Emilie Munson
The sun beat down on the tiny West Haven toll booth, where 19-year-old Martin Looney leaned out to collect coins and toll tickets from cars and trucks cruising down Interstate 95.
The year was 1967, and the work was hot and monotonous for the young university student. But 52 years later, the state’s lead senator is drawing inspiration for a trucks only tolling plan from his summer in the toll booth to advance a stalled policy.
In discussions with Gov. Ned Lamont and legislative leaders, Looney, the Senate president pro tempore, is pressing for a limited tolling plan and more state bonding to fund improvements to the state’s highways, bridges and rails. As they pursue a proposal that can pass the General Assembly, Looney believes his experience as a toll taker highlights the precedent that Connecticut might need to toll freight trucks, but not passenger cars.
“Different rates were charged at different toll stations on a per axle basis for trucks,” said Looney, a New Haven Democrat. “Three axle trucks were charged less than four axle trucks and the rate was different in West Haven than it was in Branford to the east and Stratford to the west.”
Lamont, who supported trucks-only tolling during his campaign for governor, dismissed the idea on Monday.
“I’m afraid we’ve checked that out with [Secretary] Elaine Chao who runs transportation for the Trump administration and she said trucks only doesn’t work unless you’re rebuilding a bridge from scratch,” Lamont said. “She was pretty firm on trucks only and the ability to do it.”
In contrast, House Speaker Joe Aresimowicz, D-Berlin, said he viewed trucks only tolls as an option, although he was not sure “where we will eventually land.”
“Whether it is project-specific tolling, truck tolling, I am open to any of it,” Aresimowicz said. “If we don’t do something, unfortunately we’re going to have a tragedy here in the state of Connecticut and we’ll only have our selves to blame.”
Toll precedence
Rhode Island is the only U.S. state that only tolls trucks, not passenger cars, for the purposes of rebuilding bridges on its interstate, said Bill Cramer, communications director for the International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Association, which represents the toll industry.
“They do it in Rhode Island because Rhode Island 95 is one long bridge,” Lamont said. “That’s not the case here in Connecticut. We’d only be able to do it on a limited number of bridges and [the Federal Highway Administration] wouldn’t allow it otherwise.”
In March, a federal court judge dismissed the case on the grounds that it should be heard by the state courts of Rhode Island. The trucking groups have appealed the ruling and oral arguments in the appeal will be heard in September.
Lamont and lawmakers are keen to avoid the litigation embroiling Rhode Island’s tolling plan.
“I would love to find a way to do truck only tolling that would not be seen as invalid by the Federal Transportation Department or vulnerable in a lawsuit,” Looney said.
Looney, a general practice lawyer, says Connecticut’s practice of tolling trucks at different rates, when the state had tolls from the 1950s to 1985, may give the state the basis for singling out trucks for tolls.
“We do have a precedent for charging trucks different rates based on their number of axles,” said Looney. “They were charged at a higher rate than others.”
Connecticut had eight toll stations on I-95 and Route 52 from Greenwich to Plainfield, as well as three toll stations on the Merritt and Wilbur Cross Parkways and tolls on several bridges around Connecticut. In 1967, cars paid 25 cents at the West Haven toll station or frequent commuters could purchase a ticket book that allowed them to pass at a cheaper rate, Looney remembered.
Toll collection ended on I-95 on October 9, 1985. An effort to remove tolls from Connecticut roads brewed in the early 1980s, but it was not until a fiery crash in 1983 at a Stratford toll booth that killed seven people that then-Gov. William O’Neill joined the effort to remove the booths, said Judd Everhart, spokesman for the Connecticut Department of Transportation. That same year, the state entered an agreement with the federal government to remove its tolls in exchange for qualifying for federal funding for resurfacing, reconstruction and restoration of the roads.
Conversations about restoring tolls have revived over the past decade or so, after the federal government carved out several exceptions permitting their use. Looney has been part of many of these conversations since his election to the General Assembly in 1980.
Tolls are a top priority of Lamont, a first-term Democrat. He supported a plan to put a maximum of 50 tolls on I-95, 94 and 85 and the Merritt Parkway, with discounts for Connecticut residents and commuters.
But that plan could not win legislative approval before lawmakers adjourned in June, so the governor and legislative leaders have gone back to the drawing board this summer to craft a new plan. In addition to some form of trucks only tolling, the leaders are discussing project-specific tolling: installing tolls on select bridges in poor condition to fund their rehabilitation. This idea is also recycled from earlier debates on tolls.
Bonding gridlocked, too
Lawmakers originally planned to vote on a state bond package Monday, but the debate over tolls has swallowed that legislation, too, as lawmakers debate how much bond money to put toward transportation. Republicans, who strongly oppose tolls, support funding transportation improvements almost entirely through bonding in a proposal named Prioritize Progress.
Holding out hope for some bipartisan support, Democrats are pursuing a modest transportation bond allocation, paired with a limited toll scheme. But they disagree with the governor on how much to devote to bonding overall, citing worries that municipal projects will go unfunded if the state does not support them.
“The issue now has become part of the discussion on the overall transportation initiative, including whatever we may do on tolls initially, because of the governor’s proposal to take $100 million in general obligation bonding in each year of the biennium and devote that to transportation,” Looney said. “While the administration agreed they would be willing to accept an authorization level in the statute of $1.3 billion [in bonding] in each year, rather than a lower number that they had been seeking, they want a $100 million of the $1.3 billion to be eliminated to make room for the $100 million in GO transportation bonding. That we don’t have an agreement on yet.”
Lamont, who has enacted his desired state “debt diet” in practice by holding only two bond commission meetings, appears reticent to lean on too much bonding for transportation needs.
“If they move somewhat toward Prioritize Progress, that’s putting hundreds of millions of dollars on the backs of the taxpayers,” Lamont said. “We’re trying to do something that gets the legislators off the dime. They know we need a new recurring source of revenue, they know doing it through more borrowing on the backs of tax payers is probably not the way to go. Let’s let the negotiations carry on.”
Regardless of which combination of tolls and bonding the legislature selects — if it takes action at all — Looney said his experience as a toll collector makes him grateful for the invention of electronic toll gantries. It’s possible lawmakers will someday agree to reinstall tolls, breaking the cycle of repeat debates, that are not unlike the experience of being a young West Haven toll taker in 1967 when the toll booth’s exact change machine broke.
“I was like a robot on Labor Day weekend when the traffic was so heavy, taking a quarter, pushing the button, taking a quarter, pushing the button, praying for somebody to come along with a dollar or a ticket so I could make change and break the monotony,” he remembered. Looney, who has a masters degree in English, likened leaving the toll booth that weekend to Little Tramp, of Charlie Chaplin’s 1936 film “Modern Times,” exiting the factory and jerking down the street whilst continuing to perform the same motion he did on the assembly line.
“I understand that feeling,” Looney said.
Mark Pazniokas and Kathleen Megan
AVON, Conn. - There’s nothing like a roomful of determined citizens to make a town’s zoning board take notice.
That’s especially the case when the issue at hand is the consolidation of golf course land and its partial conversion to real estate. At stake, beyond golf, are a quaint country road and the status of a hotly disputed real estate development slated for land currently zoned for agriculture, not housing. Small wonder that 150-200 people who would probably prefer to be at home are wiling to sit through public hearings that last three hours.
Welcome to Avon, a largely upscale, white-collar town of 18,300 people in Connecticut's Farmington River Valley, 15 miles west of downtown, Hartford. The town's mean household income of $186,000 places it well above the national average. Avon is also slightly more Republican by enrollment and voting than Democratic. As with any suburban town, there are developmental pressures, not only with heavy commercial growth through the center of town along Rte. 44 but also in the surrounding communities. That growth has been steadily chipping away at open space, challenging a long-held notion of Avon as a quaint New England town.
Those feelings have come to the fore of late in a series of town meetings before the Wetlands Commission and, most recently, Town Planning and Zoning. At the center of the debate is proposed conversion of nine holes of the privately-owned daily-fee Blue Fox Run Golf Club. The 27-hole layout straddles the Farmington River, and a land development team is trying to get permission to rezone a 37.2-acre parcel to be able to build 95 single-family units in a common-ownership community, plus three free-standing homes.
Blue Fox Run, opened in 1974 as an 18-hole daily fee, was expanded to 27 holes by architect Stephen Kay. Green fees are posted at $40 for walking or $49 with cart on weekdays and $55 on weekends. If plans for the development proceed, the club’s Blue Nine would remain intact while Kay would design a composite nine out of the existing Red and White Nines, with the freed-up land used for home sites.
Not so fast, says Nod Road Preservation, Inc., a community-based opposition group. This citizens action group arose in response to plans for the development by The Keystone Companies, LLC and Sunlight Construction Industries. Nod Road Preservation, Inc. was co-founded two years by two longtime Avon residents who live along Nod Road in Avon. Chris Carville is a farmer whose family-ties to the CF Woodford Farm date to 1666; they also run the popular Pickin Patch, a farm produce stand abutting the golf course. Robin Baran is a stay-at-home mom who is passionate about the environment. For both of them, there is their first foray into politics at any level. Now they are knee-deep in meetings, gathering petitioners, attending public hearings, organizing door-to-door and raising money to hire an attorney and expert witnesses to counter the army of consultants assembled by the applicants. Nod Road’s Preservation motto is “Save Nod Road.” The would-be developers have countered with “Build to Preserve.”
P. Anthony Giorgio, managing director of the Keystone Companies, Inc. is no newcomer to real estate and commercial development, with many area projects under his belt. He says as part of any plan he’s worked out a careful budget and timeline so he can assemble the needed expertise, map progress and deadlines, follow through with permits and hearings and anticipate budgets.
Giorgio says he was “flabbergasted when we ran into this juggernaut of opposition.” Dealing with it has not been easy, or cheap. Each two- or three-hour commission meeting costs him “$10,000-$15,000” in consultants' costs just to have them there ready to answer questions. He’s already spent three times more than he initially budgeted. But he figures with home sites likely to sell in the $400,000-$600,000 range, the project can still cost out.
He and his team need to convince Avon’s Planning and Zoning Commission to change the designation on a crucial 37.2-acre plot from agricultural and to residential. The proposed site occupies a floodplain, which means that even if a zoning variance is granted, all residential areas will have to be built up above the floodplain level.
In exchange for the variance, Giorgio and his partners vow to designate the rest of the property – all 187 acres outside the planned residential community – as a conservation easement. But attorney Brian Smith, representing Nod Rod Preservation, responds to this by claiming that there is a simpler way to keep the space open: “Deny the application,” he told the commission.
Historic Nod Road is three miles long from north to south, with one of the country’s oldest continuously operated restaurants (since 1757) at one end and the state’s largest tree, the Pinchot Sycamore – with a trunk 28 feet in circumference and a canopy 121 feet across - at the other. The tree is named for native-born Gifford Pinchot (1865-1946), the first chief of the U.S. Forestry Service.
Neither landmark – the restaurant or tree - is threatened by the project, but opponents fear that the rustic quality of the country road these two sites mark will be compromised with subsequent increases in traffic.
If so, the culprit won’t just be the Blue Fox Run development. The entire Farmington Valley is going through expansion – some 2,500 homesites poised for development or in construction elsewhere along a surrounding 15-mile stretch. Traffic studies undertaken by the developers acknowledge backups already on a major east-west thoroughfare at the south end of Nod Rod by Blue Fox Run. All of that additional development will simply add to the regional burden. Given popular apps like Waze that steer traffic toward more open streets, Nod Road is likely to see a considerable increase as drivers divert from main paths. That means additional traffic burdens for Nod Road, and the likelihood in the future of the road of Nod Road getting straightened and widened.Nod Road is dotted with open farmland,. There are two real estate communities on the east side, under the slope of Talcott Mountain. Just north of Blue Fox Run was an another golf course, Tower Ridge Country Club, which closed at the beginning of 2019 and may also be the site of future development.
Hanging over the entire proceedings is the threat – tacit or explicit – that if the zoning application is denied, a developer could try to get the land designated by the state under existing provision to declare the land fit for affordable housing, in which case the resulting density would far exceed what is currently proposed. Giorgio says he would "probably not try such a maneuver. But another developer could,” he added.
For now, Blue Fox Run provides modest golf to a public clientele. It also provides habitat for birds and mammals as well as serving as a site for biologically diverse wetlands. In effect, it functions as adapted open space. The issue now is how valuable that open space is, how much of it can be preserved and who pays for it. Even maintaining the golf course as a viable entity in the highly competitive metropolitan Hartford market will take millions of dollars of infrastructure investment.
The General Assembly voted in special session Monday for a bill that provides funding for the state’s share of local school construction projects, effectively rewards Hartford for closing several schools and ends reimbursement bonuses for intra-district diversity magnet schools.
The measure passed 30-1 in the Senate and 93-35 in the House, where a majority of Republicans opposed the bill, primarily over a provision that will raise the reimbursement rate for renovations to several Hartford schools from 80 percent to 95 percent.
Local school construction in Connecticut is partly reimbursed by the state on a sliding scale based on a community’s wealth, and the bill approved Monday provides $160.5 million to pay the state’s share of eight projects in seven communities.
The reimbursements generally range from 10 percent to 70 percent for new construction and 20 percent to 80 percent for renovations, with bonuses increasing the reimbursements to 85 percent under some circumstances.
The rates range from 25.36 percent for alterations to two high schools in Fairfield to 78.93 percent for new construction at Bassick High School in Bridgeport and 80 percent for equipment at the Middletown High School Vo-Ag Center.
The bill raised to 95 percent the maximum reimbursements that will be allowable for renovations planned in Hartford for the Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School, the Burns Latino Studies Academy, Bulkeley High School. Other Hartford projects submitted for state review before June 30, 2022 also will be eligible for the higher reimbursement.
“The reason Hartford got 95 percent for those schools — beyond the fact, like many cities, we struggle financially — Hartford closed schools,” House Majority Leader Matt Ritter, D-Hartford, said in an interview after the debate.
By closing rather than renovating at least four schools, the city is saving the state money it would have been required to pay Hartford, Ritter said.
House Minority Leader Themis Klarides, R-Derby, said after the session that legislators were wary about changing the rules for Hartford so soon after the city was helped with a debt bailout.
“I know they agreed to close some schools. I understand that, and I understand the balancing of the money equation,” Klarides said. “But they have to understand that doesn’t look good.”
The bill also establishes a special reimbursement rate for emergency repairs to the Birch Grove Primary School in Tolland. The school’s foundation is contaminated with pyrrhototite, a mineral that expands when exposed to groundwater and causing massive cracking.
The legislation ends special 80 percent reimbursements for so-called diversity schools — intra-district magnet schools intended to address racial disparities within a community, such as the Charter Oak International Academy in West Hartford.
“It didn’t do what we really wanted it to do,” said Sen. Doug McCrory, D-Hartford, the co-chair of the Education Committee.
McCrory said the program reimbursed wealthy communities for building schools that moved students around their communities, something that could be done by redistricting. In addition to the West Hartford magnet school, Greenwich was among the communities that filed for a diversity school, he said.
Under the new legislation, instead of receiving 80 percent reimbursement, communities would receive the town’s standard rate which ranges from 10 percent to 70 percent for new construction, depending on the town’s wealth, plus an additional 10 percentage points.
Rep. Jeff Currey, D-East Hartford, said, “We are still incentivizing. We’re still giving you a 10 percent bump … It’s just being done in more fiscally responsible manner.”
Sen. Rob Sampson, R-Wolcott, was the lone voice in the Senate speaking out against the measure. He said the 80 percent policy was “a significant incentive that might make towns actually attempt to do that. This policy is going to tell those smaller towns that you are only going to be increased 10 percent. I don’t know if this is the right direction that we we want to be headed.
“I don’t know anyone’s position on the subject of diversity [in] schools, but if you think that’s a good idea, I don’t know how you could support this … because this policy is a disincentive to increasing the diversity school program in the state.”
Ideanomics previews ‘Fintech Village’
Renderings unveiled for proposed campus at former UConn site
Ideanomics chairman Bruno Wu revealed the design proposal
for Fintech Village on Monday at the University of Saint Joseph. (Brad
Horrigan/Hartford Courant )
By Emily Brindley
West Hartford – Ideanomics, a financial technology company,
on Monday released long-awaited renderings of a sprawling $400 million
mixed-use development proposed for the site of the former UConn campus in West
Hartford, although formal plans have yet to be submitted to the town.
Brooks Fischer, principal at Newman Architects, said that
Ideanomics will submit pre-application drawings to the town this week.
Ideanomics CEO and President Alf Poor said that the site’s groundbreaking will
likely take place in 2020.
In an animated video “tour” publicly released Monday, the
company outlined plans for a walkable campus complete with living quarters,
retail and restaurant space, a public art gallery and a community center. The
campus has been dubbed “Fintech Village.”
“Fintech Village will be a unique and special project, the
likes of which Connecticut has not seen,” Ideanomics Chairman Bruno Wu said.
“Starting today, we take our largest step from blueprint to reality.”
The preliminary concept shows a dramatic transformation of
the 58-acre property, which is bordered by Asylum Avenue and Trout Brook Drive.
Ideanomics bought the campus from UConn for $5.2?million in 2018.
In return for a $10 million loan from the state, Ideanomics
has promised to bring hundreds of jobs to the West Hartford project.
West Hartford Town Manager Matt Hart said Monday that
Ideanomics, with offices in China and New York, has not submitted any site
proposals to the town. West Hartford officials would need to approve a rezoning
of the property and sign off on Ideanomics’ plans before the company could
begin building.
Under the concept plan, Ideanomics will be one of many
companies housed at the former UConn campus. Wu said at a press conference
Monday that the site will have 34 different companies, working on everything
from financial technology services to medical innovations to clean energy.
The video released Monday begins with a tour of the west
portion of the campus, where the former undergraduate building currently sits.
The tour meanders along a walkway, through a sizeable
wetlands area that is depicted as preserved green space. The animation also shows
numerous trees that currently stand on the property, including a centuries-old
white oak tree.
But the greenery soon gives way to multi-story buildings,
where massive glass walls contrast with light wood accents and metal supports.
The ground floors of the modern buildings will be open to
the public, the video says, and the plans envision cafes, restaurants and shops
in those spaces.
The western portion of the campus will also house
“Ideanomics’ nerve center,” an energy-efficient building placed where the
former undergraduate building currently stands.
Poor said in June that four of the five existing buildings
on the campus, including the undergraduate building, will be demolished. The
demolitions will be part of the remediation of the site’s PCB contamination.
The tour then moves across Trout Brook Drive — which is
shown with a “newly engineered, traffic-calming design” and bike lanes — to the
eastern portion of the campus.
This portion of the campus would include many of the
“corporate living spaces,” along with a plaza of shops and restaurants and both
on-street and concealed parking.
The community center is also on this side of the property,
facing the large white oak tree.
On the other side of the sleek buildings, the animated
mockup shows the existing ball fields, which are preserved under the design
plan.
The tour’s narration notes that the fields will be
accompanied by “plenty of accessible parking and dedicated pick-up and drop-off
areas for the athletes and their families.”
At Monday’s news conference, Wu said that the development
process has been slow during the past year, but he hopes it will now move
forward more quickly.
But before constructing anything on the former UConn campus,
Ideanomics must clean up the property, which includes the demolition of the
four buildings.
Ideanomics representatives said in a release that a
contractor is scheduled to begin a three-month asbestos abatement process at
the site this week. They also said that the company is waiting for the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency to approval the PCB remediation plan.
After submitting pre-application materials to the town this
week, Fischer said, the company will work with town staff to fine-tune the
plans and rezone the property.
Emily Brindley can be reached at ebrindley@courant.com .
Anti-toll protesters: ‘We’re not going away’
No Tolls CT organization returns to state Capitol
Anti-toll protesters gathered in front of the Capitol in
May. (Melanie Stengel/Special to the Courant )
By Tess Vrbin
Hartford – Gov. Ned Lamont and lawmakers have been looking
for a compromise on the issue of tolls, but the contingent of anti-toll
protesters at the Capitol on Monday made it clear they will not accept that.
“You can’t open that door,” said Jeffrey R. Heyel of
Danbury.
The protesters from the grassroots organization No Tolls CT
came from all over the state and stood on the second and third floors of the
building, holding signs and talking to passersby. Heyel’s sign said “No means
no, Ned!” The legislature had returned Monday for an unrelated reason: a
constitutionally mandated session to consider overriding Lamont’s vetoes.
Tolls have been the most high-profile issue of Lamont’s
administration. He promised last year during his run for governor that he would
support tolls for trucks only but changed his position in February to include
all vehicles. He put forth a plan earlier this year to bring in $800 million in
tolls on I-95, I-91 and I-84, as well as the historic Merritt Parkway.
No Tolls CT responded by holding dozens of protests,
persuading leaders in 18 towns to pass anti-toll resolutions and starting a
petition for Lamont and the legislature to oppose all legislation that would
implement tolls. The petition had almost 106,000 signatures as of July 10.
“They need to step back and listen to the people for once,”
said Jen Ezzell of Lisbon, whose sign said “Not one penny more.”
Republicans and a handful of Democrats in the legislature
have voiced their opposition to tolls. Rep. Fred Camillo, R-Greenwich,
introduced Hilary Gunn on the House floor at the beginning of Monday’s session
as “a good friend of ours from Greenwich who has led the movement against the
tolls.”
Recognizable by her handmade hat that says “NO TOLLS,” Gunn
said she came to Hartford multiple times to promote the cause during the
regular legislative session. She was one of more than 1,500 participants in an
anti-toll protest at the Capitol in May.
“We’re really just here to send the message that we’re not
going away until tolls go away,” Gunn said.
Lamont has said tolls are necessary to pay for hundreds of
millions of dollars in highway improvements, but opponents disagree.
Republicans in the state legislature have pitched their own plan that relies on
increased state borrowing to fund transportation upgrades.
Fixing infrastructure is “a top priority for Connecticut,”
but tolls are not the answer, Gunn said. Connecticut residents pay nine times
the national average per mile for road maintenance, she said.
Heyel took issue with the diversion of $170 million from the
state’s Special Transportation Fund to the general fund in May.
“When the governor’s asking us to pay more and he’s taking
money that’s earmarked for infrastructure, that’s a nonstarter for us,” he
said.
Connecticut has some of the highest taxes in the country,
and residents already pay a gas tax that is supposed to contribute to the
transportation fund, Cherie Juhnke of Plainville said.
Someone once told Heyel that the state has a revenue problem
because it has a spending problem, he said.
“Until that’s addressed, don’t even ask me or anyone else in
the state for more of our money, especially the working class,” he said.
Heyel protests not for himself but on behalf of the
low-income people he works with as an employment lawyer, he said.
Most of the few Democrats in both chambers who have publicly
opposed tolls represent Danbury — Sen. Julie Kushner and Reps. Bob Godfrey,
David Arconti, Raghib Allie-Brennan and Ken Gucker. Rep. Patrick Boyd,
D-Pomfret, said in May that he will not vote for tolls “without knowing the
plans.”
Ezzell said Boyd and the Danbury delegation are the only
Democrats so far who have taken a firm anti-toll stance.
“Some are saying they’re on the fence, but to us it’s either
a yes or a no, so if you’re on the fence, we’re going to still consider you a
yes,” she said.
Tess Vrbin can be reached at tvrbin@courant.com .
Debt diet digs into school construction bill
Legislators pass $161 million measure, one of smallest in
recent history
By Christopher Keating
The legislature passed its annual school construction bill
Monday, one of the smallest in recent history under Gov. Ned Lamont’s so-called
debt diet to cut back on state borrowing.
The bill calls for eight new school construction grants across
the state totaling nearly $161 million. Different cities and towns receive
different reimbursement rates from the state for school construction, depending
largely on their wealth.
The highest individual grant was nearly $91 million for new
construction at Bassick High School in Bridgeport. That project, at a
reimbursement rate of nearly 79 percent, accounts for more than half of the
overall money the state is borrowing for school construction.
Simsbury will be reimbursed $8.3 million for construction at
the Henry James Memorial School for middle school students. The state grant
will cover 34.64 percent of the project’s total cost of nearly $24 million.
The bill also will provide Enfield with $60 million for
renovations at the John F. Kennedy Middle School.
In a separate category for various renovations, improvements
will be made in Hartford at the Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School, Burns
Latino Studies Academy and Bulkeley High School. Improvements will also be made
at the Birch Grove Primary School in Tolland due to a problem with a crumbling
foundation, an issue that has plagued homeowners in multiple towns in
north-central and eastern Connecticut.
“The passage of this bill is a tremendous opportunity for
the city of Hartford to rebuild a number of schools that haven’t received
adequate resources for many years, and in some cases several decades,” said
Sen. Fonfara, who graduated from Bulkeley. “The passage of this bill is
especially important considering it is coming at a time when Hartford’s finances
would otherwise preclude any type of investment of this magnitude.”
The Senate passed the bill by a 30-1 vote and the House
passed it by a 93-35 margin. It was sent to Lamont’s office for his signature.
That’s especially the case when the issue at hand is the consolidation of golf course land and its partial conversion to real estate. At stake, beyond golf, are a quaint country road and the status of a hotly disputed real estate development slated for land currently zoned for agriculture, not housing. Small wonder that 150-200 people who would probably prefer to be at home are wiling to sit through public hearings that last three hours.
Welcome to Avon, a largely upscale, white-collar town of 18,300 people in Connecticut's Farmington River Valley, 15 miles west of downtown, Hartford. The town's mean household income of $186,000 places it well above the national average. Avon is also slightly more Republican by enrollment and voting than Democratic. As with any suburban town, there are developmental pressures, not only with heavy commercial growth through the center of town along Rte. 44 but also in the surrounding communities. That growth has been steadily chipping away at open space, challenging a long-held notion of Avon as a quaint New England town.
Those feelings have come to the fore of late in a series of town meetings before the Wetlands Commission and, most recently, Town Planning and Zoning. At the center of the debate is proposed conversion of nine holes of the privately-owned daily-fee Blue Fox Run Golf Club. The 27-hole layout straddles the Farmington River, and a land development team is trying to get permission to rezone a 37.2-acre parcel to be able to build 95 single-family units in a common-ownership community, plus three free-standing homes.
Blue Fox Run, opened in 1974 as an 18-hole daily fee, was expanded to 27 holes by architect Stephen Kay. Green fees are posted at $40 for walking or $49 with cart on weekdays and $55 on weekends. If plans for the development proceed, the club’s Blue Nine would remain intact while Kay would design a composite nine out of the existing Red and White Nines, with the freed-up land used for home sites.
Not so fast, says Nod Road Preservation, Inc., a community-based opposition group. This citizens action group arose in response to plans for the development by The Keystone Companies, LLC and Sunlight Construction Industries.
P. Anthony Giorgio, managing director of the Keystone Companies, Inc. is no newcomer to real estate and commercial development, with many area projects under his belt. He says as part of any plan he’s worked out a careful budget and timeline so he can assemble the needed expertise, map progress and deadlines, follow through with permits and hearings and anticipate budgets.
Giorgio says he was “flabbergasted when we ran into this juggernaut of opposition.” Dealing with it has not been easy, or cheap. Each two- or three-hour commission meeting costs him “$10,000-$15,000” in consultants' costs just to have them there ready to answer questions. He’s already spent three times more than he initially budgeted. But he figures with home sites likely to sell in the $400,000-$600,000 range, the project can still cost out.
He and his team need to convince Avon’s Planning and Zoning Commission to change the designation on a crucial 37.2-acre plot from agricultural and to residential. The proposed site occupies a floodplain, which means that even if a zoning variance is granted, all residential areas will have to be built up above the floodplain level.
In exchange for the variance, Giorgio and his partners vow to designate the rest of the property – all 187 acres outside the planned residential community – as a conservation easement. But attorney Brian Smith, representing Nod Rod Preservation, responds to this by claiming that there is a simpler way to keep the space open: “Deny the application,” he told the commission.
Historic Nod Road is three miles long from north to south, with one of the country’s oldest continuously operated restaurants (since 1757) at one end and the state’s largest tree, the Pinchot Sycamore – with a trunk 28 feet in circumference and a canopy 121 feet across - at the other. The tree is named for native-born Gifford Pinchot (1865-1946), the first chief of the U.S. Forestry Service.
Neither landmark – the restaurant or tree - is threatened by the project, but opponents fear that the rustic quality of the country road these two sites mark will be compromised with subsequent increases in traffic.
If so, the culprit won’t just be the Blue Fox Run development. The entire Farmington Valley is going through expansion – some 2,500 homesites poised for development or in construction elsewhere along a surrounding 15-mile stretch. Traffic studies undertaken by the developers acknowledge backups already on a major east-west thoroughfare at the south end of Nod Rod by Blue Fox Run. All of that additional development will simply add to the regional burden. Given popular apps like Waze that steer traffic toward more open streets, Nod Road is likely to see a considerable increase as drivers divert from main paths. That means additional traffic burdens for Nod Road, and the likelihood in the future of the road of Nod Road getting straightened and widened.Nod Road is dotted with open farmland,. There are two real estate communities on the east side, under the slope of Talcott Mountain. Just north of Blue Fox Run was an another golf course, Tower Ridge Country Club, which closed at the beginning of 2019 and may also be the site of future development.
Hanging over the entire proceedings is the threat – tacit or explicit – that if the zoning application is denied, a developer could try to get the land designated by the state under existing provision to declare the land fit for affordable housing, in which case the resulting density would far exceed what is currently proposed. Giorgio says he would "probably not try such a maneuver. But another developer could,” he added.
For now, Blue Fox Run provides modest golf to a public clientele. It also provides habitat for birds and mammals as well as serving as a site for biologically diverse wetlands. In effect, it functions as adapted open space. The issue now is how valuable that open space is, how much of it can be preserved and who pays for it. Even maintaining the golf course as a viable entity in the highly competitive metropolitan Hartford market will take millions of dollars of infrastructure investment.