For returning official, things look different in Preston
Back for a visit, Ewing marvels at changes to Norwich Hospital site
Preston — When Sandy Ewing was chairwoman of the Preston Redevelopment Agency, she knew the former Norwich Hospital property intimately, its decaying buildings, spooky tunnels, cracked pavement and overgrown fields.
But returning to Preston for the first time in six years Tuesday, Ewing was lost. She scheduled a meeting with current PRA Chairman Sean Nugent at the site to get caught up on the progress and hear about the Mohegan Gaming and Entertainment plans to develop a giant entertainment and sports resort complex there.
Ewing was just starting to direct her husband, Jim, where to turn to meet Nugent in what used to be the entrance road next to the Kettle Building.
“I said ‘You turn ... what the hell? Where’s the building,’” Ewing said a few minutes after arriving at the site to meet Nugent and First Selectman Robert Congdon.
She could say that about dozens of sites where buildings stood during her tenure as the second chairperson of the agency charged with leading the town’s monumental task of cleaning up the property and finding a developer.
Ewing resigned in 2011 when she and her husband moved to Bluffton, S.C. They stopped back in town to visit relatives this past week. She said occasionally, she will do an internet search for “Norwich Hospital” or “Preston Riverwalk,” the name chosen by the agency to market the property. She read about the initial agreement with the Mohegans in The Day in May 2016.
Ewing recalled the early difficulty with the Kettle Building, one of the largest buildings on the sprawling 390-acre campus. It was so big and would cost so much to clean and demolish that the agency had to keep putting it off.
“I remember we had trouble getting the Kettle building down, because whenever we got a grant, they (the granting agency) wanted us to finish something,” Ewing said. “The Kettle would cost so much, we couldn’t do it.”
She turned to Nugent: “How did you do it?”
Nugent handed Ewing a map of the campus that showed the demolished buildings and explained how after
receiving several smaller state and federal grants, the town eventually obtained a $1 million state Urban Act grant and made major progress on the demolition.
In all, Preston received $19.4 million in state grants and loans, $2.2 million in federal grants and contributed $2.4 million in local town funds as matching shares, for a combined total of $24 million to clean and demolish buildings, the tunnel network that had snaked through the property connecting buildings, and even to remove old fuel tanks.
Demolition contractor Manafort Bros. Inc. raised another $2 million in scrap value, completing the estimated $26 million cleanup cost. The town secured an additional $2 million “just in case” contingency loan from the state Department of Economic and Community Development if unexpected contamination is found in the final 15 months of cleanup now underway, but officials hope never to need that money.
Nugent and Congdon brought Ewing on a driving tour of the property. The town will demolish just one more building, leaving the last several structures to Mohegan Gaming and Entertainment to demolish or try to save as part of its development plan.
There was no Mohegan Gaming and Entertainment proposal in the wings when Ewing led the PRA in the tumultuous early days. Developers with dubious development plans came and went, as did some frustrated PRA members.
A cellphone conversation with one of those developers came suddenly to Ewing’s mind this past week as she approached the region on Route 2 from the Hartford area. She remembered the exact spot on the road when a developer whose plan was rejected by the town called and threatened her.
“I said ‘That sounds like a threat!’” Ewing recalled. “He said, ‘You’d better damn well believe it’s a threat.’”