he town council has approved a $1.4 million tax abatement to aid a developer looking to build apartments on the Silas Deane Highway.
The former Fun Zone property at 1178 Silas Deane Highway, which has been vacant for 20 years, was earmarked in the town’s master plan for redevelopment.
“We were looking for a high profile project and this couldn’t be any more high profile,” Town Planner Peter Gillespie said. “It satisfies a housing demand in the community. It takes a blighted property and converts it into a positive, tax generating property.”
The six-year tax abatement was approved 8-0 by the council Monday night, with Councilman Mike Hurley abstaining.With the abatement in place, Lexington Partners LLC will build 111 market rate apartments, plus restaurant space on the first floor. Apartments will range from studios to three-bedroom units.
“The Borden”, as the building will be known, is expected to draw younger residents to Wethersfield and drive up the town’s grand list once the tax abatement period ends.
“When it comes online, it will be in the top five taxpayers in town,” Gillespie said. “It immediately goes to the top.”
During construction, the developer will pay taxes on the property. According to documents filed with the town, Lexington Partners expects to start construction next month.
During public comment before Monday’s town council meeting, many residents expressed approval of the project.
“I’m support of the Borden project and the tax abatement we’re talking about,” resident Steve Walsh said. “At first blush, it doesn’t appear that there’d be an additional cost, it’ll grow the grand list.”Resident Tom Mazzarella, who is running for town council on the Republican slate in November, said he wasn’t sure the town should be forfeiting tax revenue during difficult budget times.
“Can we really afford to give up this kind of revenue when we don’t know if we’ll be able to meet out obligations?” he asked. “I would suggest you reject this proposal and renegotiate a better deal for the Wethersfield residents.” CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Conn. Regulators Probe Gas Price Manipulation Accusations
Connecticut regulators are investigating practices by the state’s two dominant gas and electric utilities following accusations that gas deliveries were manipulated to create shortages, causing higher prices and costing New England electricity consumers $3.6 billion over three years.
The two utilities, Eversource and Avangrid, deny the allegations. An executive of Eversource said the report furthers environmentalists’ efforts to halt gas pipeline construction.
Researchers Levi Marks, Charles F. Mason, Kristina Mohlin and Matthew Zaragoza-Watkins wrote in a 74-page paper that they found “strong evidence” the gas and electricity utilities “regularly restricted capacity to the region by scheduling deliveries without actually flowing gas.”
Marks, Mason and Zaragoza-Watkins are university researchers, and Mohlin is an economist at the Environmental Defense Fund.
They wrote that “unusual scheduling practices” tied up capacity that should have been released or would have otherwise been made available to other shippers.
“Instead, significant quantities of pipeline capacity went unutilized on many of the coldest days of the year, pushing up the price of gas,” they said. “This behavior blocks other firms from utilizing pipeline capacity, which artificially limits gas supply to the region and drives up gas and electricity prices.”
James Daly, vice president of energy supply at Eversource, said the analysis is “completely wrong.”
N. Jonathan Peress, senior director of energy market policy at the Environmental Defense Fund, said the state Public Utilities Regulatory Authority made the right decision to explore the increasing interaction between gas and electricity markets.
Regulators will review the gas supply portfolio and forecasting, deliveries and other practices of Connecticut’s local distribution companies “in the context of the growing dependency of the electric grid on natural gas resources.”
Avangrid said its “obligation and requirement as a regulated local gas distribution company” is to provide a reliable source of gas service to customers during the most extreme weather conditions. It said it has not benefited financially by “any movement in the wholesale electricity pricing market in New England.”State Consumer Counsel Elin Swanson Katz said Tuesday that she will participate in the review.
“While we are generally confident that our markets function as intended, claims of this magnitude must be thoroughly investigated to ensure consumer confidence in the bills they pay,” she said.
The four researchers, discussing gas-price spikes, cited the winter of 2013-14, when temperatures plunged as a result of the so-called “polar vortex,” a blast of Arctic air that drifted south, enveloping the mid-Atlantic and New England states. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE