If approved by the Legislative Council, new allocations and adjustments to the town’s recommended five-year Capital Improvement Plan will underwrite the demolition of three of the four largest building on the Fairfield Hills by 2018.

Canaan, Kent, and Shelton Houses would each eventually fall to the wrecking ball under a new CIP initiative that dedicates $3.5 million each year beginning in 2015. Board of Finance Chairman John Kortze, who initially suggested the idea, said he and others on his board wanted local officials to consider stepping up efforts to “start demolishing the largest buildings” on the town-owned campus.

“We need to do something up there, and we need to start talking about it,” Mr Kortze said of the nearly stagnant efforts to reuse or rid the campus of unsustainable abandoned hospital buildings. He said he hopes the demolition proposal survives the Legislative Council’s CIP deliberations.

Following an October 23 finance board meeting, the chairman said it did not appear there would be funding available under the town’s self-imposed nine percent debt cap to finance the large-scale demolition projects.

But a combination of factors including new grants, the elimination of future Hawley School renovations from the CIP, and a dip in debt service costs on remaining municipal bonding has aligned to permit the funding if approved by the council.

According to Finance Director Robert Tait, $3.7 million earmarked in the CIP’s year five was removed because of uncertainty about long-term future use of the school building. Another quarter-million dollars allocated for streetscape sidewalk installations was shifted from bonding, and will now be underwritten by grants.

An additional $1 million is also earmarked for Fairfield Hills demolition projects in year five of the newly recommended CIP. During the October 23 finance meeting, Mrs Llodra said while the $3.5 million per year/per building seems like the right number, the town will use a $250,000 federal grant to fine-tune cost estimates by developing hazardous materials abatement plans for each of the targeted buildings.

As recently as last month, escalating remediation costs have affected the demolition processes of former state buildings on the campus. Original funding to demolish Danbury Hall and several private homes on the campus had to be re-scoped and increased just to complete the removal of Danbury Hall adjacent to the Fairfield Hills main entrance.

Demolition Sparks Interest

Mrs Llodra told The Bee following the finance meeting that the demolition of Danbury Hall, combined with a real supported focus on removing other buildings, has already generated some new or renewed interest from possible developers, who previously rejected projects on the campus.

“These developers simply do not want to build in a location where their projects would be surrounded by derelict buildings,” she explained. “These are buildings that are hazards, they can’t be restored, and every time we take down a building it increases economic development interests.”

Another evident change to the newly recommended CIP is re-titling certain “placeholders” that Mrs Llodra is now identifying as specific projects.

“These items have been carried as placeholders tagged as municipal facilities,’ but thanks to the generous grant from General Electric for phase one of a new community/senior/aquatic center development, we are now identifying those projects, as well as a possible future police facility,” the first selectman said.

Mrs Llodra said while there is a $25 million allocation projected to complete those projects, the amount is “probably in excess of what we’ll need to spend.”

For the first time, she also noted that the finance board is seeing identified capital investments being designated for the Booth Library and Edmond Town Hall — neither of which is town-owned, but which depend on tax dollars to supplement their operation as public buildings.

Bridge, Road Allocations

Finally, the CIP preserves capital planning for road and bridge replacement - another important concern according to Mr Kortze. Public Works Director Fred Hurley is currently rethinking road allocations, however.

The first selectman told finance officials that Mr Hurley and a growing number of his colleagues across Connecticut are seeing premature degradation of road surfacing. The public works director has suggested it could be because of new winter ice melting chemicals introduced in recent years, or less reliable surfacing materials being supplied through a state consortium.

Until the local highway department can be more confident that road reconstruction projects will sustain an approximately 20-year lifespan, he is wary of committing significant taxpayer dollars to anything but the most dire road projects.

The final item on the finance board’s agenda was to recommend an updated high school auditorium project for the 2015 CIP cycle. Board of Education Chairman Keith Alexander told finance officials that the school board was looking for $3.6 million to complete a significant renovation to the heavily used venue.

The project was previously in the capital plan for $2.4 million, but it was determined that additional work would need to be done to address accessibility and code issues. The upgraded project would also take six months longer to complete than originally planned, according to the school board chairman.

On questioning from finance board member Michael Portnoy, Mr Alexander said consultants on the project believe the district will be eligible for more than a half-million dollars in state reimbursements. That estimated reimbursement would be applied for because work would bring the facility into conformity with current accessibility standards under the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) or other qualifying criteria.

Mr Alexander said the consultant, Charles Boos of Kaestle Boos, was hoping to recoup as much as $800,000 from the state if additional improvements could be qualified for reimbursement.