Danbury approves $1.5 million contractor’s building on Bethel border
DANBURY — City planners approved blueprints by a family-owned pool contractor to build a $1.5 million construction facility on the Bethel border, on the condition that the 2-acre site is kept screened and tidy.
The approval by Danbury’s Planning Commission this past week for Nejame & Sons means the 100-year-old family business can move much of its pool fabrication work indoors once the 7,000square-foot facility is built.
In exchange for approval, the city required the family-owned business to build an 8-foot stockade fence to screen the construction yard from public view, and to keep the yard tidy by placing all building materials in bins at the back of the property.
“The outdoor storage, which is the bulk of the special exception uses the commission is approving,
needs to be screened,” said Jennifer Emminger, Danbury’s deputy planning director, during a Planning Commission meeting on Thursday. “We want that to happen immediately and we want those storage bins in immediately to have a more organized site with respect to all those storage materials.”
Emminger is referring to plans by the family to expand its 1,000-squarefoot shop at 44 Payne Road with a new facility that would be used for carpentry, stone-cutting, sheet metal work, and the repair of company equipment and trucks. The site would also be used to mix cement, to store building materials and to park vehicles.
The company, which got its start here in 1921, will keep its headquarters at 91 South St., said Tom Nejame Sr., a third-generation co-owner.
The city’s approval closes a chapter for the family business that started in 2009 with the approval of an 11,000-square-foot building on the Payne Road site that was never built because of the slow economy.
Business was booming before the coronavirus crisis in early 2020.
With the worst of the epidemic in the past, business has started to pick up again, Nejame said this summer, in part because “people are are sick of traveling with all these restricted conditions,” and they are “starting to look at their back yards and saying, ‘I’m going to enjoy myself right here.’”
Before the Planning Commission granted its approval this week, members wanted to be sure all the concerns from the public hearing this summer were addressed.
As such, the family’s operation “shall be restricted to no more than one masonry saw blade and one cement mixer with a drum not to exceed a capacity of nine cubic feet,” and “cement mixer trucks, except which are necessary for the construction of the proposed building, are prohibited on the site,” according to a Planning Commission resolution.
The five-member board gave its unanimous approval.
“Gentlemen, your project is approved,” said Joel Urice, the commission’s vice chairman.