Concerns Pile High Over Dirt

Jesse Hameen II has lived in a white house abutting the edge of the former Winchester Repeating Arms parking lot since he was 12 years old. Now, in his 70s, he looks forward to a Colorado developer’s planned cleanup and redevelopment of the site — but worries about the mess that’s there in the meantime.

Hameen and his wife, Iman, are seeking reassurance from the new owners that they will maintain the overgrowth on the former factory site at 201 Munson St. and that they have a plan to eliminate a proposed 30-foot dirt pile that might be stored on site so that it doesn’t turn into a permanent neighborhood eyesore.

They also want more information about what kind of development will be coming to the street, which consists mostly of privately owned residences. The street is squeezed between the growing development of Yale University and market-rate apartment housing that caters to society’s more well-heeled rather than middle and working-class people hoping to buy their first homes. The developer is promising to build multi-family housing, but the details remain unknown.

Jesse Hameen, jazz drummer and Neighborhood Music School Jazz & Rock studies coordinator, said he’s been battling the overgrowth that yearly leaps across the chain link fence bringing with it all manner of wildlife including wild turkeys, opossums and raccoons, illegal dumpers, and poison ivy. Because his house is so close to the property line of the old factory site, he has to cut back the overgrowth especially during the spring and summer months so that it doesn’t overtake the house and the detached garage behind it.

“As you can see,” he said, looking across to his neighbor’s yard, ​“the people down here have surrendered.” Though the neighbor’s yard was well groomed, vines and overgrowth had clearly jumped the fence and started growing in wild patches in the yard. Instead of chopping it down, the neighbor had just mowed around it.

A Decision On Hold

The City Plan Commission sought similar assurances about the intentions of the new owners’ plans for the former factory site should they approve a special permit to allow for the soil storage. The owners formed a limited liability corporation to manage the cleanup and redevelopment of the site recently. They applied for a special permit that would allow the storage of 26,000 cubic yards of soil, which is far beyond the 500 square foot of outdoor storage allowed by right. The owners seek to stockpile clean soil trucked in from the Yale science building under construction about a mile away on Whitney Avenue.

The soil could potentially be used to remediate the site, which is contaminated because of its former industrial use. The soil will be kept on a portion of the site known as Science Park Tract C, which is in the northwest corner of the property, according to a report from City Plan staff. The proposed stockpile would cover about 54,000 square feet of the site, according to the report.

City Plan staff recommended approval of the special permit with conditions that included a plan for dust control, limits on the side slope of the stockpile and a possible maximum time limit for how long the dirt could remain. But at their most recent monthly meeting, commissioners decided to hold off on issuing the permit until the July meeting so the owners can return to speak about what they plan to do with the site and how long they estimate that the dirt pile might remain.

Colorado-based Resight Holdings LLC this past December bought the nearly 13-acre site from the Olin Corp., which had bought out Winchester in 1931. The site stretches from the Farmington Canal to the east, skirts around the side and back of Jesse Hameen’s house on Munson Street and continues to 23 Shelton Ave., at the crossroads of the Dixwell and Newhallville neighborhoods.

Another LLC, Double A Development Partners, was formed to manage the cleanup and redevelopment of the site. (Read more about the sale of the site in this New Haven Register story.)

“It’s Like A Forest In There”

The commission’s decision to push pause on this first step toward cleaning up the site and eventually redeveloping it was a small relief to the Hameens. It also netted them a phone call from one of the principals associated with Double A Development.

Hameen said years ago, he could contact Olin, and the company would send someone to cut the property back. But in the last two or three years, that hasn’t been the case. He got the Livable City Initiative, the city’s anti-blight agency, involved but it too struck out in finding someone to deal with the overgrowth.

He said he has paid out of pocket to have someone come cut back the overgrowth that has managed to make its way over the fence. That isn’t cheap. He’s already out a $1,000 deductible for a tree from the Olin property that crashed his garage. It’s the second time that has happened. The first time it happened, Olin reimbursed the Hameens the deductible. The second time it happened two or three years ago, the insurance company couldn’t get ahold of a representative from the company.

The company official with whom Hameen said he spoke assured him that a landscaper would contact him soon to start the process of tackling the overgrowth.

Reached by phone last week, Douglas Gray, president and CEO of Eclipse, said that he thought that someone had gone out to cut back the growth and he would make sure that it got done. He also had a few other answers that commissioners were interested in, such as a the status of the property’s remedial action plan (RAP), the proposed timeline for the dirt pile and what the owners vision for the site might be.

Temporary Dirt, Future Housing?

Gray said he and his partner are seeking the special permit before they’ve received an approval of their RAP because the soil is available now. Construction on the Yale Science Building is already underway, he said; the contractor on that job needs to get the soil off that construction site. The clean soil is needed to replace the dirty, contaminated soil on Munson Street that the builder hopes to start digging up and taking away possibly this summer or fall, depending on the weather and on when it wins approvals and permits.

He said it means a lot less cost for a remediation project that is expected to be expensive because the company can truck in clean soil from a nearby location. The further a contractor has to go to bring in clean soil, the more it costs. He said the month delay at City Plan does hamper the ability to get all the soil that the Yale contractor wanted to offload.

“One of the biggest variables is whether there is soil available right at the time you need it,” he said. ​“It can be up to four to five times more expensive if you have to ship it from farther out.”

Gray said the Yale contractor may still have some soil available by the time the City Plan Commission meets later next month. He said the plan is to get as much done this summer, including the demolition of buildings, so that the remediation of the soil could get underway. An aggressive goal would be to have the ground closed back up and sealed by winter, but that again depends on the weather. He said the company is looking to put housing on the site but plans to reveal more in meetings next month.

He’ll likely be hearing from the Hameens, who don’t want a dirt pile lingering in the neighborhood, even if they can’t see it from their property.

“I’m against keeping a big mound of dirt,” Jesse Hameen said. ​“But if it’s going to be guaranteed use of it in a timely manner, I’m for that. But just storing it there, and if their permits don’t go through or it takes a long time, the neighborhood could be stuck with a mound of dirt.”

Iman said her concerns is that if the builder puts in new housing, what kind of housing will it be, and for whom? And if it’s a parking lot to a big housing complex or even a noisy playground, how does it impact the homeowners in the neighborhood? She’s also asked how contaminated the land on the factory site is, and if that contamination has seeped into surrounding property, what the new owners are prepared to do about that.

“I’m concerned about what they do unearth and how contaminated the soil is,” she said. ​“I want to know the results of the soil tests. We are concerned about the results.”

More answers to come.