Remington Woods’ future dependent on zoning overhaul
BRIDGEPORT — Already known as the “Park City” for its numerous recreation areas, Connecticut’s largest municipality also contains 420 acres of potential open space — Remington Woods, a former munitions testing site currently the subject of a massive environmental cleanup.
And while that remediation is still a few years from completion, crucial decisions impacting the woods’ future and if or how much will be redeveloped are being made this fall.
A 302-page overhaul of
Bridgeport’s zoning regulations resulting from the city’s new 10-year master plan proposes changing Remington Woods’ designation from “light industrial” to “residential office center.”
Although the latter term sounds like a compromise to keep the property on the tax rolls while also advancing longtime efforts to save at least part of this urban wilderness, it still goes too far in the wrong direction, according to those who have fought for all of the land to remain untouched.
The local Sierra Club in a statement said Mayor Joe Ganim’s administration should instead designate the woods and the Lake Success located within as parkland.
“There are so many reasons why these woods should be preserved,” the organization said in a statement, citing the need for more natural sites within the city and the positive impact on air quality. “We could really use all the green space we have.”
“We want zero development,” said Councilwoman Maria Pereira who represents the area. “Remington Woods has its own ecosystem. They’re always trying to preserve all this open space in the rural areas and suburbs. You know who needs it desperately? Polluted inner cities.”
But the citywide master plan, drafted and adopted in 2019 following a big public outreach effort, does not call for zero development at the woods. Instead that document states “significant areas, such as the Remington Woods/Lake Success property, present the city with a chance to increase its publicly accessible open space and protected natural habitat, while also generating opportunities for economic development.”
Zoning commission hearings on the new Bridgeport neighborhood zoning map originally scheduled for Oct. 13 and Oct. 21 were recently rescheduled to Nov. 16 and 17.
Ganim’s office did not provide comment from a representative of the Office of Planning and Economic Development, which spearheaded both the master plan and zoning updates, and staff in that office did not respond directly to requests for comment.
Remington Woods was a one-time munitions test site for Remington Arms Company. The majority of the 420 acres are in Bridgeport, with 75 acres in Stratford currently zoned by that town for an office park and residential uses.
The land is owned by a subsidiary of Dupont Corporation, Corteva Agriscience of Delaware, which is in the midst of a yearslong cleanup of industrial contamination overseen by the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
According to the state DEEP, remediation work continues, particularly at Lake Success with the “processing of ... sediments in order to separate remaining discarded military munitions.” That is scheduled for completion in March 2023.
“It’s amazing work,” the Sierra Club said of Corteva’s efforts.
A spokesperson for Corteva did not return requests for comment, but the company has made public a list of potential future redevelopments/uses: Office/research & development; hotel/conference center; “green”/low impact manufacturing; skilled trades; active recreation; and a nature center.
An office park was first proposed for Remington Woods in the late 1990s. In fact the city only recently moved forward with longdormant federally funded road work improvements to the intersection of Seaview and Boston avenues and Bond Street that were originally connected with the office park concept.
Pereira and some others on the council last year voiced suspicion that the road upgrades were a sign of Corteva moving ahead with redevelopment plans in the near future, but William Coleman, Bridgeport’s deputy economic development director, sought to reassure them that was not the case.
“The Seaview Avenue project is really envisioned as one that will create a better and safer network of roads for local uses,” Coleman said, emphasizing, “It’s not Dupont’s driveway. It’s not.”
Callie Heilmann is a leader of the Bridgeport Generation Now civic group, which has been encouraging its members and the general public to attend the upcoming zoning commission hearings to “preserve as much of the space (Remington Woods) as possible.”
Heilmann said, “We’re not saying that it’s ‘all or nothing.’ ... I don’t think it can be an all or nothing, just realistically, because the land is privately held.”
But, she said, if the whole site is designated as a residential office center zone, “Then essentially the entire forest is unprotected and we are at the whim of corporate behavior as to what, when, where and how it is developed.”
The Sierra Club suggested another solution — Corteva gives the forest to Bridgeport.
“They’re one of the largest corporations in the world,” the organization said in its statement. “They can afford to donate land back to the Bridgeport community.”
Christopher Caruso, who formerly represented the Remington Woods neighborhood as a member of the state legislature, agreed, calling it “a positive gesture.”
He said the end goal should be to make the land a federally-protected national wildlife refuge akin to the Stewart B. McKinney refuge that encompasses portions within 70 miles of Connecticut’s shoreline.
“You could have light walking trails on there,” Caruso said. “Urban communities need open space.”
Pereira earlier this month met with U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and the woods was one of the topics discussed. Online on Facebook she wrote, “He lent his support to preserving Remington Woods as a national preserve.”
Blumenthal, however, in a statement to Hearst Connecticut Media specified, “Land use decisions are up to the city’s elected leaders.”
“Remington Woods is a unique ecological and environmental area, vital to the long-term health of Bridgeport and its residents. Home to dozens of species of birds and mammals, this truly is a special place in a heavily urbanized area,” Blumenthal said. “If it should become a nature preserve for passive recreational use, I would work with the city and residents on federal funding to enhance and protect such status.”