The Lee Company opens Innovation Center

The Lee Company announces the opening of its new Innovation Center, a 27,500 square foot facility built to accelerate product development and reinforce the company’s continued commitment to innovation in miniature.

The building marks a major milestone in the company’s history, creating a modern environment where engineering teams can rapidly explore new application spaces, prototype advanced solutions, and respond to evolving customer needs across key markets.

“Today, we aren’t just opening the doors to a new building – we are officially launching the next chapter of a story that began over 75 years ago at my grandfather’s kitchen table,” said Marietta S. Lee, president and CEO. “The Innovation Center is a direct descendant of his curious spirit, giving us the tools and freedom to pursue bold ideas that matter to our customers.”

Inspired by The Lee Company’s founding focus on solving meaningful problems with excellence, the Innovation Center brings engineers together in an open workspace with integrated labs that help transform ideas into action. At its core is a fully equipped machine shop built for rapid, precision fabrication. The facility also offers high resolution additive manufacturing, with additional lab infrastructure planned to support advanced testing, automation, and system‑level experimentation.

"This facility is a world-class engineering playground that allows us to simulate real customer environments in-house and develop a deeper understanding of the problems they're trying to solve," said Thomas Frosell, vice president of Innovation. "We have the tools, the team, and the environment needed for success – enabling us to move faster, accelerate our learning, and design solutions that are aligned with where our customers are headed."

The building itself was designed with these goals in mind: a vibrant, light-filled space where innovation can truly thrive. “We Lees, we’re all dreamers,” said William W. Lee, chairman of the Board of Directors. “This building reflects that vision, helping to fuel the next generation of growth and progress our parts into the future.”

A ribbon cutting ceremony held on March 3 brought together company leadership, employees, representatives from local government and the Connecticut Business and Industry Association, project design and construction partners, and members of the media to mark the beginning of a new era in the company’s history.

The Lee Company makes miniature precision fluid control products for aerospace and defense, automotive, diagnostics, industrial and off-highway, medical equipment, scientific instruments, motorsports, oil and gas, power generation, and many others. Founded in 1948, the company has more than 1,100 employees and occupies over 1.2 million square feet of manufacturing space in Westbrook and Essex, Connecticut.