PRESERVE OR DEVELOP?
Residents push for vote on decades-long dispute over 288 acres of former tobacco fields
After more than two decades of debate, abandoned plans and false starts, Simsbury is on the verge of deciding whether 288 acres of former tobacco fields will be set aside as open space and athletic fields.
More than 1,000 residents signed petitions to force a May 4 referendum in a brief, hastily organized campaign that includes accusations that the finance board was refusing to let taxpayers vote the deal up or down.
If voters approve on May 4, Simsbury will put about $2.2 million toward a $6 million purchase of the land, part of a farm where Martin Luther King Jr. worked in his youth.
Griffin Industrial Realty, the owner, had fought for years for permission to create a massive subdivision with an affordable housing component, but never went ahead with the project.
Instead, Griffin changed course and last year negotiated to sell to the Trust for Public Land in a complex $6 million deal that includes a patchwork of state agriculture, historic and open space preservation grants along with the town money.
Simsbury leaders this month got into an uncommonly harsh dispute over whether to go forward, ending with a fastpaced petition drive last week
end to meet a Monday deadline.
With backing from the Simsbury Land Trust, the Simsbury Grange and the board of selectmen, volunteers fanned out to popular stores and restaurants to get signatures.
“We needed at least 953 signatures and we received more than 1,800!,” First SelectmanEric Wellman proclaimed afterward on Facebook. “Reasonable people can disagree on whether the town should acquire this parcel, but I amsopleased that our residents will have the opportunity to vote.”
Earlier in the month, the finance board took up the idea in its annual budget review and decided not to include it.
Some finance board members warned there are already too many public works and education projects in the pipeline now, and funding Meadowood would postpone them.
When selectmen convened the next night, some were furious.
The finance board’s move implied voters are “too stupid” to make the decision,” Selectman Sean Askham said.
“I don’t recall a time when the board of finance not only refused to send on a signature project from the board of selectmen, but refused to even go on the record. That move is usually a cowardice move because folks are looking to avoid being accountable for a decision,” Askham said.
“They made a choice to take away the right of the citizens to vote,” Selectman Mike Paine.
If the referendum passes and the sale goes through, the Trust for Public Land, a California-based nonprofit, would get title to the property — with restrictions.
The state would get an easement for recreational access for 138 acres, including
connectivity to the McLean Game Refuge and new walking trails.
Another 117 acres, including the former tobacco sheds on Hoskins Road, would be reserved as farmland, and 24 would be set aside for future town athletic fields.
A little more than 4 acres, including the three historic barns that face Firetown Road, would be used for historic preservation and a Martin Luther King Jr. interpretive display, according to the Trust for Public Land.
The Trust for Public Land has raised more than $400,000 toward surveys, research and other expenses connected with the transfer.
It’s unclear how Griffin would proceed if the deal falls through.
The company went to court more than a decade ago to get zoning approval for 296 homes on the site, including 88 intended for affordable housing.
But the land required extensive environmental remediation because of fertilizer chemicals, and Griffin never moved forward with the housing project after it
was approved.
Simsbury is among the affluent Connecticut suburbs that affordable housing advocates have targeted for new development.
But Desegregate CT, a prime force in that effort, takes no position on individual projects, and said Thursday it had no comment on Meadowood.
Simsbury Grange President Susan Masino said preserving the land is the goal.
“I 100% support affordable housing, and there are many ways that can be done. But a critical network of open space is also essential. This land is not the right place for multiple reasons,” she said.
She noted that the 88 proposed affordable housing units were expected to run $280,000 each.
“That is more money than 33% of the housing in Simsbury, so that is not helping people who really need housing,” she said. “Most important, there is no guarantee what will be built. Multiple experts have said affordable housing is highly unlikely in the end because it is not the most profitable option.”