In the ten years since Newtown purchased the state-owned property that served Connecticut for more than 60 years as a psychiatric hospital, the evolution of 186-acre campus at Fairfield Hills has been mostly municipal. The site is now the seat of Newtown’s government. Attempts to stimulate commercial interest there, however, have sputtered. The one notable exception was the opening of the 86,000-square-foot Newtown Youth Academy in 2008. But now, there is even talk of an eventual town takeover of that facility as well.

From the beginning, the prospect of a commercial component at Fairfield Hills was to be the tax-base-enhancing carrot to go along with the stick of public expenditures, which started with the $3.9 million purchase price and have continued through several subsequent iterations of the town’s Capital Improvement Plan. Now, there is a plan to offer an incentive to commercial developers that townspeople have been most reluctant to offer from the beginning — residential housing opportunities.

On Saturday, December 6, and then again five days later on Thursday, December 11, Newtown’s Planning and Zoning Commission, Economic Development Commission, and Fairfield Hills Authority are sponsoring two public forums “to address housing” at Fairfield Hills. The Saturday session will from 2 to 4 pm, and the Thursday session will be from 7 to 9 pm, each at the library of the Reed Intermediate School at 3 Trades Lane.

The professionally moderated sessions are billed as an opportunity for the public to comment, but they will likely establish consensus as their center of gravity, rather than just hearing people out. The fact is, people have been heard on this issue — repeatedly. As the Fairfield Hills Master Plan Review Committee put it in its final report in the fall of 2011, “There is still widespread opinion that residential housing should not be a part of the future of Fairfield Hills in any form.” That conclusion echoed the results of a public survey cited by the panel in the same report, which in turn reflected earlier expressions of public opposition to housing at the site since it was acquired by the town in 2004.

The forums will seek to determine whether the people of Newtown have changed their minds on this issue, given the town’s disappointing track record of attracting businesses to Fairfield Hills. Once they are told that developers prefer to hedge their investments in commercial enterprises by mixing in the steady income of and surer demand for some limited rental housing opportunities, will Newtowners swap their outright opposition for a consensus allowing some residential uses? Can Newtown get something it wants — useful economic development — by accepting something it doesn’t want — private residences with their inherent barriers to public access on publicly owned property?

The sponsoring commissions are looking for guidance from these forums. It seems clear, however, that if what they get on December 6 and 11 is silence or sparse attendance, they will go ahead and do what they are now poised to do: approve a set of regulations that will open the way for housing development at Fairfield Hills. We encourage Newtowners to attend the sessions to at least give them a sense of whether they are moving forward with or without the support of the town.