Build-build-builder Carter Winstanley (center) with Mayor Elicker on Thursday. Credit: Thomas Breen photos
Unilever USA President Herrish Patel: “When something works here and it resonates with American consumers,” it will soon be adopted around the world.
The site of the future Unilever Global Innovation Center.
(Updated) The multinational beauty-food-healthcare-products giant Unilever plans to invest $270 million in opening a new R&D center downtown — at the next lab-office building to be constructed atop the former Rt. 34 corridor.
Gov. Ned Lamont, Mayor Justin Elicker, U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, and a host of city and state officials, business boosters, and Unilever executives gathered at 1 p.m. to celebrate the announcement.
The presser took place at 101 College St., the new 10-story, 500,000 square-foot life science research and office building that opened in 2024 — right across the street from 100 College St., a 14-story lab-office building that opened in 2016.
Both 100 and 101 College were constructed by Winstanley Enterprises on vacant land where a mini-highway was planned but never finished.
Winstanley plans to build a third lab-office building — to be located at 2 Church St. — on a vacant stretch of publicly owned grassy land between Temple Street and Church Street. It is in this planned new building at 2 Church St. that Unilever, which is headquartered in London, will open its new “Global Innovation Center.” (Click here to read a September 2025 article in the Independent previewing the development of that new lab-office building.)
Unilever’s new New Haven hub will bring 300 jobs to the city — “scientists, engineers, researchers will come here,” Unilever USA President Herrish Patel said.
The 2 Church St. center will be “a leading hub for R&D for Unilever’s personal care, beauty and wellbeing businesses in the U.S. and globally,” according to a fact sheet distributed by Unilever.
Some of Unilever’s globe-inundating products include Dove soap and Vaseline. “Both of these are monstrous brands that are growing double digit,” Patel said. Speakers at Thursday’s presser repeatedly stated that 95 percent of U.S. households use Unilever products.
According to Unilever’s fact sheet, the 2 Church St. “Global Innovation Center” will host a “global center for skin care and cleansing,” a “polycultural skin and hair center of excellence,” a “packaging innovation studio,” a “Unilever Fragrance House,” and a “Human performance lab, generating unprecedented new data and insights into human physiology, enabling on-site testing of ingestibles, and accelerating growth across Unilever’s wellbeing brands.”
Speakers at Thursday’s presser touted Unilever’s continued innovation at the intersection of “science, desire, and culture,” as company R&D head Leo Aquino put it.
“Beauty is becoming a wellbeing business. Personal care is becoming a beauty business,” said Unilever Chief Research & Development Officer Richard Slater.
Developer Carter Winstanley told the Independent that construction of the new 2 Church St. building could begin early next year, and should take 24 months to complete. The building is currently designed to be four stories tall and at least 200,000 square-feet large. Unilever plans to move in by the spring of 2029.
Unilever isn’t the only tenant to have lined up space at this planned new 2 Church St. building. Quantum CT, a state-backed nonprofit focused on supporting the quantum-computing industry in Connecticut, will also rent space in the building.
The Wall Street Journal broke the news of Unilever’s planned move to New Haven in an article published at 9:30 a.m. Thursday.
This article was updated at 3:10 p.m.
At Thursday’s presser at 101 College St.
U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro: This represents “the single largest U.S. R&D investment in 40 years.”
City Economic Development Administrator Mike Piscitelli (right).
Pizza at the ready for 101 College St. presser attendees.
Consume or be consumed: Unilever goodie bags at Thursday’s event.
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