City reps to consider property acquisition
Officials say home is needed to make way for trafficeasing projects
STAMFORD — The Board of Representatives will consider a resolution that calls for the acquisition of a Pulaski Street property after the matter failed to gain approval at the committee level, indicating a potentially difficult fight ahead.
Members of the board’s Land Use and Urban Redevelopment Committee debated for three hours this week whether to recommend the resolution, which would allow the city to enter into negotiations for 21 Pulaski St., a threestory house on the north side of the street — a process that could end in an attempt to seek the property by claim of eminent domain if negotiations fail. In the end the committee members voted 44.
As a result of the tie vote, the motion to recommend failed. The resolution moves on anyway to the full board, which will consider the matter at its Dec. 2 meeting.
City officials have proposed plans a decade in the making to improve Pulaski Street and Washington Boulevard in order to ease congestion problems. Work would involve constructing a roundabout at the intersection of Greenwich Avenue, Davenport Street and Pulaski Street in Waterside; and widening parts of Pulaski Street and Washington Boulevard in the South End.
Lesperance’s home stands smack in the middle of the two plans, Pulaski Street the connecting corridor between Waterside and the South End.
Increasing the road space on the boulevard would require a partial take of 256 and 274 Washington Blvd.
But when it comes to changing Pulaski Street, plans call for the full take 21 Pulaski through negotiations or eminent domain. The possibility of the latter has concerned a number of representatives.
Transportation, Traffic and Parking Bureau Chief Jim Travers said that the traffic improvement project is a way to solve what many in the community have told him is a major issue, namely congestion and safety.
Land Use Committee members who voted to recommend the resolution argued it was a way to start the process of negotiations for the residence, a process that would be safeguarded through various mechanisms and would still have to be acted upon by the Board of Representatives.
Rep. Virgil De la Cruz, who represents Waterside, said he was in favor of addressing the traffic issues in the neighborhood.
“This is the process that gets a conversation going,” De la Cruz said, noting that good faith negotiations with the property owner would be the first step. “So, understanding that I have to balance the interest of thousands of people on their safety, I have to vote yes to let the process begin.”
Those representatives against the resolution, however, said the threat of eminent domain was unfair to the property owner, Roland Lesperance, who has lived there for more than four decades.
Rep. Nina Sherwood, D8, said her vote on the resolution wasn’t against the traffic project but against wielding eminent domain to alleviate traffic congestion due to development in the area.
Representatives Bradley Michelson, De la Cruz, Benjamin Lee and Bob Lion voted in favor of recommending approval of the resolution. Representatives Sherwood, Annie Summerville, Megan Cottrell and Anzelmo Graziosi voted against it.
Almost two dozen people attended the committee meeting, including Lesperance, who was with his wife and son.
Lesperance said he felt “good” about the vote and that he would attend next week’s Board of Representatives meeting.
The street widening is expected to cost $1.9 million and would be paid by Charter Communications, a company who is building its new headquarters on Washington Boulevard. The company has agreed to cover the costs if the project can be undertaken before it obtains its certificate of occupancy, expected to be around 2022.
Travers noted that while a decision to continue with the traffic improvement plan isn’t easy, it’s meant to help alleviate congestion issues in Waterside and the South End.
“We tried to make the best decision we could for the residents of the city,” Travers said at Monday night’s meeting. “It’s hard but I have to weigh a presentation to you that has a benefit to thousands of people, and if you don’t feel that’s the right thing to do, then you vote no and I move on to the next project.”