Chaindrive

Factory Can Be Cleaned Up


Town Will Seek Developers


July 09, 2008|By VANESSA DE LA TORRE; Courant Staff Writer


NEWINGTON — The abandoned National Welding factory on Cedar Street is coated on the inside with asbestos and sits on ground that is contaminated with petroleum.
But the 4-acre site off Route 9 that town officials have stamped as an eyesore can be cleaned up for commercial development, according to an environmental assessment of the property that was presented to the town council Tuesday night. The town now plans to solicit developers for the site in the next few months.




Dave Hurley, an environmental engineer with the consulting firm Fuss & O'Neill, which conducted the three-phase study with help from the Department of Environmental Protection, told the council that the cost of removing the contamination "is more than the value of the property, but it's not astronomical. ... It's all doable."

The former factory has been out of business since 1994 and has been on the town's blighted properties list since at least 1999. The owner - listed under town records as National Acme Inc. of Glastonbury - currently owes at least $1.1 million in back taxes and interest, Mayor Jeff Wright said. The town filed a foreclosure suit against National Acme in 2003 and the case is still in court.
Exactly how much the town might have to pay to demolish the factory and clean the site of contamination is uncertain, but Town Manager John Salomone said Newington will apply for state funding under a new program that helps municipalities with the costs of remediating brownfields for redevelopment.

Rehabilitating the National Welding property is a key piece of the town's vision for the Fenn Road-Cedar Street area that is across from Central Connecticut State University. Town Planner Ed Meehan calls the location, just off the Route 9 exit ramp, Newington's "gateway."

In April, the plan and zoning commission approved plans from developer Fenn Road Associates LLC of Manchester to build a commercial center on about eight acres next to the National Welding site, a development that will include a Starbucks coffee shop with a drive-through window, a bank and a 124-room, four-story hotel. Those businesses will face Fenn Road, but visitors staying in rooms at the back of the hotel would have a view of the decrepit factory, which at the moment has the words "YOUR LOSS" written in massive graffiti across a section of the building.

The National Welding property also abuts land where the state Department of Transportation intends to build a Newington station on the proposed Hartford-New Britain express busway.

Democratic council member Tom Bowen said he was concerned that a redevelopment - such as turning the factory site into an office building - would add to local street traffic. Already, an average of 38,000 motorists head down Cedar Street each day.
Wright said the National Welding property "has been studied to death" and that it was time for the town to move forward on the project.