Enfield OKs zone change for former MassMutual site redevelopment with apartments, condo complex
ENFIELD —
Officials have approved a zone change that could pave the way for 464 housing
units on the
former MassMutual site.
Branford-based
MB Financial Group plans to reuse the office campus at 85 and
100 Bright Meadow Blvd., last occupied by insurance company MassMutual, as
a primarily residential development with some commercial space. The 65-acre
project site currently features three vacant offices, an unused parking garage,
two large uncovered parking lots, and an active daycare..
MassMutual closed its Enfield offices in 2021, later moving
over the border to Springfield, Mass. A New York-based developer proposed the
"All Sports Village" sports and entertainment complex to
town officials in early 2023, securing
some town approvals in 2024 but ultimately fizzling out.
MB
Financial Group purchased the properties for $4 million in May of this
year and submitted a zone change application for the two properties in
September.
The Planning and Zoning Commission unanimously approved at
its Thursday meeting a zone change to the recently established Special
Development District, designed by the town for projects like MB Financial
Group's plans and the Enfield Square Mall redevelopment.
A narrative included with the zone change application states
that the developer plans to file a master plan "in the very near
future" following approval of the new zone.
Carl Landolina, an attorney with Fahey & Landolina
representing the developer, said Thursday that the developer intends to file
applications for a site plan and subdivision before the end of this year, and
construction could begin next year under an aggressive timeline.
Representatives for the developer presented plans for the
site at the Thursday meeting, describing 178 rental units in the three existing
office buildings, 157 condos to be built on the large parking lots, and the
potential construction of a new five-story apartment building with 129 units.
The daycare and parking garage would remain on site and
later support the rest of the development. Other planned site work includes the
demolition of one-story structures attached to the office buildings, described
by the developer as "appendages" used for backend operations.
The apartments and condos would have separate amenities,
including various recreational facilities, as well as 12,000 square feet of
commercial space broadly intended for food and beverage sales.
Members of the PZC who commented on the plan were largely
positive and town staff outlined items in Enfield's Plan of Conservation and
Development that the application aligns with, including a specific mention of
seeking reuse of the MassMutual campus.
A public hearing attracted comments from three residents who
disapproved of the application, with some voicing concerns over the design and
density, and one arguing that the site should instead be used for medical
facilities.
Landolina said large, vacant offices like the MassMutual
campus "don't seem to have any use" other than residential or
mixed-use developments in the post-COVID-19 pandemic landscape, where remote
and hybrid work schedules are commonplace.
Eric Zuena, founding principal of ZDS Architecture, said
Thursday that the developer sees the MassMutual campus as "a wonderful
opportunity" to revive a well-kept but vacant property and add housing
stock to Enfield and the broader Connecticut market.
Zuena said the first proposed phase would be the adaptive
reuse of the existing office buildings, and the townhouses would come after. He
said construction of the planned new apartment building would be based on
market demand, though the developer hopes the other units will be quickly
absorbed.
Landolina said any businesses in the commercial space
would be open to the public, but planned amenities like pools and a
fitness center would be for condo owners and apartment tenants only.
Ridgefield voters rejected a new $85.6M public safety building. Will they vote yes on the revise?
RIDGEFIELD — Ridgefield officials
are preparing for their second attempt to get the construction of a new public
safety building approved.
First Selectperson Rudy Marconi said low voter
turnout and tax impact concerns are the top reasons why it is "very, very
difficult" to get the proposed public safety project passed.
"This has been a long time coming, and we're ready to
cross the finish line. I hope the voters support it," he said.
A referendum on the project will be on the ballot in
November, though one such vote on the initiative already failed earlier this
year.
Marconi said the project failed in February's referendum
vote, when it had initially cost $85.6 million. He said due to public feedback,
the project is now $8 million cheaper. The changes included taking out a
concrete garage, reducing the square footage and reducing the cost of the site
work.
The $77.4 million building at 36 Old Quarry Road is
designed to house both police and fire crews due to their dilapidated stations.
Marconi said both the police station and the fire station
are more than 100 years old. According to the project's website, the last
renovation made to the police station, which used to be a private home, was in
1975 and the last update to the fire station was in 1965.
"For the fire department, the men have one shower. And
the NFPA, which is the National Fire Protection Association, with
technology and more studies about cancer, they advise that you must shower
within an hour when you're in the middle of a fire with smoke," Marconi
said. "With one shower that's impossible. So, that's just one example of
how our buildings really have outlasted their useful life."
Marconi said the town hasn't had a lot of major projects in
its history, with the latest being the $134 million for the schools in the
early 2000s. Some of the major parts of the project were the construction of
Scotts Ridge Middle School, upgrades to East Ridge Middle School and
constructing a new recreation center.
He said the project was completed in 2004 and the years that
followed have been spent paying it off.
"We said we weren't going to do any other major
projects until we paid off the debt on that substantial project 20 plus years
ago," Marconi said. "And 2024 marked the final payment for all the
work we did with the schools."
He said once the payments finished, he was ready to focus on
the public safety building.
US DOT promotion of ‘vehicular travel’ hits popular CT greenway trail hard. What it lost.
Progress on a multimillion-dollar Connecticut bike trail is
in jeopardy after the U.S. Department of Transportation pulled a grant it had
awarded for the project.
Earlier this month, the Trump administration cancelled
funding for at least six biking and walking trails across the country,
including a $5.7 million grant slated for Connecticut’s
Naugatuck River Greenway Trail, or the NRG Trail.
In a letter dated Sept. 9, Maria Lefevre, executive director
for the office of the under secretary of transportation, said the
administration is prioritizing “projects
that promote vehicular travel.” The U.S. Transportation Department
rereviewed the grant individually, the letter stated, and withdrew funding
because the project “no longer aligns with DOT priorities.”
The letter was addressed to Rick Dunne, executive director
of Naugatuck Valley Council of Governments,
or NVCOG. Reached for comment Monday, Dunne stressed that the NRG Trail would
not be built over any motorized routes, and that it would be used for
transportation in addition to recreation.
“We were looking forward to being able to work with the
administration on it… but they defined their goals for multi-modalism as
funding vehicular access,” Dunne said.
Officials with the U.S. Transportation Department did not
respond to a request for comment in time for publication.
The grant was funded through former President Joe Biden’s $1
trillion infrastructure bill and the NRG Trail was selected for funding in June
2024.
The NRG Trail would connect 11 towns in the Naugatuck River
Valley. The planned route snakes along the river for 44 miles, bridging towns
from Litchfield to Waterbury to Derby.
The trail has been in the works for almost three decades,
and the pulled federal grant would have helped close the remaining gaps. It
would have funded segments of the trail totaling roughly 16.5 miles.
Progress on those parts of the trail — in Thomaston,
Watertown, Waterbury and Naugatuck — will halt until NVCOG can secure alternate
funding.
Naugatuck has agreed to fund its section of the trail,
according to Dunne. NVCOG intends to find replacement funding to complete the
full project.
Since taking office, President Donald J. Trump has made
efforts to revoke many grants across government departments. It’s an unusual
strategy, particularly with respect to already funded projects, such as walking
and biking trails.
Dunne said that colleagues in similar positions in other
states have contacted him to join a lawsuit against the federal government over
the canceled grants. Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller stated his intention to sue
earlier this month.
Those affected by the lost funding include consultants
involved in designing the trail and the communities the route passes through,
who may lose out on economic opportunities, said Bruce Donald, Southern New
England manager for East Coast Greenway
Alliance, a group developing a trail network from Maine to Florida.
“This is fairly new territory,” Donald said. “Usually when
money is awarded, you get it and you use it.”
Scott Goldstein, senior director of government relations
at Rails to Trails Conservancy, a
nonprofit that supports trail network development, said it’s difficult to keep
track of the grants that have been revoked because the Trump administration is
sending letters directly to communities, rather than making public
announcements.
“These cancellations are happening in the shadows,” he said.
How 190-foot poles and power lines have turned into one of CT's biggest controversies
FAIRFIELD — There’s a big difference between the
historic million-dollar homes and gardens of the Southport section of town and
the lower-income row houses and brick former factories
of downtown Bridgeport 7.3 miles away.
But 40 property owners in both communities could face
massive changes in their lives if a proposed
$300 million transmission line is approved next month by a
little-known state agency. The plan would allow United Illuminating to erect
102 steel towers along the Metro-North rail line ranging in height
from 95 to 195 feet, carrying a new 115,000-volt power line to the utility’s
Congress Street substation downtown.
It’s part of a bigger 25-mile plan to bring the high-voltage
line from the Westport-Fairfield border and Bridgeport, linking sections
through Stratford and West Haven with 500 new galvanized steel towers, then
finally east to New Haven. UI is a subsidiary
of Avangrid, a division of Spain-based Iberdrola.
Concerns vary along the potentially affected area, many
worried the gigantic power lines and poles will destroy the character of the
community. There are also concerns about environmental disruption and
limitations on economic development.
Some neighbors along the rail corridor worry that parts of
their properties, including homes, offices, churches, historic
sites and businesses, would be seized and partially demolished using the
controversial eminent domain law to obtain 40-foot rights of way along the
south side of the tracks. They’re calling for state regulators to force
UI/Avangrid to put the 115-kilovolt lines
underground or make them remain on the catenary power lines above
the tracks that power train operations.
The issue has mobilized
state lawmakers in both Fairfield and Bridgeport, and even Gov. Ned Lamont, who has
made five
appointments on the nine-member Connecticut Siting Council, which
recently postponed
action on the proposal until at least Oct. 16.
“The Siting Council did not receive sufficient evidence or
testimony to determine the cost of alternative options,” said state Rep. Steve
Stafstrom, D-Bridgeport, co-chairman of the legislative Judiciary
Committee. “That’s why this process was fundamentally flawed and needs to
be redone. UI wants to take more than 19 acres of developable land off the
corridor, which affects economic development.”
Sarah Wall Fliotsos, a UI spokeswoman, said Friday the
company looks forward to the Siting Council’s final decision in October.
“As with any of our projects, we routinely meet with our
customers and elected officials to discuss the details of plans and proposals,”
she said of the project’s two-and-a-half-year process. “Our goal is always to
find ways to balance the interests of the communities we serve while working to
serve the public interest of the state and New England region: reining in costs
that are borne by 3.7 million Connecticut residents, and investing in the
transmission system to ensure safe, reliable power for the next several
decades.”
Rob Blanchard, Lamont’s director of communications, said
Friday the governor is working on potential compromises.
“We’re continuing to engage with all shareholders, with the
goal toward an alternative path,” said Blanchard, a Fairfield resident who is a
member of the Representative Town Meeting.
Nonagenarian was shocked
Jacquelyn Thunfors, a spry 97, said she could literally
envision part of her tree-shaded, colonial-era home being demolished if the
plan were to go through. The house abuts the train tracks on Pequot Road
in Southport within the 40-foot right of way the utility wants. A painter and
retired newspaper reporter, Thunfors, like several people interviewed, said she
had not received a notice of UI’s intentions and only incidentally heard about
the plans from neighbors in August 2023.
“It was like a moment from outer space, really,” Thunfors
recalled in the cozy living room of her red clapboard house — one of the
oldest in Fairfield — with later Greek Revival-style additions that
she bought about 40 years ago. “You don’t expect the reality of something like
that. I still haven’t accepted it. It’s just incredible to me that anybody can
impose eminent
domain, take away your property and plop a big pole in your backyard. It
was a very shocking kind of thing.”
The use of eminent domain is not guaranteed on this project
and UI has stated it would negotiate in good faith as it seeks to move forward
with the project, if approved.
Outside, sitting in a garden chair on the property that
predates both the railroad and nearby Interstate 95, Thunfors said she believes
new calculations are needed on the cost of taking properties in the Southport
historic district and east into Bridgeport. The tower, called a monopole, that
would be erected on a reinforced base on her property would be 125 feet high,
according to the UI plan that includes possibly taking some of her house and
the shady maple trees that screen Thunfors' back porch from the tracks. She
shows an artist’s rendition of the aftermath of a UI takeover, demolition and
construction.
Thunfors' neighbor, David Scott Parker, an architect and
historian, said allowing a foreign-owned utility to take private property makes
a mockery of the public-benefits goals of eminent domain by allowing
UI/Avangrid to create an “energy toll road” to eventually transmit power to
other states.
“The whole idea of this was local distribution, not profit
for multinational companies,” said Parker, who could lose half of the
mustard-colored, 19th-century house he uses for his office. “UI admitted in the
hearings there was no need in their distribution area for the next five years
or next 10 years.”
Differences on cost of burying lines
UI has budgeted $30 million for acquiring the estimated 19.3
acres along the 7.3 miles, but Fairfield officials believe the actual values of
properties could be three to five times as much. The utility estimates it would
cost $840 million to $1 billion estimate to bury the transmission lines
underground, although property owners have been critical of those estimates,
suggesting they are inflated. Similar burials of lines cost between $23 million
and $33 million per mile, citing state estimates and similar projects in
Connecticut and New York.
Avangrid
executives say burying the cables through Fairfield and Bridgeport
would be paid by Connecticut rate payers, and if it were borne by Fairfield and
Bridgeport, that would add as much as $80 per month to consumer bills in those
communities.
Allan Drury, a spokesman for New York utility giant Con
Edison, said he was not familiar with UI/Avangrid’s projects.
“But if you are trying to estimate the cost of those
projects based on the cost of any Con Edison under-grounding projects, the
comparison just doesn’t work,” he wrote in an email. “Our undergrounding is for
local distribution lines, not transmission. Big difference. Furthermore, the
costs of under-grounding projects vary greatly from area to area, depending on
numerous factors. They can even vary significantly within a single utility’s
service area.”
Tricia Taskey Modifica, external communications and media
relations manager for Eversource, said the company’s underground work in recent
years also cannot be compared to UI’s proposal.
“The Greenwich line and substation project was an upgrade
that involved enhancements to the existing Cos Cob substation, construction of
a new substation on Railroad Avenue, and new 115-kilovolt underground electric
transmission lines connecting them, and was completed in 2021,” Modifica said
in an email. “The total project cost, not just for undergrounding, was
approximately $131 million. We’re not able to provide the cost breakdown of the
various components of the project.”
Modifica said an underground
project in Stamford, similar to a Hartford project replacing 55-year-old
underground transmission lines, is “very different than the overhead project UI
is proposing. We do not have a cost/mile number for the Stamford project. We
have an estimate for the entire Stamford project of approximately $239
million.”
Tom Swan, longtime executive director of the pro-consumer Connecticut Citizen Action Group who
has tracked state utilities for decades, calls the power-tower proposal
“outrageous,” but typical of the state’s adversarial electric monopolies.
“If I was a resident, I would be very concerned with their
track record of bullying to get their way,” Swan said in a phone interview.
Budding arts community threatened
A few miles to the east, on Bridgeport’s Railroad Avenue,
Michael Villani — co-owner of the former women’s underwear factory space
that was vacant for decades, then cleaned up and converted four years ago into
the Metro Arts Studios —
stood in the street and pointed at the 20 feet or so that could be torn away
from the front of his building. With more than 200 artists on a waiting list
for space in the fully occupied, light-filled studios, Villani said he sees the
UI/Avangrid plan as a serious threat to an attempted revival of the city’s
South End.
“I think it’s a land grab,” Villani said. “There is
something fundamentally wrong here and it could put a stake in the heart of the
Bridgeport arts community.
“It’ll be about 20 feet in on an angle,” he noted of the
impact to the building over the low drone of nearby I-95 traffic.
He recalled that acquaintances first alerted him to the UI proposal in the fall of 2023.
“It was big news, evidently, in Fairfield and Southport, so
I jumped on it and did what I had to do,” Villani said.
He recalled in recent months that consultants opened the UI
service manholes on the sidewalk and assessed space under the street. They told
him informally there’s plenty of room under the street to bury the 115-kV line.
“They were honest and they know stuff,” Villani said,
pulling up the UI proposal on his phone. “They were here for about a week. They
told me it was empty and it’s deep.”
Villani reiterated the battle cry of neighbors who share the
proximity of the train tracks despite geography and demographics.
“I don’t get how a foreign entity can take our property,
seize our property,” he said as a Metro-North commuter train rolled by about 20
feet up on the elevated track. “No one is answering that question. And not only
seize private property, but church property. It’s outrageous that we even have
to put up with this crap. It’s freezing all the investment and Bridgeport is
trying hard to bring people in. We have people coming here saying I never knew
Bridgeport had something this beautiful.”