Shelton Aldermen voted Feb. 26 to spend up to about $8,000 to evaluate a city-owned property they might swap with a developer to improve traffic flow downtown.
The property, a 1.5‑acre lot known as the Rolfite Site, is immediately south of the Spongex building — the L‑shaped brick building parallel to the Derby-Shelton bridge.
Developer John Guedes, the CEO of the Primrose Companies, plans to renovate the Spongex building into apartments. Last month he made a proposal to a committee of Aldermen to trade him the Rolfite land in exchange for his company building a new road between the two properties.
Click the play button above to see Guedes talking about the project with Aldermen last month.
Click here to read more about Guedes’ proposal from a previous story.
Aldermen voted unanimously Feb. 26 to spend up to $2,800 for a survey of the Rolfite site and up to $5,000 for an appraisal of it.
Mayor Mark Lauretti said during the meeting that he is negotiating a deal with Guedes but needs an appraisal of the property “so that we can have a clear and transparent discussion” of the values of the properties involved.
“During our discussions, we were trying to assess the value and to establish a number that would allow us to effectively act in getting the road in a swap for the property,” Lauretti said. “The first step is we want to evaluate it and we’re going to need some professional services to do that.”
Guedes told Aldermen the deal would benefit traffic flow downtown and help continue the redevelopment of the Canal Street area.
The article continues after plans Guedes handed out to Aldermen during the meeting.
“This basically would benefit the ability to develop the site and at the same time provide a proper roadway system in that area,” he told Aldermen.
Lauretti said it makes sense to develop both parcels as one.
“In order for both these properties to be developed, you need the two of them,” Lauretti said. “There’s no access to the Rolfite site. The border to one side is a river, the border to one side is the Spongex property, and the border to the third site is the railroad.”
What Parking Problem?
Guedes said the Rolfite property would also be used to accommodate parking for apartment tenants.
There would be two spaces per apartment in the Spongex building and five spaces per thousand square feet in the commercial building, he said in response to a question from Alderman John Papa.
In addition, he pointed out, the city is in the process of foreclosing on the nearby Chromium Process Co. property with a view to replacing the dilapidated factory with a 60-space parking lot and extending Center Street through part of the site.
Lauretti said he “respectfully disagreed” with those who say there’s a parking problem downtown.
“I’ve never believed that,” he said. “The convenience of parking is not always what people want, but there is a very fair amount of parking in the downtown areas, and that’s another thing the city has worked over the last 20 years to try to accommodate.”
He pointed to the lot between Coram Avenue and Howe Avenue near the post office as one example.
“If you look at any successful place on the planet, they’re busy,” Lauretti said. “At any certain time there may never be enough parking. That’s a good thing. When people tell me there’s a parking problem, I disagree with that.
“When you go to a mall at Christmastime, do you get to park in front of the store that you want to go to? Don’t you have to park in a lot and walk a pretty fair distance to get to your location?” the added. “Well that’s the way this works.
“In the big picture, we’d be doing the downtown a disservice by saying we have a parking problem,” Lauretti went on. “Any time that we have approved a new type of development or activity, there’s always been additional parking to accommodate that.
“We have a fitness problem,” John Anglace, the president of the Board of Aldermen, joked. “Our parking downtown is designed with fitness in mind.”
