Town Wants $822K in Bond Money for Fairfield Metro Center

The town wants a $822,464 cash performance bond that had been posted by the Fairfield Metro Center developer for the first of five phases of work on a 35.5-acre property on lower Black Rock Turnpike that would include the town's third train station, from 1,300 to 1,500 parking spaces for rail commuters and nearly 1 million square feet of commercial development if fully built out.

The request for the money - meant to guarantee that work would be done in compliance with the town Inland Wetlands Commission's permit - comes after site monitor reports, which weren't publicly available before Wednesday, expressed concern over contaminated water being discharged directly into a storm drain and silt fencing between the property and adjacent Ash Creek that was "inundated by the tidal cycle" of the creek.

The town, a co-applicant on the Metro Center project, isn't seeking the cash performance bond from the Inland Wetlands Commission because it foresees a potential deficit on the Metro Center's budget, according to First Selectman Ken Flatto. Flatto on Wednesday said the town normally doesn't post a cash performance bond for town projects and is simply finding a home for the money that Kurt Wittek, a managing director of Blackrock Realty, LLC, the Metro Center's private developer, turned over in February 2008 as a guarantee that work required by the commission's permit would be done.

"There's not normally a town bond for town projects," Flatto said, adding that the money was no longer Blackrock Realty, LLC's money since the town assumed control over work Blackrock Realty was supposed to do on public portions of the 21 Black Rock Turnpike site. Flatto said the money was held in the same town bank account, regardless of whether it was under control of the town or Inland Wetlands Commission.

The commission on Thursday will vote on whether to release the cash performance bond to the town, which is one of three co-applicants on the Metro Center project. Blackrock Realty, LLC and the state Department of Transportation are the other co-applicants. The commission's meeting is at 7:45 p.m. in Sullivan-Independence Hall.

The total estimate needed in cash performance bonds for the wetlands work, which includes four subsequent phases, was estimated at $3.34 million by Blackrock Realty and the town on the cash performance bond form. The $822,464 was to be held so the Inland Wetlands Commission could fund the work if it wasn't done to the commission's satisfaction. The $822,434 for the first phase was envisioned to be rolled over for the second phase if work in Phase 1 was done to the commission's satisfaction, according to the cash performance bond form" for Phase 1.

The cost of the following four phases of wetlands work was estimated by the town and Blackrock Realty at $807,602, $819,639, $833,559 and $54,942. The town apparently wouldn't post performance bonds for those phases if the commission agrees with Flatto's assessment that it's not necessary.

The co-applicants back in April announced that a deal had been struck to advance the Metro Center project after it was in limbo for about two years due to Blackrock Realty's financial difficulties. The deal called for the state to provide $19.4 million for work on public portions of the site ($300,000 of that amount was in services to be performed), for Blackrock Realty to provide $5.2 million and for the town to allocate $5 million from a $6 million funding request approved by town boards several years ago.

Flatto said the project was running under budget and that the $822,464 would be the last money spent on the site. "In the big picture, there's not huge change orders. Right now, the project is $2 million under budget. If things work out in the end, the town may end up spending much less than expected," Flatto said. "We're in pretty good shape, but...there's always bound to be things."

Site monitor reports based on visits to the property after Aug. 10 and 11 weren't available in the Metro Center file in the town's Zoning Department Wednesday, though Mark Barnhart, director of the town's Office of Community & Economic Development, provided six subsequent reports to Fairfield Patch at the request of Flatto's office. The Metro Center property is contaminated with casting sand from when the Bullard Co. foundry operated on the site and also has areas with PCBs. The casting sand would be pushed around the site for grading purposes and then capped with clean soil, a membrane and asphalt, while the PCB-contaminated areas would have to be removed from the site.

The second earliest of those six site monitor reports says silt fencing by Ash Creek was inundated by the creek and indicated that dewatering wastewater had been discharged directly into a storm drain, which Redniss & Mead and William Kenny Associates, LLC, two site monitors on the project, expressed alarm about in all capital letters on one of the reports. "DO NOT DISCHARGE PUMPS INTO THE STORM DRAIN" and "DEWATERING WASTEWATER SHOULD NOT BE DISCHARGED DIRECTLY TO THE STORM DRAIN" the report says, adding that dewatering discharges and protocol should be reviewed by Loureiro Engineering Associates, another site monitor, and contractors involved with that work should be notified of requirements of discharge permits and informed of appropriate protocol.

Redniss & Mead's and William Kenny Associates' report, based off a site visit on Aug. 23, said there was cloudy water discharging from a storm drain and that a boom was in place downstream of the discharge.

A resident who lives nearby the Metro Center property provided a photo, taken on Aug. 23, to Fairfield Patch that shows a section of silt fencing inundated by Ash Creek.

Flatto's office is responsible for putting the site monitor reports in the Metro Center file, but Flatto wasn't among town officials cc'd on the six site monitor reports missing from the file on Wednesday. Town officials who were cc'd were Barnhart, Town Attorney Richard Saxl, Inland Wetlands Commission Chairman Stanton Lesser, Inland Wetlands Commission Vice Chairman Milan Bull and Gary Weddle, the town's wetlands compliance officer on the project.