A Google image showing the former Ansonia Police Department.
ANSONIA — Mayor David Cassetti’s administration is exploring whether to sell the former police station on Elm Street along with a residential property and an unfinished city-owned parking lot on Platt Street to the Ansonia Housing Authority.
The police station at 2 Elm St. was vacated in October when the police department moved to new digs at 65 Main St. downtown. Next to the old police station sits 70 Platt St., a vacant, three-family house the city acquired for unpaid taxes. Next to the house is 64 Platt St., a small, unpaved parking lot that was used as overflow parking for the police department.
Corporation Counsel John Marini said the Ansonia Housing Authority is taking a look at 2 Elm St. for administrative offices. Marini said the idea is in the “feasibility stage,” meaning it’s early in the discussion process
“That’s what we’re exploring right now, for the housing authority to take that property for administrative offices and possibly something more. We are still studying what the arrangement would look like,” Marini said.
The Ansonia Housing Authority is an appointed, yet independent board that oversees federally subsidized housing.
If the Ansonia Housing Authority decides to make an offer on the properties, any deal (including the purchase price) would have to be approved by the Board of Aldermen. The discussion is not at that point yet, Marini said.
Marini said the city had been thinking of rolling the police station into a sale that is already underway between the housing authority and the City of Ansonia. That one involves the housing authority selling vacant land on Olson Drive to the city. That deal still hasn’t been closed, though it’s been talked about for a few years.
The city and the housing authority needed the department of Housing and Urban Development to remove a deed restriction that prohibited anything other than housing from being built on Olson Drive. HUD agreed.
The Primrose Companies, a Bridgeport-based developer, wants to purchase Olson Drive from Ansonia in order to build a private recreation facility on Olson Drive.
Marini said the possible sale of the police station to the housing authority – and the sale of the Olson Drive land from the housing authority to the city – are separate transactions.
“These are parallel deals, one does not rely on the other,” Marini said. “Given the requirements of HUD, it makes more sense to have a simple and clean transaction.”
