2010 Saw Industrial/Commercial Approvals, Residential Prospects

By Andrew Gorosko

Land development appeared to pick up its pace in 2010, as applications for commercial/industrial projects rose in comparison to the preceding several slow years.

In September, Advanced Fusion Systems, LLC (AFS), paid $6.3 million to buy real estate at 11 Edmond Road, where it plans a large-scale industrial redevelopment project for a vacant facility formerly occupied by Pitney-Bowes, Inc.

In the September 17 transaction, AFS purchased the property from Arbar Properties, LLC, of Westport. AFS describes itself as a Delaware limited liability company which has corporate offices in New York City.

In July, AFS had received approval from the Planning and Zoning Commission (P&Z) for the industrial redevelopment project. The company had earlier gained approvals for the project from the Inland Wetlands Commission (IWC) and the Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA).

AFS is a technology firm that plans to create a manufacturing and research and development facility at the 24-acre Edmond Road site, near the eastbound lanes of Interstate 84. The vacant industrial building on the site would be expanded and put back into use.

Initially, AFS would employ about 40 people, with the firm’s employee roster eventually rising to about 250 people, according to a spokesman for the company.

AFS plans to add about 30,800 square feet of enclosed space to an existing vacant 211,282-square-foot industrial building. The firm also plans to build a 20,000-square-foot high-walled, roofless structure for a future electric substation.

In an expanded industrial plant, AFS would manufacture high-speed electrical switching devices for very high electrical voltages. It also would make environmental cleanup equipment, sterilization gear, and x-ray laser microlithography equipment.

In August, a local business owner’s plans to redevelop of a section of Sandy Hook Center with several commercial buildings, including a branch office of Newtown Savings Bank and a child daycare center, gained P&Z approval.

P&Z members issued a special permit to developer Verdat Kala for the project planned for properties at #2, #4, #6, and #8 Riverside Road. Mr Kala is the proprietor of The Villa Restaurant & Pizza at 4 Riverside Road.

The project, which has the working name Sandy Hook Villa, gained approval from the IWC in July 28. The developer intends to link the project to the municipal sanitary sewer system.

The town’s Aquifer Protection Agency’s (APA) also determined that the project would have no significant adverse effects on the underlying Pootatuck Aquifer, which is the town’s sole source aquifer.

In the redevelopment project, the four parcels on Riverside Road would be combined to form one 3.2-acre site. The land abuts the prominent intersection of Riverside Road, Washington Avenue, Church Hill Road, and Glen Road.

A main feature of the project would be the presence of a Newtown Savings Bank branch office at 2 Riverside Road, on the corner of Riverside Road and Washington Avenue. An existing commercial building there would be demolished to create a site for bank construction.

People who spoke at public hearings about the project agreed that it would benefit the local economy, but some people expressed displeasure with the appearance of the planned bank building, criticizing the structure’s aesthetics, likening it to a factory building from the past.

The town’s Design Advisory Board (DAB), however, had endorsed the appearance of the bank building. The DAB advises the P&Z on architectural and landscape architecture issues.

Hook & Ladder Seeks A Firehouse

In another land use matter, Newtown Hook & Ladder Company, Inc, #1, is awaiting a decision from the Borough Zoning Commission (BZC) on its proposal to construct a firehouse at 12 Sugar Street (Route 302) to replace the aging deteriorated town-owned firehouse which the volunteer fire company uses at 45 Main Street, behind Edmond Town Hall. The BZC is expected to discuss and possibly act on the zoning application on January 12.

On December 8, the seven-member IWC unanimously rejected issuing a required wetlands/watercourses environmental protection permit for the project to the fire company, citing concerns about such a project’s construction and ensuing presence at the site posing environmental hazards to wetlands and watercourses nearby.

If the fire company were to receive a zoning approval for the project, it would still need to obtain a permit for it from the IWC. This week, the fire company filed suit against the wetlands commission, appealing its permit denial.

Under the development proposal, the Borough of Newtown Land Trust, Inc, and the R. Scudder Smith Family Partnership would donate land for the firehouse project. Mr Smith is the owner/publisher of The Newtown Bee. Approximately one acre of the wet 9.4-acre site would be developed with a firehouse and related facilities.

People living in the area near the site proposed for the firehouse who oppose that project generally say that a fire station is an inappropriate land use that would be out of character with the residential area, the presence of such a facility would damage property values in the area, the presence of a fire station would damage the area’s appearance, and that firehouse-related traffic would worsen traffic congestion that occurs in the area during daily commuter rush periods, among other complaints.

The firefighters, however, maintain that 12 Sugar Street is a good place to build a new firehouse because it would be at a central location within the Hook & Ladder fire district.

The town has five fire districts for its five volunteer fire companies. Unlike Hook & Ladder, each of the four other fire companies owns its firehouse. The other fire companies are based in Dodgingtown, Hawleyville, Sandy Hook, and Botsford.

Zoning Changes

In a residential land use matter, following a December public hearing, P&Z members unanimously modified the zoning regulations on elderly housing complexes, setting the regulatory stage for a major developer’s anticipated application to construct 171 age-restricted condominium units at a 50-acre depleted gravel mine in Hawleyville.

Three such housing complexes for people over age 55 were planned for that property in the past, none of which ever materialized.

The P&Z’s move to change the zoning rules on high-density, age-restricted, elderly housing complexes comes in response to developer Toll Brothers, Inc’s, request that certain zoning rules be created, which would then enable it to seek land use approvals for a specific project that it envisions for the site. The developer has not yet submitted an application for the project.

The property has a street address of 12-16 Pocono Road. Access to the site would be provided via an existing driveway at 166 Mt Pleasant Road (Route 6). 

Generally, the zoning rule changes approved by the P&Z would allow taller buildings than now permitted, would allow the placement of a bedroom on the upper level of two-story townhouse-style condo units, and would add a new category of age-restricted multifamily housing termed “apartments.”

DEP Reviews Railroad Plans

In an ongoing land use matter, town officials in 2010 waited to learn whether the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) would issue permits to the Housatonic Railroad Company and/or its contractors to expand the railroad’s solid waste handling operations at its 13.3-acre rail terminal at 30 Hawleyville Road (Route 25). The application has been under DEP review since the spring of 2009.

About six years ago, the railroad entered the solid waste transfer business. The railroad transfers solid waste from heavy trucks onto railcars for shipment by rail to out-of-state landfills.

The railroad’s proposal to increase the range of solid waste and also expand the tonnage of solid waste that it handles has proven controversial, drawing stiff opposition on environmental grounds from town officials and a citizens group known as Hawleyville Environmental Advocacy Team (HEAT).

The concerns include the potential for surface water pollution and groundwater pollution due to expanded waste operations. Other issues include quality-of-life matters, such as increased truck traffic, increased noise, and additional blowing dust in the area.

In August, in an unusual revision of a controversial wetlands permit application from the Housatonic Railroad Company, IWC has approved one aspect of the railroad’s application, but denied another feature of it.

IWC members decided to approve the portion of the wetlands permit application that would have the railroad remove a large volume of earthen fill from its property, which had been placed there in violation of the wetlands regulations. The IWC, however, rejected the railroad’s proposal to build some additional railroad track on its site to expand its materials-handling capabilities.

In the dual decision, the IWC rejected the railroad’s proposal to improve its facilities for the handling and temporary storage of construction materials. The railroad receives shipments of building materials by rail, which it temporarily stores for reshipment by truck.

The Newtown Transload wetlands permit application had been submitted to the IWC in connection with the railroad’s controversial pending proposal to DEP to expand its solid waste handling operations at the terminal.

Water Line Extension And                  The Tech Park

In the realm of public water supplies, state regulators are considering what would be the best means to provide a safe drinking water supply to the Greenridge residential subdivision in Brookfield — an extension of United Water’s Newtown-based water system or instead the provision of water to Greenridge from some source within Brookfield.

Representatives of the state Department of Public Utility Control (DPUC) and the state Department of Public Health (DPH) conducted a daylong public hearing on the issue on December 15 at Brookfield Town Hall. The DPUC-DPH will be issuing a final water supply decision on the Greenridge matter, but it is unclear when that will occur.

United Water’s public water system serves central Newtown, as well as South Main Street, Sandy Hook Center, and Mt Pleasant Road. Under the firm’s Greenridge water supply plan, the company would extend its Newtown water supply system northward from Mt Pleasant Road along Hawleyville Road in Hawleyville and then along Whisconier Road in Brookfield to reach the Greenridge subdivision.

The DPUC and DPH had endorsed that water system extension project and United Water had started work on the project last spring. But Town of Newtown and Borough of Newtown officials’ concerns about the implications of such a project resulted in the state halting the water system extension until those concerns could be resolved.

Last August, Brookfield First Selectman William Davidson recommended to DPUC and DPH an alternative water supply plan for Greenridge, which would provide water to the subdivision from a source within Brookfield.

The existing Greenridge community water supply is contaminated with naturally occurring radioactive minerals. Drinking such tainted water is considered harmful. About 700 people live in Greenridge, a small part of which lies in Newtown.

Also, the IWC is considering a revised application from the Economic Development Commission (EDC) for Newtown Technology Park, off Commerce Road. A public hearing on the application is slated to resume on January 12.

In September, the IWC rejected an initial version of the technology park from the EDC, deciding against issuing the town agency a wetlands/watercourses protection permit due to environmental hazards posed by the proposed site development near the environmentally sensitive Deep Brook.

The project would involve the construction of six buildings containing an aggregate of about 100,000 square feet of industrial condominium space.

Plans for the industrial development project have been in the formative stages since 2004.

And Environmental Cleanup

In an environmental cleansing matter, an industrial firm this year continued its planned decadelong cleanup project designed to minimize by 2020 residual chemical pollution at its Prospect Drive site and also at an adjacent property near Mile Hill Road South.

In 1987, the DEP ordered Noranda Metal Industries to study the nature and extent of chemical contamination at its Prospect Drive manufacturing site and also to take appropriate steps to clean up the property.

In 1989 and 1990, the firm did some initial cleanup work. In 2004, it started an in-depth study of the contamination in seeking to resolve the problem.

Workers supervised by an engineering company are proceeding on two fronts to clean up the longstanding subterranean pollution problem caused when Noranda, which formerly had a factory off Prospect Drive known as Noranda Forge Fin, inadvertently released significant amounts of a toxic degreasing solvent at its property after the solvent was used in its manufacturing processes. The chemical’s release thus created a “brownfield,” or contaminated industrial site.

Workers are laboring to clean up the residual chemical contamination at Noranda’s 12-acre site at 11 Prospect Drive. Prospect Drive is a dead-end street extending eastward from South Main Street, just south of Highland Plaza.

An adjacent contaminated site amid wetlands, where Noranda’s environmental cleanup work also is underway, has access from 40-50 Mile Hill Road South. The wetlands there are located along an unnamed tributary of the Pootatuck River.