ANSONIA — The Ansonia Board of Aldermen voted unanimously on Tuesday to sell about 8 acres on Olson Drive to a private developer for $510,000.
The new owner (once the closing happens), Primrose Companies Realty LLC, intends to build a sports complex on the land, which straddles both sides of High Street. Primrose intends to build a 39,000-square foot indoor soccer facility and an outdoor soccer field, along with a NCAA-regulation size indoor skating rink.
The company is expected to submit a site plan to the Ansonia Planning and Zoning Commission to review as soon as possible, according to Sheila O’Malley, the city’s economic development director and grant writer.
The Aldermen also approved a “tax incentive” at the property that freezes the property’s current assessment of $2 million for three years, meaning the city will not collect more than about $75,000 in taxes per year for the first three years. After three years, the assessment will increase 5 percent a year for 14 years.
The city has not collected taxes on the property since 1962 because the land on Olson Drive was owned until April by the Ansonia Housing Authority, which, as a government agency, did not pay taxes.
Primrose will build and manage the property, and lease spaces to other, private recreation businesses. The new businesses will not replace Nolan Field or any other existing Ansonia-owned athletic field in the city. The finished product will not be owned or controlled or used exclusively by the City of Ansonia, its teams, the school district, or local recreation leagues. A private soccer business — Ole Soccer — has already been named as the first tenant.
However, the deal approved by the Aldermen gives Ansonia residents a 10 percent discount at any programs offered at the new sports complex, which members of Mayor David Cassetti’s administration compared to The Sports Center of Connecticut and its affiliated business, The Rinks at Shelton.
In addition, the property owner has to make the place available for some 10 Ansonia events a year, according to corporation counsel John Marini, whether it be for concerts, gatherings or certain sporting events.
Mayor Cassetti said the new sports complex will complement a resurging Ansonia downtown, where there are new restaurants, businesses, a police station, improved rail service, and hundreds of new apartments coming online. Marini said the sports complex will bring new people to Ansonia, such as soccer teams using the facility for tournaments. That benefits Ansonia businesses. Most importantly, the redevelopment project will bring new tax revenue and jobs to an economically-distressed city, officials said.
Ansonia officials in attendance included (left to right, front row) corporation counsel John Marini, Mayor David Cassetti, Economic Development Director Sheila O'Malley and Alderman Joe Jeanette, Jr.
The Aldermen held two public hearings on the project Tuesday. The public hearings were on the tax incentive and the “land disposition agreement” between the city and Primrose, which is based in Bridgeport and headed by John Guedes.
The first public hearing lasted roughly one hour and 14 minutes and featured about 18 speakers. There were 66 people in attendance.
Of the 18 speakers, nine opposed the sale to Primrose, five supported the sale, and four speakers were somewhere in between.
Olson Drive was home to the Riverside Apartments, a federally-subsidized housing complex dating back to 1962. It started with 11 apartment buildings on the site. A community center was next to the housing.
Resident Lydia Douglas said affordable housing should return to Olson Drive, but that people renting apartments should have some type of path to ownership.
“Ansonia is not just made up of rich people who like sports. It’s made up of all kinds of people,” Douglas said.
Bart Flaherty, the former chairman of the Ansonia Planning and Zoning Commission, said the city should consider turning the land into a city green. He pointed out that with hundreds of apartments coming to nearby Main Street, a dedicated green space would make downtown Ansonia that much more attractive.
Any use of the property should be for the public, Flaherty said, not for the benefit of wealthy soccer clubs from Fairfield County.
Two speakers questioned the financial sustainability of a sports complex, and predicted the venture would result in failure.
Ansonia resident Matt McGowan expresses his opposition to the sale of public land to a private developer.
Others who spoke in opposition said the city was selling the land at a cheap price, while also showering the developer with a sweet deal on taxes.
John Feddern, the chairman of the Ansonia Democratic Town Committee, said the city wasn’t following its own rules when it comes to selling city land. He said the property should have been put out to bid. Instead, the city steered the land toward one preferred developer, Feddern said.
Ansonia Democrats handed out a flyer saying the city skipped multiple steps spelled out in the Ansonia City Charter, such as getting an appraisal after the city’s planning and zoning commission said they didn’t oppose selling the land. The flyer correctly predicted the Aldermen would vote to authorize the sale.
Thomas Egan, a local lawyer representing Ansonia Matt McGowan in a lawsuit against the city trying to stop the sale, said the process the city followed wasn’t proper.
“Everything is out of order,” Egan said.
One Hubbell Avenue resident called for an investigation into the city’s dealings regarding the Olson Drive land sale.
But others, such as resident Lou Schwartz, said Ansonia’s mill rate is dangerously high. Schwartz said he was on a fixed income, and that the city should be doing all it can to encourage economic development.
“Ansonia is starved for redevelopment, or development,” Schwartz said.
Gary Farrar, Jr., the former head of the Ansonia Democrats who is now a Republican, said the effort to improve Olson Drive had bi-partisan support starting over a decade ago.
The city is heading in the right direction, Farrar said, and a new sports complex will help.
“It’s here. Let’s move on it. Let’s get it done,” Farrar said.
About 66 people attended the meeting, which was held in the Ansonia Armory.
Resident Joseph Arruda said he was a soccer dad in Ansonia while his two daughters were growing up. They often traveled around the region to play at facilities such as the one Ansonia is now getting. The new complex will bring people, and that will benefit nearby businesses such as restaurants and gas stations, Arruda said.
“I think it’s a great idea,” he said.
Ansonia soccer coach Stephen Kish said facilities like the one coming to Olson Drive are in great demand. He said he’s been to similar facilities in Bethany and Trumbull.
“They are busy. They are constantly busy,” Kish said.
After the public hearings ended, the Aldermen held a meeting in which they voted to approve the sale.
However, before doing so Alderman Tony Mammone read a complicated motion into the record.
The motion seemed to be written specifically to fight back against procedural issues raised by Ansonia Democrats and raised in a lawsuit currently pending accusing the city of not following the rules.
The motion had the Aldermen “acknowledge” that a section of the Ansonia Code that spells out the procedure to sell city property was “inapplicable” to the Olson Drive transaction due to the unusual steps the city had to take to buy the land from the Ansonia Housing Authority — circumstances completely unique to the Olson Drive transaction, officials said.
Specifically, the unusual steps included the fact that the Cassetti administration and the Ansonia Housing Authority had to convince the federal department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to allow Olson Drive to be sold to the city for $510,000. HUD was involved because the Ansonia Housing Authority is under HUD jurisdiction. The price was the fair market value for the property, accepted by the city and HUD.
In addition, the motion took the extra step of saying that if any “reviewing authority” (such as a court) decides that similar sections of the Ansonia City Code (or the Ansonia City Charter) actually do apply to the Olson Drive transaction, then the Aldermen officially waive such sections.
The last-minute legalese didn’t sit well with Alderman Steven Adamowski, who noted the motion was not included in the legislative packet for the meeting — meaning the public didn’t get a chance to see the motion before it was read into the record by Mammone. He abstained from voting while the rest of the board voted “yes.“
The motion highlighted just how complicated the Olson Drive issue has been in Ansonia, going back some 20 years.
A video of the motion is below. Article continues below.
A Complicated History
The old Riverside apartments opened in 1962, but, according to previous Valley Indy interviews with Ansonia police department leaders and residents, became riddled with crime when crack cocaine became popular in the 1980s and 1990s.
By the year 2000, 44 percent of the serious crime happening in Ansonia — murder, assault, drug crimes, robbery, rape — was happening on Olson Drive. There were 148 arrests at Riverside that year.
A combination of efforts from law enforcement, schools, city government, the Ansonia Housing Authority, and social services chipped away at the crime rate around the Riverside Apartments. By 2010, there were 13 arrests there, down significantly from 10 years prior.
Mayor James Della Volpe’s administration worked through the 2000s to see the Riverside Apartments torn down. The buildings were in disrepair, and the 60s-era planning and architecture at Riverside was conducive to crime.
Demolition started in 2009 — after voters approved a $5.2 demolition bond in 2006 — and continued in phases for years.
The video below is from 2016.
That effort to get rid of Riverside included a series of negotiations between Ansonia city government, the Ansonia Housing Authority and the federal department of Housing and Urban Development. HUD had told the city and the local housing authority for years that replacement housing had to be included in any redevelopment plan.
In 2012, 48 replacement units were scheduled to be built, as required by HUD.
In 2014, Mayor Cassetti announced plans for a new police station, a community center and the promised housing for Olson Drive.
In November 2016, voters approved borrowing $12 million for a new police station on Olson Drive.
In April 2017, the Cassetti administration announced the Olson Drive plans had been discarded, and that a new police station would go to 65 Main St. instead.
In September 2019, Primrose Companies responded to a “request for proposals” from the Cassetti administration, who were now hoping to bring a tax-paying recreational use to Olson Drive. The Cassetti administration, seeing Guedes’ project as a way to expand the tax base and add jobs, have been supporting the project since 2019.
However, the City of Ansonia had no control over the land in 2019 because it was owned by the Ansonia Housing Authority, an independent body under HUD.
The Cassetti administration launched a long series of negotiations with the housing authority and HUD to convince HUD to allow the housing authority to sell the property to the city.
In 2022 HUD allowed the Ansonia Housing Authority to “dispose” of Olson Drive.
A February 2021 letter from HUD states that replacement housing from Riverside Drive had been scattered throughout the city — and that the Olson Drive floodplain now made getting financing for affordable housing at the site an impossibility due to costs.
HUD’s February 2021 letter mentions that the city “intends to build a recreational facility available for all community members.“
However, a HUD spokesperson repeatedly told The Valley Indy HUD did not “require” recreation on the site.
HUD’s concern was that the land not be used for something it deems “harmful” to low-income residents, such as building high-end condos on the site (after forcing out low-income residents and bulldozing their apartments).
“The housing at Riverside was obsolete: the site was in a floodplain (in which case affordable housing could not be built using low-income housing tax credits to build on the property), so the proposed use seemed fine in this case,” Christine A. Baumann, a HUD spokesperson, said in a June 24 email to The Valley Indy.
The Cassetti administration has taken issue with HUD’s assertion, saying that while recreation may not have been in the formal written approval allowing the housing authority to sell the land, there is no way HUD would have said yes unless the city went into details about the property’s future to make sure it was something HUD liked.
The $510,000 the city paid to the housing authority is being used by the housing authority to acquire housing units elsewhere in Ansonia. The city will recoup its payment now that Primrose has agreed to pay the city $510,000 for the land.
