New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
New Haven to issue Tweed cease and desist order for unauthorized parking lot work
NEW HAVEN — The city is in the process of issuing Tweed New Haven Regional Airport a ceaseand-desist order for parking lot work at the airport that goes beyond what the City Plan Commission recently approved, Building Official Jim Turcio said Thursday.
Turcio said the action resulted from calls from neighbors about the work.
“One of them has a video,” he said.
On Wednesday, Tweed Executive Director Sean Scanlon told the Tweed New Haven Airport Authority that “there was a miscommunication and some work was done in another parking lot” that was not among the approved work.
“We’re working with the city” to rectify the issue, said Scanlon, also a Democratic state representative for Guilford and Branford. He will be leaving both positions shortly after being elected to the position of state comptroller.
“There will be no further work happening there, and there will certainly be no cars parked there” while the situation is being rectified, Scanlon told the authority.
But an East Haven resident who opposes Tweed expansion, Lorena Venegas, questioned the official version during the public comment session of the Tweed Authority meeting.
“That’s not an accident. That was done on purpose,” she said, citing the fact that a fence company had to be called to move the fence before the work could take place.
The area in question is adjacent to the farther from the Tweed terminal of two front parking lots that are both walking distance of the terminal.
The unauthorized work was originally included in what Tweed asked City Plan to approve. It was later among the final 34 spaces that were removed from the application after it was scaled back from 507 additional spaces to
237 because of wetlands issues, then from 237 spaces to 203.
A member of the development team for Tweed and its operator, Avports, said at the Oct. 26 City Plan Commission meeting that the 34 spaces in the farther of the two front lots were removed from the application for expediency. Raymond Paier, vice president of engineering for Westcott & Mapes, told the commission they were removed because of the need to move a security fence in order to add them to the existing lot.
The team still must apply to move the fence, Paier said at the time.
Turcio said Tweed has since submitted an application that is expected to be heard at the City Plan Commission’s December meeting.
Scanlon explained what happened further in an email Thursday.
“The project in question involves moving a fence a short distance and painting parking stripes for existing pavement, which had already been designated and used as parking for airport vehicles,” Scanlon wrote. “The project has been discussed with city officials for months and the only reason it was not approved along with the rest of our parking expansion in October was due to a technicality.
“However, due to a miscommunication among airport staff, the work began without the authority being made aware,” Scanlon wrote. “The work should not have happened when it did, and we proactively reached out to the city to get their guidance after the miscommunication occurred.
“No cars will be parked there and no further work will be done there until we receive city permission and we are working cooperatively with them now to address this issue and move forward,” he said.