The city’s Redevelopment Agency is expected to sign off Wednesday night (Sept. 22) on a California company’s plan for downtown Derby.
The meeting is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. in the Aldermanic Chambers on the second floor of Derby City Hall at 1 Elizabeth St.
Representatives of Eclipse Development are scheduled to make a public presentation, followed by a question and answer period.
Assuming the Redevelopment Agency greenlights the concept, Eclipse will have one year to line up tenants and start construction.
The agenda for the meeting was posted online late Tuesday afternoon. It is posted at the end of this article.
Officials apparently had problems scheduling the meeting due to an illness in a family of one of the agency members.
Eclipse is expected to show the agency and the public a plan that has space for a mix of uses, including a grocery store and retail shops.
In August, members of the Redevelopment Agency met in a closed-door executive session with Paul Bernard, the vice-president of Eclipse Development Group, a company based in Irvine, Calif.
During that meeting, Bernard presented three plans to the agency. Members requested that he come back with a single plan — one that did not include a movie theater or parking garage.
Agency members were concerned the downtown redevelopment zone — the area between Route 34 and the Housatonic River near Caroline Street — would become a mass of concrete with a movie theater and parking garage.
Agency members also asked Eclipse to create a better “gateway” to the project. The plan to be unveiled Wednesday is expected to incorporate the widening of Route 34.
After last month’s executive session, Bernard took questions from the public.
Click the video to play Bernard’s public comments from the August meeting.
When asked for comment late Tuesday night, Ken Hughes, president of the Board of Aldermen and a member of the Redevelopment Agency, said he was “cautiously optimistic” about the project.
“The RDA (Redevelopment Agency) has been very diligent in listening to each and every proposal which came our way. We vetted different developers and different methods to conquer the daunting task of Downtown Redevelopment,” Hughes wrote in an e‑mail. “We are proceeding in a manner to not repeat mistakes of the past and are being cautiously optimistic that the agency will agree on a plan which is the best fit for the City of Derby.”
