DOT Drops Proposed Plan for Additional Guilford Train Station Parking
While town officials have struggled for nearly a decade to find a way for more parking on the north side of the Guilford Train Station, the struggle was just dealt another blow. At the Board of Selectmen (BOS) meeting on July 5, First Selectman Joe Mazza said he had received a letter from the Department of Transportation (DOT) informing the town that the DOT would no longer pursue a parking expansion at the station.
The push to build more parking has been an issue since the new train station first opened back in the early 2000s. Selectman Carl Balestracci said that when he was first selectman in 2001, five shoreline towns were informed by the state that they would be receiving new train stations. In anticipation, the town moved forward with attempting to purchase a piece of property on the north side of the train station for parking.
However, the day before a town meeting was scheduled to approve the property purchase, Balestracci received a call from DOT informing him that Guilford would not in fact be receiving a new station, as the money was now being directed to other state infrastructure. Shortly after the call, Balestracci said he received another call from a different DOT employee who had a different spin on what was happening.
“He said he wanted me to know the reason they were not going to fund the stations in our towns was because they were going to redirect the funds to Fairfield for a third station because a wealthy land developer was going to build a huge development and they needed parking for that,” he said.
Balestracci said he quickly called the state senator at the time and fellow first selectmen who met with DOT officials, and the tide quickly turned in the towns’ favor.
“The funds came back to us and all five towns got their stations and Guilford got the up and over station that we needed,” he said. “The town voted to purchase the property for parking.”
However, in the interim some residents had become displeased with the idea of using open land on Drive Way for a parking lot and the plan never moved forward, even as the new train station opened. Since then, Balestracci said the town and the DOT have gone back and forth over where additional parking could be built on the north side. Now it seems the DOT has given up altogether, according to the letter provided to Mazza.
“Parking does not currently appear to be a critical issue at this station,” the letter read. “If a greater need for parking expansion is anticipated in the future, the department will revisit the project and all options at that time.”
Mazza said he thinks “a lot of it has to do with money at this point,” and that he disagrees with the DOT’s stance on the matter.
“This is something that Carl worked very hard on in his administration and it was then turned over to my administration. [The DOT] had shelved it for a while and we had been asking them about it, but apparently there is not a need for it at this point—which I tend to differ with, but so be it—so that is where we are with the north side parking lot,” said Mazza.
Balestracci said the DOT may have set this project aside, but the parking issue is not going to go away.
“We had our station but we continued to work for years for some kind of a plan for parking on the north side because we know eventually we are going to need it,” he said. “I mean more and more people are using the station and using Shoreline East. People are commuting every day and it takes a lot of people off the road, so we will continue to work for parking. But the state is strapped for money now, so it is going to be a while.”