CT bill would transfer Hartford’s South Meadows site, $5M to CRDA to oversee development
State legislators are considering a bill that would transfer
Hartford’s 80-acre South Meadows property and $5 million to the Capital Region
Development Authority.
The site along the Connecticut River formerly was home to a
garbage-to-energy plant operated by the quasi-public Materials Innovation and
Recycling Authority. MIRA shut down the faltering plant in 2022 and local
officials have been pushing to prep the site in Hartford’s industrial South
Meadows neighborhood for redevelopment.
House
Bill 1559 has been raised by the state legislature’s Finance,
Revenue and Bonding Committee and will be discussed during a public hearing
Monday.
The bill proposes transferring the South Meadows property to
the CRDA, which would be charged with establishing “provisions for the
development, redevelopment or remediation of such site.” The bill would also
create and establish the boundaries for the South Meadows development district.
In 2023, the state created the MIRA Dissolution Authority to
oversee the winding down of MIRA operations and the disposition of its transfer
stations and the South Meadows site. The authority has since sold
off some properties.
Lamont administration officials have subsequently asked the
CRDA to consider whether it could organize the South Meadows site’s
redevelopment preparations, CRDA Executive Director Michael Freimuth said
recently.
Freimuth said his 13-staff agency, a quasi-public entity
responsible for economic development efforts in Greater Hartford, already has a
large workload and would need additional manpower and money to take on the
project.
To help fund those efforts, the bill proposes that on June
30, $5 million would be transferred from the MIRA Dissolution Authority to CRDA
and deposited into an account created specifically for work related to the
South Meadows site.
The bill would also transfer $2 million from the dissolution
authority and deposit it into “a nonlapsing account of the General Fund
established by the secretary of the Office of Policy and Management.”
The money would be administered by the OPM secretary “for
the purposes of operating, maintaining, remediating or taking any other action
associated with the activities formerly conducted by or properties formerly
owned” by the MIRA Dissolution Authority, though that would exclude the
“activities associated with and the properties comprising the South Meadows
site.”
A
study released in March reported that redeveloping the site will take
years and cost anywhere from $27.87 million to $333.87 million, depending on
how many of the existing buildings are demolished and what sort of future
development is pursued.
The bill also would create a South Meadows Development
District and establish its borders. The boundaries as described in the bill
have raised an objection from the Connecticut Airport Authority, which operates
Hartford-Brainard Airport, which borders the MIRA property to the south.
CAA Executive Director Michael Shea submitted testimony in
advance of Monday’s hearing, asking the Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee
to consider removing the airport from within the development district’s
boundaries.
Residents worry about proposed Tilcon quarry expansion
Dylan Braccia and Claudia Hilario
PLAINVILLE – Local residents voiced their concerns that more
blasting will impact their homes if Tilcon’s request to expand its quarry by 83
acres into a heavily wooded area is approved.
Ticlon is proposing to re-zone its property on Long Swamp
Road and Nike Road from residential to quarry zone so it can add the 83 acres
to its existing basalt quarry operation.
At the town Planning and Zoning Commission last week, Tom
Daly of SLR Consulting – presenting the proposal for Tilcon – said the change
would increase Plainville’s tax base.
But residents at the meeting overwhelmingly opposed the
change, saying they already endure the disruption and silica dust from Tilcon
blasting at its existing site on the town line with New Britain.
Daly and Taylor Daigle of SLR International Consulting said
the residential-zoned area where Tilcon is looking to expand contains basalt
that Tilcon — a supplier of crushed stone, hot mix asphalt and ready-mix
concrete that was established in 1923 and operates multiple facilities
throughout Connecticut — could extract.
Daigle said the expansion would create new economic
opportunities and long-term jobs in town. And Daly said it would be “very
difficult” to build any residential use on the property anyway.
Tilcon Environmental and Land Manager Chris Costello added
that it would take another 35 years until Tilcon reached the new properties
with its quarry operation.
But Georgia Biddell said Tilcon’s blasting already disrupts
homes in the area, and that blasting more area for resources would destroy the
area – leaving toxic silica dust in the air.
“I strongly urge against this,” Biddell said. “If your home
is damaged, your life is compromised.”
Wendy Irving said that the town can’t keep allowing Tilcon
to expand into undeveloped land.
“Plainville needs to preserve what is left of the open
land,” Irving said. “There isn’t much left anymore. We will not get the land
back.”
Richard Thibedeau of Plainville said the proposal neglects
the human impact blasting has. As a veteran who suffers from PTSD, blasting can
be a trigger for him and for others, he said.
Mark Swanson said his big concern was the tremors blasting
would generate. He also questioned what would happen when Tilcon was finished
mining in the area.
”What is the plan when it’s all said and done?” Swanson
said. “I haven’t heard anything about remediation.”
New Britain resident Bill Shortell said in an interview that
he has frequented the woods for decades and said it’s an “ecological haven.” He
said Tilcon has “made billions out of the Plainville solid,” and should donate
the land to make it a park instead of expanding their quarry.
“I’m just interested in them not raping the land and not
turning the place where I go for my mental health into a pile of rocks,”
Shortell said. “They want to change the zoning so that they can go in there and
tear up all these trees, the homes for lots of animals, a place for people like
me to go and get our heads together after stressful lives.”
Shortell said the Holyoke Ridge, which stretches from
Meriden to Massachusetts along the western edge of New Britain and eastern part
of Plainville, provides valuable resources to the company.
He has noticed that mining operations are present along the
ridge but concentrated in less affluent towns. While the ridge also passes
through communities like Simsbury, mining activity is absent. However, some
mining occurs in Farmington and other areas across Connecticut, where numerous
trap rock mines operate.
Despite the scale of these operations, Connecticut remains
one of the few states without an extraction tax on such resources.
“They’ve been there 80 years or something pulling valuable
stuff out of our soil, and I don’t know how much taxes they pay on income,
probably considerable, and I don’t know how much property taxes they pay. They
probably have a fair amount of property there; they have machinery. But an
extraction tax would be very helpful to Plainville,” Shortell said.
While many opposed the expansion, the Manafort Brothers
wrote a letter in support of the change that was read in the meeting for the
record.
Following the comments and questions from the public, Daly
asked to respond for Tilcon at a later meeting. The committee agreed to table
the hearing until its May 13 meeting, scheduled for 7:30 p.m. at the Plainville
Municipal Center.
East Hartford considers 8-year, $5.2M tax break for 150-unit apartment development
East Hartford officials are considering an eight-year tax
break worth an estimated $5.2 million to incentivize a 150-unit apartment
development on a long-vacant property near the Connecticut River.
The Capital Region Development Authority last year approved
a $6.5 million, low-interest bridge loan to help finance Simon Konover’s plan
for an estimated $47.5 million apartment development on a 35-acre property at
341 East River Drive.
The West Hartford-based real estate development, management
and investment company has owned the property for more than 40 years, and
originally expected to build offices.
Now, the proposed apartment development would consist of
four buildings, a clubhouse and dog park.
Konover’s development site sits just behind East Hartford’s
Great River Park along the Connecticut River. It is immediately west of the
Academy of Computer Science and Engineering Middle School, a magnet school run
by CREC.
Konover’s site is also just south of the Founders Plaza
office park, which a group of prominent developers is trying to redevelop into
a mix of roughly 1,000 apartments, along with restaurants, retail and other
commercial uses.
East Hartford's Town Council is expected to discuss the
proposed tax abatement at its Tuesday night meeting.
East Hartford Mayor Connor Martin, on Monday, noted tax
abatements are commonly used to incentivize development.
“We do so for the significant return on investment, which
comes in the form of new housing units, grand list growth and incremental tax
revenue growth,” Martin said. “Our goal is to enact shorter tax abatement deals
to get development projects to full taxation faster, hence the 8 years.”
During the life of the eight-year deal, the town would
continue to receive the $48,088 Konover pays in annual property taxes.
Abatements on the added value would start at 100% in year one – saving the
developer an estimated $863,940 – and would ratchet down gradually to 35% in
the final year, which would spare the developer an estimated $359,434 in taxes.
After the abatement expires, the town expects the
development to yield more than $1 million yearly in new tax revenue.
Newton C. Brainard, Simon Konover’s vice president of
acquisitions and development, said the tax abatement would help the project
overcome market challenges, including higher construction and financing costs,
slowing rent growth and the uncertainty brought on by the Trump
administration’s tariff policies.
“We are excited to begin the process with the town,”
Brainard said Monday. “This is just one piece of a complicated development
puzzle.”
Given mounting challenges to development, temporary tax
relief of this sort has been implemented by a growing number of communities,
Brainard said. He also noted the development will be an improvement on a site
that has been simply “a very nice grass field” for decades.