New problems have been reported for the trouble-plagued commercial development on River Road in Shelton that late last year left a neighboring homeowner staring over a 45-foot cliff outside his back door.
Bishop Management of Shelton, LLC is building a modest strip of retail stores at 781 – 785 River Road. Turner Road, a residential neighborhood, is above River Road.
The project made headlines in March, when the Valley Indy first reported that a rock-blasting mishap took out a hillside under Turner Road resident John Wardowski’s property.
The developer installed a retaining wall to shore up the excavation site, but on Tuesday they had to get permission from the city’s Planning and Zoning Commission to extend the wall to prevent more soil from falling.
Shelton Planning and Zoning Administrator Richard Schultz assured the commissioners they had no choice.
“This has to be done. It’s a safety issue,” Schultz said.
Nevertheless, PZC member Joan Flannery voted against it. Flannery was also the only member of the commission to vote against the original approval for the project when it was proposed in 2011.
Bishop Management’s lawyer and Wardowski’s lawyer are negotiating a deal to compensate Wardowski for damages caused when that edge of the excavation pit collapsed last November.
Schultz said the lawyers are close to an agreement. He expected it would be presented to the PZC at its regular July meeting.
Bishop Management also owns the Sports Center of Shelton, located across the street from the new development.
A large section of the hillside was excavated in order to create a level spot to build the strip mall at the same level as River Road.
The collapse left the rear of Wardowski’s house less than 20 feet from the edge of a 45-foot cliff.
Bishop Management contractor Joe Grasso told the PZC on Tuesday that he expected to complete work on the retaining wall near Wardowski’s house by the end of this week and the shrubbery screen would be planted by the end of next week.
However, a new problem arose recently when workers discovered that the west side of the excavation had the same loose soil condition that caused the hillside near Wardowski’s home to collapse.
Grasso asked the commission to approve an extension of the retaining wall to keep that wall from collapsing some day in the future.
Grasso also agreed “in hindsight” that the entire problem could be blamed on the failure to perform adequate test borings to determine what the soil conditions actually were.
