Inland Wetlands Commission (IWC) members are continuing their review of a now-modified proposal to construct in Hawleyville what would be the largest industrial/office complex ever built locally.

At a February 13 public hearing, IWC members discussed at length with representatives of Hawleyville Properties LLC a proposal to construct a warehouse/medical office complex that would contain 583,500 square feet of enclosed space in the form of three warehouses and one medical office building at a 138-acre site near Exit 9 of Interstate 84. The site is comprised of 10 Hawleyville Road, 90 Mount Pleasant Road, and 1 Sedor Lane.

The latest version of the project proposed by the developer reduces the amount of wetlands at the site that would be filled, cutting it from 130,095 square feet to 115,910 square feet, thus reducing it from 2.98 acres to 2.55 acres.

The current version of the project would increase the amount of “upland review area” to be physically modified from 499,790 square feet to 605,420 square feet; in effect, hiking that from 11.47 acres to 13.89 acres. Besides reviewing the direct effects of a project on wetlands and watercourses, the IWC also has jurisdiction to review physical changes to upland review areas, which extend outward 100 feet in all directions from wetlands and watercourses.

The latest version of the project does not decrease the proposed 583,500 square feet of enclosed space, but would include developmental changes such as altered grading patterns, the construction of an additional large retaining wall, the shifting of a building’s location, and the narrowing of a proposed roadway on the site in order to reduce the amount of wetlands that would be filled.

The developer also is proposing increasing the amount of new wetlands that it would “manufacture” on the site from 104,550 square feet to 232,880 square feet, or from 2.4 acres to 5.34 acres. In such “wetlands mitigation” work, earth moving and plantings are employed to create physically modified areas which environmentally function as “wetlands.”

For perspective, the entire 138-acre site contains 15.6 acres of wetlands, plus 31.6 acres of upland review areas.

Public Hearing

At the February 13 hearing, civil engineer John Schmitz of BL Companies and soil scientist George Logan of REMA Ecological Services LLC represented the developer.

The steep, rugged terrain proposed for contains extensive wooded wetlands and areas with very dense to impenetrable brush. Although the site is considered desirable because it is near Exit 9 of I-84, it was the town’s 2016 extension of the Hawleyville sanitary sewer system which catalyzed commercial/industrial development applications for that area.

Mr Logan told IWC members that the manufactured wetlands that the applicant proposes for the property would environmentally function better as “wetlands” than the natural wetlands that would be filled in there by the developer. Mr Logan then described the technical aspects of manufacturing such wetlands.

IWC member Michael McCabe said he expects that there are some “feasible and prudent alternatives” that could be taken by the developer to reduce the filling of natural wetlands at the site. The project could be reduced in size, he said. “I see a lot of potential alternatives,” he added.

In July 2018, Hawleyville Properties received a requested wetlands/watercourses protection permit from the IWC for a 490,000-square-foot version of a warehouse/medical office project for the site. That project initially was proposed as 525,000 square feet of new buildings, but was reduced in scale by the developer after IWC members said a project of that size would result in too much wetlands filling. In the 490,000-square-foot version of the project, no wetlands would have been filled.

The developer never proceeded to the Planning & Zoning Commission (P&Z) with an application for the 490,000-square-foot version of the project.

Because there are legal limits concerning how long a development proposal can remain in the IWC public-hearing stage, IWC Chairman Sharon Salling asked that the developer grant the IWC a time extension to allow for at least one more public hearing on the proposal. The initial public hearing occurred on January 23.

After conferring among themselves, however, the developer’s representatives said that no such time extension would be granted. Consequently, IWC closed the public hearing. Legally, the hearing closure means that no additional information on the proposal can be submitted to the IWC.

Notably, applicants for development projects pending before the IWC and the P&Z almost always grant time extensions for additional public hearings, when requested by the agencies.

With the IWC hearing’s closure, the IWC now has 65 days to make a decision on the application. It is expected that the IWC will discuss and possibly act on the application on February 27.

The IWC members who have not yet visited the development site are expected to go there soon to check the flagging installed by the applicant, which indicates the areas where construction would occur.

Following the IWC’s January 23 public hearing, a town official raised environmental concerns about the adverse effects of the then-proposed filling of 2.98 acres of wetlands at the site. At that time, Steve Maguire, senior town land use enforcement officer, had said, “It’s very aggressive [development] for the property.”

The site is bordered on the north by eastbound I-84 and its Exit 9 on-ramp, on the northeast by agricultural open space land, on the southeast by the residential Whippoorwill Hill Road, on the south by Mount Pleasant Road, and on the west by Hawleyville Road.