Greenway Commons owner says there’s buyer for downtown Southington project
Jesse Buchanan, Record-Journal staff
SOUTHINGTON — An owner of the Greenway Commons property downtown is hopeful about a buyer as the deadline for a town-approved development looms.
Soil tests took place at the former factory site this month
as part of the potential buyer’s due diligence before finalizing a sale. Such
soil tests could reveal contamination that would have to be cleaned.
Howard Schlesinger with property owner Meridian Development
Partners, didn’t name the buyer.
“There’s a buyer and he’s doing some additional
investigation. It’s looking good,” Schlesinger said.
Meridian has been trying to sell the property to another
developer for years. This isn’t the first time a prospective developer has
conducted soil tests, according to town Economic Development Coordinator Lou
Perillo. He’s hopeful that some activity will take place soon at the former
factory site but said he’s been working on the redevelopment project for 15
years.
“We’ve been down this road before,” Perillo said. “I’m
hoping the third time’s the charm.”
Owners held an auction on the property last year in an
attempt to sell it.
While the former Ideal Forging factory buildings were
demolished and some of the property remediated, environmental cleanup work may
not be complete.
“I’m not so sure there isn’t more that needs to be done,”
Perillo said.
Approval deadline
Meridian Development Partners has owned the downtown site
since 2005. The company got approval to build more than 200 apartments and
condominiums in addition to retail space.
Michael DelSanto, a town councilor and former Planning and
Zoning Commission chairman, said property owners have struggled to sell the
land. The amount of remaining contamination could be the main deterrent to
buyers, he said.
Planning and Zoning approval for the project will lapse
before the end of this year, requiring a new developer to apply again.
Schlesinger said the approval deadline was in September.
“We’ll make it,” he said. “We’ll get something going I’d
imagine.”
Schlesinger said the new buyer has the town-approved plans
and was moving forward, but didn’t elaborate on the prospective buyer’s vision.
“The goal has always been to do something good there and
this will produce that,” he said.
DelSanto said it’s important that there’s a retail component
to the project and has opposed attempts to change the design to include only
residential units.
Town officials said the project could be a major boost to
downtown commerce.
“Let’s hope there’s some activity there soon. We need it,”
DelSanto said.
State funding, tax abatements
Both the state and the town have tried to make development
more financially attractive. Perillo said the state has spent more than $4
million in remediation costs. The town has offered a tax abatement which
reduces property taxes for a certain number of years once buildings are
completed.
Southington hasn’t spent any money on the Greenway Commons
project, Perillo said, but is willing to offer tax breaks to a developer who
has put up the money and taken on risk to build.
“We try not to outlay any money,” up front for projects,
Perillo said.
Selling the property could allow Meridian to see some kind
of return on its investment, Perillo said.
Apartments, restaurant could be on deck for historic downtown Hartford firehouse
The city of Hartford is moving toward a deal with New
York-based development firm Wonder Works Construction that could see the
historic former fire station at 275 Pearl St. redeveloped into a mixed-use
apartment project.
Wonder Works, which has built 560 housing units in Hartford,
mainly under the Spectra banner, was selected as the preferred developer for
the site, according to I. Charles Mathews, the city’s development services
director. A final deal for the property is being ironed out and should take about
two or three weeks to finalize, Mathews said.
Wonder Works Chairman and Founder Joseph Klaynberg confirmed
Wednesday that his company is planning to construct 40 apartments in the
three-story building and install a 4,000-square-foot restaurant on the former
fire house’s first floor. The eatery is expected to include indoor and outdoor
dining areas and space for live entertainment.
While Klaynberg declined to name the restaurant, he said his
firm has collaborated with the brand before and saw positive results.
As for the apartments, Wonder Works will stick with the
model Klaynberg called “affordable luxury,” with the same amenities as those
offered in the Spectra properties.
In total, Klaynberg said the project will likely cost about
$9.5 million, a sum he expects to finance in part with support from the Capital
Region Development Authority, the State Historic Preservation Office and
partnering banks.
When asked if the COVID-19 pandemic may have altered demand
for housing in the city in a way that could make it difficult to find tenants
for 275 Pearl St., Klaynberg said he remains optimistic about Hartford’s
growth, especially considering how far the city has come within the last 10 or
so years.
“They said that about the last project we did, and it filled
up,” he said. “If we build it, we know people will come.”
Whole Foods site plan gets PZC approval in South Windsor
Joseph Villanova, Journal Inquirer
South Windsor's Planning and Zoning Commission on Tuesday
approved plans for the construction of the planned Whole Foods building at
Evergreen Walk.
At the regular meeting, commission members unanimously
approved the site plan for the 50,000-square-foot building, which will replace
two existing buildings, the current sites of Old Navy and Sakura Garden,
comprising 53,000 square feet. The new building will have two units: a
40,000-square-foot unit for Whole Foods and a 10,000-square-foot retail space
that will be available for lease.
PZC Chairman Bart Pacekonis said he was somewhat concerned
about the empty retail space, as he recalled a similar space attached to the
old Highland Market that went unused.
“I’m looking at your group as being more active in getting
tenants, and I’m hoping we’re not making the same mistake and having that
eyesore for 10, 15 years,” Pacekonis said.
Karen Johnson, project planner with Evergreen Walk’s
managing company Charter Realty, said the company has seen an increase in
leasing activity since Whole Foods was announced, and is not concerned with the
retail space being vacant.
“We’re comfortable that it will be leased shortly,” Johnson
said.
Construction of the Whole Foods is part of a larger
initiative by Charter Realty to revitalize the property as a shopping
destination for South Windsor and surrounding towns. These plans, outlined in a
document released by the company, detail efforts to lease retail locations to
various companies, although the document conceals their names.
An undeveloped 5,680-square-foot lot by the former Moe’s is
to be leased to a “national burger chain,” and a “national athleisure brand”
expects to lease a 5,715-square-foot space. Other storefronts have letters of
intent for businesses to lease, but specifics have not been announced.
David Gagnon, civil engineer with Langan Engineering, said
the hope is to have the Whole Foods accessible by sidewalk from Evergreen
Crossing, a nearby retirement community, which also would help connect it with
the rest of Evergreen Walk.
PZC member Stephen Wagner said he is excited by the
development of Evergreen Walk, and pleased with how Charter Realty has handled
it.
“It’s great to see there’s a long-term plan there to keep
this place going and keep it lively,” Wagner said.
PZC alternate member Megan Powell said that while she had
not been present for the entire application process, the company did a good job
with the Whole Foods site plan, other than minor concerns.
“I do think that due care was given throughout the process,”
Powell said.
PZC member Michael LeBlanc said he loves the mural planned
for the rear of the building, but wants to make sure it will be easy to touch
up if need be.
“The only problem is that they’re hard to maintain,” LeBlanc
said.
Pacekonis said he also was concerned about maintenance of
the mural, as well as what could happen in the distant future.
“I’m also concerned that at some point, that mural is gonna
want to be replaced with advertisement,” Pacekonis.
The commission ultimately agreed to have make a condition of
the application’s approval be that no advertisements could replace the mural.
Mayor Andrew Paterna said he feels that the new Whole Foods
will be great for Evergreen Walk, and presents many additional development
opportunities.
“It shows that South Windsor is still in a great position to
attract economic development,” Paterna said.
Tweed-Florida Flights Planned; Decision Delayed On $5M Airport Renovation
THOMAS BREEN
(Updated) On the heels of an announcement of new
flights to four Florida airports, Tweed New Haven Airport unveiled — and
sparked hours of climate-change-influenced debate over — plans to add 271
parking spaces and renovate the existing terminal and administrative buildings
into separate spaces for departures and arrivals.
Those announcements and debates played out across a virtual
City Plan Commission meeting Wednesday night and a celebratory press conference
held outside of the East Shore airport terminal’s front doors Thursday morning.
To pave the way for those new flights at Tweed, airport
officials laid out expansion plans Wednesday night during the latest regular
monthly meeting of the City Plan Commission. The four hour-plus virtual meeting
took place online via Zoom. At the center of the meeting was a lengthy discussion
and debate around a suite of site plan, coastal site plan, flood plain permit,
and special permit applications. It ended with commissioners putting off a vote
until another meeting.
At Thursday’s press conference, Avelo Airlines announced
that on Nov. 3 it will launch daily nonstop flights to and from Tweed and Fort
Myers, Orlando, Tampa, and Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
Avelo CEO Andrew Levy said that the airline will start out
with five flights a week to Orlando, five a week to Ft. Lauderdale, three a
week to Tampa, and two a week to Ft. Myers. He said a one-way ticket from New
Haven to Florida will cost as little as $59.
“Our business is about driving down the cost of travel and
stimulating demand with lower prices,” Levy said Thursday. “As you lower the
price, more people are able to travel. It’s a tried and tested formula for
low-cost carriers.”
The flights begin an East Coast network for the new airline,
which so far has been flying to and from West Coast airports out of its
Southern California hub in Burbank.
Levy said Thursday that the airline does not have any
current plans to connect its West Coast and East Coast routes.
“We do expect to serve other markets” besides just Florida
from New Haven, including perhaps Washington, D.C., he said. But for now, to
start, Florida will be all.
Why only the Sunshine State?
“Florida was the overwhelming choice of the entries in our
sweepstakes,” Levy said about an online poll to which 6,000 people responded.
He said it made sense for Avelo to start out “with leisure markets like
Florida, with wide appeal and low price points.”
The budget airline plans to begin with three new flights a
day, and claims it will build up to eight per day over the next three years.
Tweed New Haven Airport Authority Executive Director Sean Scanlon
described Avelo’s Tweed-Florida routes as kicking off a “long-term partnership”
between the airport and the new airline, though Levy declined to say exactly
how long Avelo will stay with Tweed.
“We expect to be here for decades to come,” Levy said, but
there is no specific time commitment detailed in Avelo’s agreement with the
airport. “It has to work,” he said about the new New Haven-based routes. “It’s
a business, and has to have profits and cash flows in order to thrive.”
“There are many more steps ahead,” said Avports CEO Jorge
Roberts, who helms the Goldman Sachs-owned private airport management company
that will play a key role in the airport’s coming expansion, “but we are
finally on the path for a more dynamic Tweed.”
City Plan Decision Delayed Until Next Week
All the requests considered at Wednesday’s nights City Plan
Commission meeting related to an intermediate step in the airport’s
long-term, privately funded $70 million expansion plans that should
see the lengthening of the main runway and the the construction of a new
four-to-six gate terminal and parking garage on the East Haven side of the
airport property.
None of that grander vision was up for consideration
Wednesday night.
Rather, the local land-use applications under review
pertained to a first step in that process: an estimated $5 million renovation
of the existing “West Terminal” and administration buildings on the New Haven
side of the property, and the net addition of 271 new on-site parking spaces
atop a secondary runway that is no longer in use.
All to make way for the budget flyer Avelo Airlines, which
plans the new Florida flight routes for the three Boeing 737 jets that it
intends to base out of Tweed starting in November. Currently, the only
commercial operator at Tweed is American Airlines, which flies one plane a day
to Philadelphia.
“This is an enabling project to improve service at Tweed,”
City Plan Director Aicha Woods said on Wednesday in support of the West Terminal
renovation and parking addition projects. “We want to think about this in terms
of regional connectivity. We also want to think about the role in growing jobs
and opportunities for New Haven residents, and also opportunities for residents
to travel.”
These applications are directly related to Avelo’s planned
beginning of service at Tweed on Nov. 3, Airport Manager Jeremy Nielson said.
“That’s what’s necessitating the presentation of these various terminal
improvements to handle that additional growth that we’re excited for and that
we’ve been looking forward to for quite some time.”
The commission heard hours of heated public testimony on
either side of the proposals. Critics focused on the environmental impacts of
more air service in Morris Cove. Proponents boosted the potential economic
benefits of greater connectivity to the rest of the country
The commissioners ultimately decided to continue the public
hearing on the matter until Aug. 25.
They scheduled that continued hearing to take place five days
before the Board of Alders Finance Committee is slated to host a public hearing
of its own on a
separate proposed 43-year lease agreement between the city and the airport
authority.
That lease extension would allow the authority to hand over
many of the financial risks and perks associated with an expanded airport to
the Goldman Sachs-owned management company Avports—which has managed Tweed
since 1998, and which has promised to foot the costs of the airport’s
expansion.
On Thursday afternoon, Scanlon told the Independent that
Avelo’s new Florida routes are not necessarily contingent upon the City Plan
Commission’s approval of the site plan, coastal site plan, flood plain permit,
and special permit heard Wednesday night.
“The permits do not affect whether or not Avelo can begin
flights on November 3,” he said by email. “The action by the City Plan
Commission is necessary to improve the passenger experience at the airport—things
like how easy it is to park, meet a taxi or Uber driver, utilize walkways and
bike racks, etc but not necessary for them to actually start service. We’re
confident that through continued work with the City and commission, the permits
will be approved soon.”
A team of project managers, lawyers, engineers, designers,
and airport managers kicked off the Tweed section of Wednesday’s meeting by
detailing what this planned three-year, $5 million New Haven-side renovation
would entail.
Per their presentation on Wednesday and the application
materials submitted to the commission in advance of the meeting, the airport
updates would include:
• The conversion of the existing main terminal building into
a departures building, and the adjacent administrative office building into an
arrivals building with a new baggage claim hall for passengers.
• The installation of a modular trailer building alongside
the existing passenger terminal-turned-departures building to allow for
expanded check-in and security screening operations.
• The net addition of 271 car parking spaces built atop
existing airport pavement that was previously used as the now-closed 14/32
runway. After the renovation, the airport is slated to have a new total of 927
on-site parking spaces.
• The creation of a newly paved connector between the
runway-turned-parking lot and an existing parking area to the south of the
terminal.
• A series of stormwater management improvements, including
the dryproofing of the existing terminal and administration buildings and the
creation of a new 300,000 gallon-capacity stormwater retention system around
half of the new south parking lot.
In describing what he said would be a minimal traffic impact
to the neighborhood, airport-hired engineer Don Tone said that Avelo is
planning a “scaled implementation of flight programming.”
That means: The new airline won’t start immediately in
November with eight flights per day. Rather, it will start with three flights,
then eventually increase to five flights, then eventually increase to eight
flights.
All the while, the airport authority and airport management
company will be evaluating how best to handle the increased traffic through
such potential measures as speed humps and increased enforcement and new
signage.
The airport will undertake “a measured approach at each
stage,” Tone promised.
During the public testimony section of the meeting, 20
people spoke up passionately on either side of the issue.
The public testifiers generally fell into one of two
categories: Morris Cove neighbors and environmentalists who slammed the
proposed expansion for being financially unrealistic and reckless in the era of
climate change. And local and regional business leaders who praised the project
for making New Haven that much more accessible to employers and investors.
“Sea levels are rising,” said Lighthouse Road resident
Claudia Bosch. “Within 30 years, Tweed is underwater. This is coming, and no
tidal gate will help. All coasts across the globe, the water will rise. Can you
have a good conscience and approve a project to build in these fragile
wetlands?”
Adam Matlock agreed. As confirmed in the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change’s recent report,“the increasing severity of climate
change means we can’t fully predict what we’re dealing with in 20 years, 10
years, five years.”
While a larger Tweed is touted by supporters as an economic
and transportation win for the region, he said, that “win” would come “at an extremely
high environmental cost. ... These fruits could sour before they are able to be
enjoyed by the community.”
Speaking to Tweed’s longer-term expansion plans more
broadly, Matlock said, “Signing a 43-year deal when every year brings
increasing severity of weather events seems short-sighted.”
City Environmental Advisory Council Chair Laura Cahn raised
concerns about how Bridgeport’s Sikorsky Airport also recently announced plans
to expand.
“I’m wondering if both airports can be successful,” she
said. “Are we putting money into something that’s just going to end in
disaster?”
Even with a larger Tweed airport, she said, “New Haven will
never be able to compete with a major airport. Maybe we should just have better
train service,” particularly to airports that already exist—like Hartford’s
Bradley Airport, which is currently inaccessible by train.
BioCT President and CEO Dawn Hocevar, meanwhile, threw her
support behind a larger Tweed airport on the grounds that it will be an
economic boon, especially for New Haven’s health-tech industry.
“The easier and more convenient we make travel, the more
likely companies will want to come and stay in New Haven,” she said. She said
that venture capital firms and other investors want to be able to visit
start-ups they’re funding. “We need to remove as many obstacles as possible,
and improving travel at Tweed airport would be a significant improvement.”
Biorez Founder and CEO Kevin Rocco agreed. He criticized
Tweed’s current air service as “unreliable” and “too infrequent.”
He said he and his employees frequently travel through
Bradley and New York City airports, but “these other airport options are more
than 50 miles away and add hours of unnecessary travel time.” All of the added
time in cars and stuck in traffic to reach further airports is “more than a
minor inconvenience.”
HealthVenture Co-Founder and CFO Donna Lecky said she and
her business partner are currently reconsidering their decision to have their
headquarters in New Haven, largely because of the lack of reliable air service.
“New Haven has a unique opportunity to be an innovative
center for excellence,” she said, “one where businesses can thrive, given that
access into and out of the city is available.”
Asked on Thursday about the IPCC report and about how an expanded
Tweed airport might exacerbate climate change, Scanlon said that the airport
authority will start in the next few weeks “an environmental assessment that
will drive everything we do.” He said that assessment will study the potential
impact on the area’s wetlands, wildlife, and air.
“That will be a very collaborative, open, public process,”
he said. “It’s something that is the most significant on our minds in terms of
how we can be leaders on this. This is what the people demand.”