get out of the way.”

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