CT bill would transfer Hartford’s South Meadows site, $5M to CRDA to oversee development

David Krechevsky

State legislators are considering a bill that would transfer Hartford’s 80-acre South Meadows property and $5 million to the Capital Region Development Authority.

The site along the Connecticut River formerly was home to a garbage-to-energy plant operated by the quasi-public Materials Innovation and Recycling Authority. MIRA shut down the faltering plant in 2022 and local officials have been pushing to prep the site in Hartford’s industrial South Meadows neighborhood for redevelopment.

House Bill 1559 has been raised by the state legislature’s Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee and will be discussed during a public hearing Monday.

The bill proposes transferring the South Meadows property to the CRDA, which would be charged with establishing “provisions for the development, redevelopment or remediation of such site.” The bill would also create and establish the boundaries for the South Meadows development district.

In 2023, the state created the MIRA Dissolution Authority to oversee the winding down of MIRA operations and the disposition of its transfer stations and the South Meadows site. The authority has since sold off some properties. 

Lamont administration officials have subsequently asked the CRDA to consider whether it could organize the South Meadows site’s redevelopment preparations, CRDA Executive Director Michael Freimuth said recently.

Freimuth said his 13-staff agency, a quasi-public entity responsible for economic development efforts in Greater Hartford, already has a large workload and would need additional manpower and money to take on the project.

To help fund those efforts, the bill proposes that on June 30, $5 million would be transferred from the MIRA Dissolution Authority to CRDA and deposited into an account created specifically for work related to the South Meadows site.

The bill would also transfer $2 million from the dissolution authority and  deposit it into “a nonlapsing account of the General Fund established by the secretary of the Office of Policy and Management.” 

The money would be administered by the OPM secretary “for the purposes of operating, maintaining, remediating or taking any other action associated with the activities formerly conducted by or properties formerly owned” by the MIRA Dissolution Authority, though that would exclude the “activities associated with and the properties comprising the South Meadows site.”

A study released in March reported that redeveloping the site will take years and cost anywhere from $27.87 million to $333.87 million, depending on how many of the existing buildings are demolished and what sort of future development is pursued.

The bill also would create a South Meadows Development District and establish its borders. The boundaries as described in the bill have raised an objection from the Connecticut Airport Authority, which operates Hartford-Brainard Airport, which borders the MIRA property to the south.

CAA Executive Director Michael Shea submitted testimony in advance of Monday’s hearing, asking the Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee to consider removing the airport from within the development district’s boundaries.

Residents worry about proposed Tilcon quarry expansion

Dylan Braccia and Claudia Hilario

PLAINVILLE – Local residents voiced their concerns that more blasting will impact their homes if Tilcon’s request to expand its quarry by 83 acres into a heavily wooded area is approved.

Ticlon is proposing to re-zone its property on Long Swamp Road and Nike Road from residential to quarry zone so it can add the 83 acres to its existing basalt quarry operation.

At the town Planning and Zoning Commission last week, Tom Daly of SLR Consulting – presenting the proposal for Tilcon – said the change would increase Plainville’s tax base.

But residents at the meeting overwhelmingly opposed the change, saying they already endure the disruption and silica dust from Tilcon blasting at its existing site on the town line with New Britain.

Daly and Taylor Daigle of SLR International Consulting said the residential-zoned area where Tilcon is looking to expand contains basalt that Tilcon — a supplier of crushed stone, hot mix asphalt and ready-mix concrete that was established in 1923 and operates multiple facilities throughout Connecticut — could extract.

Daigle said the expansion would create new economic opportunities and long-term jobs in town. And Daly said it would be “very difficult” to build any residential use on the property anyway.

Tilcon Environmental and Land Manager Chris Costello added that it would take another 35 years until Tilcon reached the new properties with its quarry operation.

But Georgia Biddell said Tilcon’s blasting already disrupts homes in the area, and that blasting more area for resources would destroy the area – leaving toxic silica dust in the air.

“I strongly urge against this,” Biddell said. “If your home is damaged, your life is compromised.”

Wendy Irving said that the town can’t keep allowing Tilcon to expand into undeveloped land.

“Plainville needs to preserve what is left of the open land,” Irving said. “There isn’t much left anymore. We will not get the land back.”

Richard Thibedeau of Plainville said the proposal neglects the human impact blasting has. As a veteran who suffers from PTSD, blasting can be a trigger for him and for others, he said.

Mark Swanson said his big concern was the tremors blasting would generate. He also questioned what would happen when Tilcon was finished mining in the area.

”What is the plan when it’s all said and done?” Swanson said. “I haven’t heard anything about remediation.”

New Britain resident Bill Shortell said in an interview that he has frequented the woods for decades and said it’s an “ecological haven.” He said Tilcon has “made billions out of the Plainville solid,” and should donate the land to make it a park instead of expanding their quarry.

“I’m just interested in them not raping the land and not turning the place where I go for my mental health into a pile of rocks,” Shortell said. “They want to change the zoning so that they can go in there and tear up all these trees, the homes for lots of animals, a place for people like me to go and get our heads together after stressful lives.”

Shortell said the Holyoke Ridge, which stretches from Meriden to Massachusetts along the western edge of New Britain and eastern part of Plainville, provides valuable resources to the company.

He has noticed that mining operations are present along the ridge but concentrated in less affluent towns. While the ridge also passes through communities like Simsbury, mining activity is absent. However, some mining occurs in Farmington and other areas across Connecticut, where numerous trap rock mines operate.

Despite the scale of these operations, Connecticut remains one of the few states without an extraction tax on such resources.

“They’ve been there 80 years or something pulling valuable stuff out of our soil, and I don’t know how much taxes they pay on income, probably considerable, and I don’t know how much property taxes they pay. They probably have a fair amount of property there; they have machinery. But an extraction tax would be very helpful to Plainville,” Shortell said.

While many opposed the expansion, the Manafort Brothers wrote a letter in support of the change that was read in the meeting for the record.

Following the comments and questions from the public, Daly asked to respond for Tilcon at a later meeting. The committee agreed to table the hearing until its May 13 meeting, scheduled for 7:30 p.m. at the Plainville Municipal Center.

East Hartford considers 8-year, $5.2M tax break for 150-unit apartment development

East Hartford officials are considering an eight-year tax break worth an estimated $5.2 million to incentivize a 150-unit apartment development on a long-vacant property near the Connecticut River.

The Capital Region Development Authority last year approved a $6.5 million, low-interest bridge loan to help finance Simon Konover’s plan for an estimated $47.5 million apartment development on a 35-acre property at 341 East River Drive.

The West Hartford-based real estate development, management and investment company has owned the property for more than 40 years, and originally expected to build offices.

Now, the proposed apartment development would consist of four buildings, a clubhouse and dog park.  

Konover’s development site sits just behind East Hartford’s Great River Park along the Connecticut River. It is immediately west of the Academy of Computer Science and Engineering Middle School, a magnet school run by CREC.

Konover’s site is also just south of the Founders Plaza office park, which a group of prominent developers is trying to redevelop into a mix of roughly 1,000 apartments, along with restaurants, retail and other commercial uses.  

East Hartford's Town Council is expected to discuss the proposed tax abatement at its Tuesday night meeting. 

East Hartford Mayor Connor Martin, on Monday, noted tax abatements are commonly used to incentivize development.

“We do so for the significant return on investment, which comes in the form of new housing units, grand list growth and incremental tax revenue growth,” Martin said. “Our goal is to enact shorter tax abatement deals to get development projects to full taxation faster, hence the 8 years.”

During the life of the eight-year deal, the town would continue to receive the $48,088 Konover pays in annual property taxes. Abatements on the added value would start at 100% in year one – saving the developer an estimated $863,940 – and would ratchet down gradually to 35% in the final year, which would spare the developer an estimated $359,434 in taxes.

After the abatement expires, the town expects the development to yield more than $1 million yearly in new tax revenue. 

Newton C. Brainard, Simon Konover’s vice president of acquisitions and development, said the tax abatement would help the project overcome market challenges, including higher construction and financing costs, slowing rent growth and the uncertainty brought on by the Trump administration’s tariff policies.

“We are excited to begin the process with the town,” Brainard said Monday. “This is just one piece of a complicated development puzzle.” 

Given mounting challenges to development, temporary tax relief of this sort has been implemented by a growing number of communities, Brainard said. He also noted the development will be an improvement on a site that has been simply “a very nice grass field” for decades.