State grant could add $25M to remediation project
FAIRFIELD — More than six months after state officials awarded Fairfield a $3 million grant for a proposed development that would transform a vacant lot near the Fairfield Metro train station into housing and shops, the town may not use it after all.
The grant had been set to cover the remediation of contamination at the site of the former Bullard Machine Tool Company factory as the first phase of construction, but those overseeing the project say its legal terms would make it nearly a third more expensive.
The developer and Fairfield’s head of economic development said they’re leaning against accepting the money after learning that wages mandated by the
terms of the grant would, in their estimation, jack up the project’s cost by 20 to 30 percent, which amounts to at least $25 million.
“The negatives outweigh the plusses here,” Mark Barnhart, Fairfield’s director of community
and economic development, said.
The remediation work would have been one of the preliminary steps in a roughly $125 million project to build a five-story, 245unit, mixed-use development that include 30 affordable units at 81 Black Rock Turnpike near the Fairfield Metro station, where the town has looked to add more housing and commercial retailers.
Under the grant’s conditions, the developer would be required to comply with the state’s “prevailing wages rules,” which regulate compensation for workers involved in construction projects, including those that the Department of Economic and Community Development funds. The DECD’s Brownfield Remediation and Development Program distributed the Fairfield grant, which came as part of a statewide funding spree over the summer for brownfields that have turned into industrial graveyards across Connecticut.
The wages that workers in the Fairfield project would be re