Cromwell lays out plans for combined garage, sewer authority
Jeff Mill
CROMWELL — The town is preparing to move forward with a new combined Public Works Department garage and Water Pollution Control Authority headquarters at the end of County Line Drive. It would be paid for by the municipality and WPCA funding.
Town officials outlined the proposal to the council during its regular meeting this week. The council — in a party-line vote of 4-0-3 — approved the plan. Three Democratic members of the council abstained from voting.
Town Engineer Jon Harriman said a preliminary design calls for construction of a 38,732-square-foot, L-shaped, prefabricated metal-sided building on 13.5 acres of town-owned land. The project has an estimated cost of $9.3 million, according to Town Manager Anthony J. Salvatore. In addition to providing a new home for the highway garage and bringing the WPCA into the same building, the proposal will enable the town to “relocate and upgrade the transfer station. We look at this as the coming together of efficiencies and cost reductions of several entities,” Salvatore said.
The proposal is the latest effort on the part of the town to address the need for a new highway garage, something identified and under study since 2004, Harriman said. The existing highway garage is located at the end of Community Field Road adjacent to Pierson Park. Harriman said taken together, the current highway garage and the WPCA facility have a combined total of approximately 20,000 square feet.
The WPCA occupies space in a rented building behind the Police Department parking lot.The existing garage complex “is too small and does not sufficiently meet the needs of the town,” Salvatore said during a joint interview with Harriman Thursday in the manager’s Town Hall office.“Some of the existing buildings are beyond the end of their useful life,” Harriman said, calling attention in particular to “a wooden building that is more than 100 years old.” .
Assuming the project were approved, “we would be relocating the salt storage facility to the new site,” Harriman said.Having won the approval of the council, the project must now go to the Board of Finance for its approval, and then to a town meeting, said Salvatore, who expects to bring the issue before the finance board later this month. No date has been set for the town meeting.
The site adjoins the massive warehouse being built by the Scannell Properties, at the rear of the property facing Interstate 91. The town previously worked a land swap with the company to give Scannell adequate room for construction of the nearly 500,000-square-foot warehouse.
The swap gave the town the additional space necessary to build the garage complex, and was critical for another reason, Salvatore said. “At that time, there was no town-owned land that could fit” the proposed town garage. “Absent that swap, it would have forced the town to look at a piece of land that was on the tax rolls.”If the finance board and the town were to approve the project, it would then need to go before various town agencies — such as the Planning and Zoning Commission — for necessary permits. Harriman estimated that permitting process would take about three months, with construction taking an estimated 15 months.
Salvatore said officials have not yet decided how to finance the project, but the money “will be coming from two sources: the highway department and the WPCA,” he said.
Director of Finance Marianne Sylvester is reviewing data “to determine a proportionate share to be aligned for the WPCA’s use of the facilities and grounds,” Salvatore said.“I’m very happy to see the resolution move forward on the new DPW/Sewer facility. This is a proposal that has been worked on for the past five years, and is a need and not a want. The situation of our current facilities is poor and antiquated. We are very tight for space, and we need a facility that will protect our trucks and all equipment for many years to come,” Mayor Enzo Faienza said.
“Furthermore, our DPW/sewer employees deserve to have a facility that is brought to modern times and technology, for example, with male and female locker rooms, and an area to put cots for long nights when facing various storms. This appropriation will also take care of the state-mandated fixes and upgrades that are required at the transfer station,” Faienza said.
Allan Waters, senior Democrat on the council, described the proposed site as “perfect, because it’s town property.” He is also in favor of building a large enough structure to enable town crews to park many — or most — of the trucks inside. That is not possible at the current site.“I’m in favor of it,” Waters said in a phone conversation Thursday morning. Despite that, however, Waters abstained from the vote Wednesday. “There were so many things on the agenda,” Waters said, he had forgotten how he voted.The other two Democratic councilors are James Demetriades and Myron P. Johnson. Having abstained from voting on approval of the project, the three councilors voted against a motion empowering Faienza to set a date for a town meeting, according to the minutes of Wednesday’s meeting.
In 2014, the town proposed relocating the garage to a site off Evergreen Road, but neighbors complained about truck traffic into and out of the site, and the proposal was rejected during a town meeting.