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03/22/2017 08:30 AMIt may not be everything the town had dreamed of, but a new project to complete half the town’s envisioned upgrades to the former police station site may soon get underway, adding parking to the town center and paving the way for a future park.
A town project to add 31 off-street parking spaces on the former Main Street police station site and to plant grass on land around the new lot went out to bid this month. Contractor bids are due at Town Hall by 2 p.m. on Tuesday, March 28.
The new modified project now out to bid is smaller in scope than the original public park and parking lot project released to bid in 2015.
The original Main Street Connection Park site plan that zoning approved in 2015 included both the 31-space parking lot and development of the site’s remaining area as a park and for public recreation. The goal was to add to the public amenities along Main Street, while also making a new linear park connection to link Main Street with Lynde Street.
When bids received in 2015 for the original project scope were opened, however, even the low bid was slightly higher than the Small-Town Economic Assistance Program (STEAP) grant the town had received for the project; that meant that the project, if it moved forward, would have no contingency to address unforeseen circumstances, so the town rejected that round of bids.
To prepare for this second round of project bids for Phase 1A, the town hired an environmental contractor to assess whether the site of the former police station had any residual contamination. Fortunately, the contractor did not find any contamination until 10 feet below the ground, and the contamination that was identified was confirmed to be contained. With this finding, contractors bidding the job had one less contingency to plan for when finalizing their bids.
Late in 2016, the town asked for Zoning Commission (ZC) approval to modify the project site plan for the Main Street Connection Park plan that the commission approved in 2015.
As Town Engineer Geoff Jacobson explained on Dec. 19, 2016, the site plan change, if the ZC agreed to it, would allow completion of the town project in two phases, designated as Phase 1A and Phase 1B.
In the first phase, 1A, the town would construct a 31-space public parking lot on the site of the former police station and plant grass on the rest of the undeveloped site. In the second and subsequent phase, the town would improve the site’s grassy area to enhance it for public use and recreation by adding trees, landscaping, benches, a walkway, and bocce courts.
Following deliberations, the ZC voted to agree to the site plan modification, but attached a condition, seeking to preserve the plan to develop and area around it as a public park area. The approval carried the condition “that the remainder of the site outside of the proposed phase be used by the site owner, the town, as park, playground, or open spaced land and any zoning violations will be removed entirely...”
ZC members had objected to the observed use of the unimproved site by Frontier Communications trucks and town Water Pollution Control Agency trucks and trailers for parking. This type of parking use was not part of the commission’s original approval and was deemed by members to be a zoning violation.
With the ZC action, the town now will build out the site as a public parking lot surrounded by grass first and later, improve that grassy area with landscaping, benches, and bocce courts.
Jacobson told the ZC in December that the town would apply for a second STEAP grant to pay for Phase 1B work. If, in the current environment of limited state funding, the application were denied, First Selectman Carl Fortuna, Jr., has said he would use town resources and personnel to finish Phase 1B.
By dividing the public project into two phases, Fortuna is betting that the costs of the first phase will be fully offset by the $500,000 STEAP grant the town received in 2015.
When the bids are opened on March 28, he’ll learn whether or not the strategy was successful. If the bids are low enough for the project to move forward, construction of the new parking lot and site improvement will likely begin in before summer begins.