ANSONIA – Plans for a private athletic complex on Olson Drive have been scrapped, the property owner said Wednesday (Jan. 7).
The owner, John Guedes, said the tenants he had lined up for the business backed out because the environmental cleanup at the site has taken years longer than expected.
“The tenants we had lined up, they just couldn’t wait any longer, and we lost all the tenants because the site is still being mitigated,” Guedes said.
Guedes is the president and CEO of The Primrose Companies, which bought the land from the city in 2022 for $510,000.
Olé Soccer, a private soccer club based out of Fairfield, was supposed to use the facility as its headquarters.
Guedes said a soccer field is still being planned for the land at 31-165 Olson Drive.
However, the redevelopment project could involve commercial and residential space instead of an athletic complex.
Former Mayor David Cassetti’s administration sold the property with the expectation it would be an athletic complex.
The athletic complex was supposed to open in March 2023, officials initially said.
Guedes said he wants to talk with new Ansonia Mayor Frank Tyszka to get input on what the administration would support at the property, which was previously owned by the Ansonia Housing Authority, which ran the federally subsidized Riverside Apartments.
“I want to give him an opportunity to be part of the upcoming discussion on this as to what we do, and then we’ll decide,” Guedes said.
Tyszka, who assumed office last month, told The Valley Indy that he wants to talk with Guedes before adopting a position on the property’s future. However, he said he was open to the idea of mixed-use residential and commercial developments.
“That’s a waterfront property. I would love to put beautiful townhouses there and do something like that. We’ll have to have discussion with (Guedes),” Tyszka said.
The property is across the street from the Naugatuck River. West Main Street is on the other side of the river.
Guedes said remediation work is ongoing, and that retaining walls and a storm drainage system were installed within the last month. He said some of the delays are due to the difficulty of coordinating work for a project funded by both private and public sources.
The remediation has been funded in part by public money from the state. That’s taxpayer money, but it doesn’t come directly from Ansonia taxpayers.
“Right now we’re just working on finishing the mitigation that was necessary for it, and we’re quite frankly still not there yet,” Guedes said. “It’s always difficult to try to execute a commitment with a tenant if you can’t commit to when the space, in this case the field, would be ready for the operation.”
Background
Beginning in 1962, the Olson Drive site was home to a federally owned apartment complex. The outdated buildings started coming down during Mayor James Della Volpe’s administration and continued under Mayor David Cassetti’s administration.
The Cassetti administration purchased the land from the Ansonia Housing Authority and sold it to Guedes for $510,000 in August 2022, a deal which included tax breaks over the next seventeen years and an agreement to rebuild Ansonia’s animal shelter.
Initial plans for the site included two buildings, at 39,000 square feet and 49,000 square feet. The buildings would have been used as private sports training centers for soccer, basketball, lacrosse, and football.
Shortly after the sale, Cassetti personally ordered the addition of 137 parking spaces along Olson Drive in anticipation of the project’s completion. They were later removed.
Environmental reviews conducted after the sale found widespread contamination on the site. The city under Cassetti stepped in to help the developer apply for state grants to aid in the cleanup. That cleanup is still ongoing.
Ansonia Democrats have criticized the sale since it was first proposed, referring to it as a “sweetheart deal” that denied valuable tax dollars to the city. Republicans have said the deal was good for the city, since the land is not otherwise producing any tax revenue.
Former elected officials, including “Team Cassetti” Republicans, have questioned the city’s continued involvement in the site years after the sports complex was supposed to be completed.