Council Members Impressed On Tour Of  Fairfield Hills

By Steve Bigham

Members of the Legislative Council took part in a two-hour tour of the massive buildings on the campus of Fairfield Hills Wednesday afternoon. Most were seeing the buildings’ interiors for the first time and were impressed with the general condition of the structures.

 The council will play a key role in the town’s decision on whether or not to purchase the 186-acre campus with its one million square feet of building space. According to Council Chairman Pierre Rochman, this week’s tour only served to make the decision that much harder.

“If the buildings were in bad shape, then it makes the decision easy. We could just knock them down. But they’re not, so the tour didn’t make our decision any easier,” he said. “The buildings have great potential, but how do we maintain them?”

And how does the town find consensus on who should occupy the buildings? That appears to be the underlying question that Newtown must answer. Council members felt the buildings would be suitable for corporate use, municipal use, or both.

Because the buildings are not heated, the temperature on this particular tour was cooler inside than it was outside.

Will Rodgers light-heartedly called Fairfield Hills a “light fixer-upper opportunity,” noting that, while some maintenance is needed, most of the buildings still have some usefulness.

As the group walked the halls of Cochran House, one council member said the building reminded him of a school.

“It almost was,” someone else replied, referring to the proposal put forth by the development firm of Becker and Becker to renovate the building for a 5/6 school. That plan has since been cut loose in favor of construction of a new school on the Watertown Hall property on the other side of Wasserman Way.

Several council members, including Melissa Pilchard, toured Watertown Hall two years ago when the town accepted it as a “gift” from the state. That building is considered to be one of the worst in terms of its overall condition. Council members admitted that that is what they thought most of the other buildings looked like, too. But Wednesday’s tour proved that not to be the case.

On this week’s tour, council members also toured Bridgeport Hall, the large cafeteria building in the center of the campus, Newtown, Woodbury and Shelton Halls at the campus’ entry plaza, and Canaan House, the largest building on the campus, which is now used partially for town office space. The group also toured Plymouth Hall, the campus’ large recreational facility.

The tour was led by representatives from the Tunxis Management Company, which has overseen the Fairfield Hills campus since soon after its closure in December, 1995. First Selectman herb Rosenthal was also on hand to answer questions.