Waterbury eyes $13.3M cleanup as potential tenant emerges for Anamet site
Nine years after the City of Waterbury acquired the polluted
and crumbling Anamet industrial campus near the city center – and after
millions of dollars invested in its rehabilitation – an end to the cleanup may
be in sight and a new user identified.
The Waterbury Development Corp. board is set to vote Friday
on using $13.3 million in state grants to complete the cleanup of more than a
century of pollution at the roughly 17-acre site at 698 South Main St.
The property borders the Naugatuck River near the southern
gateway to downtown Waterbury.
The city previously used millions of dollars in state grants
to demolish most of the buildings on the industrial campus, which once employed
hundreds of people making flexible metal hoses and electrical conduits.
The city also borrowed nearly $2.8 million to install a new
roof on a roughly 200,000-square-foot, high-bay building it hoped would help
attract a buyer and new users.
Finding a user proved difficult. The city marketed the
property three times and evaluated multiple proposals before reaching a
tentative agreement with Cornerstone Realty, a local industrial property owner
operated by the Albert family, which has deep roots in Waterbury’s business
community.
If officials approve the new funding, the Waterbury
Development Corp. can seek bids for the cleanup work and have the property
ready for sale in about a year, WDC Executive Director James Nardozzi said.
Any agreement to sell the property would require approval
from the board of 698 South Main St. Inc., a company the city formed to own the
site and oversee its rehabilitation. The organization is led by Catherine
Awwad, who also chairs the Waterbury Development Corp. board.
City officials and a Cornerstone representative confirmed
sales talks are in the works but said they could not yet disclose conditions of
the potential deal.
According to documents provided to Waterbury Development
Corp. board members ahead of Friday’s meeting, Cornerstone would acquire the
property and redevelop it as office and warehouse space for Torrco, a
Waterbury-based plumbing supply company. Cornerstone may also lease portions of
the property to other tenants, the documents state.
Waterbury Mayor Paul Pernerewski rejected offers from
Cornerstone and a California-based real estate investor in 2024. At the time,
Pernerewski said the proposals were not “the right fit,” given the amount of
public money invested in the property.
At the time, Cornerstone had proposed to partner with Torrco
in a $1.8 million purchase of the property
This time, Pernerewski said, city officials determined they
needed to help secure a new home for the growing Torrco or risk losing the
company to another municipality. He said the price under negotiation is
approaching the nearly $2.8 million that city taxpayers have directly invested
in the property.
“Basically, it is to maintain a very good company in
Waterbury if we can,” Pernerewski said. “This money will go a long way to get
to the final cleanup, which is holding up the deal from being consummated.”
Cornerstone Vice President Jake Albert, in an email response
to questions, said his company and Torrington-based construction
contractor O&G
Industries have invested “significant time and resources since early
2022 to bring this complex transaction with the City of Waterbury to fruition.”
Albert said the city selected the development group in May.
He noted that Cornerstone and O&G are family-owned companies with histories
stretching back more than a century and deep ties to the Greater Waterbury
area.
The redevelopment would transform a blighted former factory
in the city’s South End into a taxpaying property occupied by a growing local
company, Pernerewski said.
The factory, which closed around 2000, has long attracted
illegal dumping, drug use, vandalism and other nuisance activity.
Pernerewski said the project illustrates the extensive public investment
required to clean up former industrial properties that once powered
Waterbury’s economy but were left unusable by decades of
pollution. Such cleanups are generally too costly for private developers to
undertake without government assistance, he said.
“It’s going to take property that has been sitting vacant
and deteriorating and put it back into productive use,” Pernerewski said.
“These factories throughout the city drove Waterbury to the heights of economic
success through the 1950s and 60s, and then dragged it down.”
GFI's new Ledyard plan calls for bringing in dredged material
Lee Howard
Ledyard — Even as Gales Ferry Intermodal LLC continues to
fight the town’s denial of a permit for a large-scale quarry operation, the
company last week publicly aired a new proposal to barge dredged material to
the former Dow Chemical site, mix it with Portland cement and use it as part of
a plan for future industrial development.
Members of the public expressed skepticism about the plan
during a more than two-hour meeting Aug. 19 at Ledyard Middle School attended
by about 50 people plus others on Zoom (a recording is now available on the GFI Facebook page).
There were questions about the noise of trucks and barges
required to bring material into the industrial site at 1761 Route 12, as well
as concerns about the nature of the dredged material, though recent state
regulations for the large-scale “beneficially reclaimed” material requires that
the fill contain no hazardous substances.
But the main issue was one of trust, as neighbors have said
they felt blindsided by the extent of the proposed 40-acre quarry that was
rejected by the town Planning & Zoning Commission last year. GFI — a
division of Cashman Dredging & Marine Contracting Co., of Quincy, Mass. —
is fighting the rejection in court.
“We would like you to talk to us, like neighbors, speak
plainly,” said resident Eleanor Murray. “Put important commitments in writing.
Give us the information we need to verify them ourselves. Don’t make us go on a
wild goose chase and try to find information that we find out later wasn’t
exactly what you told us because we’ve been through that, and through it, and
through it, we don’t want to do that again.”
Harry Heller, lead attorney for GFI, said the project would
involve hauling about 248,000 cubic yards of material to the site, a task that
is expected to be completed in two to three years starting in 2027. The
material will be spread over about 12.7 acres, transforming the area from
impervious spaces to green spaces.
Heller said the project will result in the creation of two
shovel-ready industrial sites, one a little more than 9 acres and another about
3 acres.
The operation, in an industrial zone, would run during the
dredging season from October to February from Monday through Saturday, or as
approved by local officials. A watering system would be implemented to try to
limit the amount of dust that might be stirred up by the project, according to
its proponents.
The pilot program that has given rise to GFI’s current plans
to bring in dredged material is being run through the state Department of
Energy and Environmental Protection, but local permits are required from the
Planning & Zoning Commission as well as the Inland Wetlands agency. The
program aims at reclaiming or redeveloping “environmentally impaired or
underutilized land,” and initially only four projects statewide will win
approval.
“The Connecticut General Assembly has prioritized reuse of
beneficially reclaimed material,” Heller said in a recording of the public
hearing. “The program allows the projects to reuse this material in lieu of it
being hauled out of state for disposal. The legislation provides a cost saving
to developers to encourage the redevelopment of land ... for parcels which
would not otherwise be feasible to be redeveloped.”
According to DEEP’s website, uncontaminated or dewatered
sediment can be used as part of such a project, as well as asphalt, brick,
concrete, ceramic and waste sand from metal casting, along with street
sweepings and catch basin clean-out material (excluding anything
environmentally hazardous). Heller said this project will largely consist of
dredged material, one of Cashman’s key businesses.
Mixing the dredged material with concrete affords it
stability, allowing for a flatter area for future development possibilities on
GFI’s 165-acre property next to the Thames River, said officials from Loureiro
Engineering Associates who presented details of the project. Five years ago GFI
proposed using the site as a dredging hub, but it never made a formal
application as the idea quickly hit local opposition.
Heller pitched the latest project as a “unique opportunity”
to “support regionwide industrial and economic growth.”
But Ledyard residents who attended the meeting were cautious
in their reaction, asking a series of questions about contamination, noise and
dangers to the water supply. Heller said GFI would provide hearing notes to
DEEP indicating some of the residents’ concerns.
Bruce Edwards said GFI once had proposed a contaminated
solid waste management site for its property.
“You don’t use the word ‘contaminated’ like you used to, but
it seems to be a lot of the same thing,” Edwards said.
“I am anticipating the industrialization of our river,” Jill
Foster said during the hearing, adding she was worried about the noise and
vibration pollution that might be created by the project.
Heller said he expected one barge would arrive on site daily
during the dredging season, and he didn’t expect any significant increase in
noise. He promised that the overall decibel level of the project, including
trucks bringing material to the site, would not rise above limits set by the
state for daytime operations.
Eric Treaster, a former town zoning official, questioned the
need for 30 years of monitoring of the material brought on site if it is safe.
He also wondered why there were restrictions on the use of the area as a
residential site in perpetuity if there are no concerns about the material
being brought in.
Heller said prior contamination of the site by previous
owners, rather than any new material being brought in, was the reason for the
residential restriction.
Project environmental engineer Kate Engler said monitoring
of the site over a 30-year period was necessary to ensure that groundwater
discharging into the Thames River meets state requirements. She also said
groundwater on the site is already contaminated but flows toward the river, not
in the direction of local wells.
Heller, in response to a question, clarified that the
statute GFI is trying to use was approved to save industries money when they
are trying to dispose of material with small amounts of contaminants that do
not rise to the level of hazardous waste.
“Currently that material goes out of state,” Heller said.
“Totally clean material is eligible for disposal at sea, which is the most
cost-effective method of dredged spoils.”