The City of Ansonia posted this image to Facebook in May to promote the idea of selling public land for a private sports complex on Olson Drive.
ANSONIA — Three meetings are scheduled for Tuesday about long-discussed plans to sell land on Olson Drive.
City officials are considering selling about 8 acres of city-owned land to Primrose Companies Realty, LLC for $510,000. The land used to be home to the Riverside Apartments, a federally-subsidized housing complex.
Primrose wants to develop a private sports complex. That complex could include a 39,000-square foot indoor soccer facility and outdoor soccer field, along with a NCAA-regulation size indoor skating rink. Correction: no skating rink is planned.
Formal plans have yet to be submitted to the city’s planning and zoning department. That’ll happen if the city approves the deal with Primrose.
John Guedes, the principal of the Bridgeport-based Primrose Companies, said the facility will cost at least $15 million.
ZOOM AT FIVE
The first of three public meetings related to the sale is scheduled to be held on Zoom starting at 5 p.m. Tuesday, according to the city’s website and messages exchanged with corporation counsel John Marini.
That 5 p.m. Zoom hearing will be held in front of the city’s tax incentive review committee.
Assuming you’ve downloaded Zoom, the Zoom ID for the meeting is 835 7996 5956. The passcode is 577381.
Marini said the tax incentive review committee includes the mayor, along with the city’s economic development director, a member of the city’s planning and zoning commission, and a member of the Board of Aldermen.
(An agenda for the 5 p.m. online meeting was not posted online as of 11 a.m. Monday — but it was online as of 12:30 p.m., after The Valley Indy alerted the city. An earlier version of the meeting’s description on the city website described the meeting as a public hearing, but it’s just a regular meeting, according to the agenda.)
The agenda says the 5 p.m. meeting’s purpose is for the tax incentive review committee to review the tax break the city is considering as part of the effort to sell Olson Drive. The committee will decide whether to recommend the tax incentive deal with Primrose Companies Realty LLC to the Board of Aldermen.
The incentive is embedded below and is also on the city’s website.
Ansonia-Primrose Tax Incentive by The Valley Indy
TWO PUBLIC HEARINGS
According to a legal notice from the city, a public hearing is scheduled to start at 6 p.m. at the Ansonia Armory at 5 State St. This hearing is scheduled to happen in front of the Ansonia Board of Aldermen. Please note the meeting is in person, not on Zoom.
The 6 p.m. public hearing is on the sale of the property itself. The city posted sale documents on its website.
The 6 p.m. public hearing is the public’s chance to go on the record about their thoughts on what the city is doing.
At 6:30 p.m. the Aldermen are scheduled to hold a public hearing on the tax incentive portion of the real estate deal. The purpose of this hearing is to hear from the public. The 6:30 p.m. meeting is also scheduled to take place in-person, at the Armory.
Finally, the Ansonia Board of Aldermen are scheduled to meet at 7 p.m. (also at the Armory). According to an agenda listed online for the 7 p.m. meeting, the city’s legislative body could formally approve the Olson Drive deal during that meeting. The Olson Drive issue is listed twice on the agenda, including a possible executive session, a type of meeting closed to the public but allowed under state law to talk about real estate transactions.
Mayor David Cassetti’s administration has been pushing for this project for several years. His administration purchased the land from the Ansonia Housing Authority. The Ansonia Housing Authority was given a green light to sell the property by the federal department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
The Cassetti administration says a recreation complex on Olson Drive will expand the city’s tax base and bring jobs to Ansonia, an economically distressed city. The Cassetti administration has overseen a rebirth on Main Street, with a number of new restaurants and hundreds of housing units coming online. The sports complex is a natural complement to what’s happening on nearby Main Street.
However, the process by which the Cassetti administration acquired and is now selling the land on Olson Drive has been criticized by some in the city, including Ansonia Democrats.
Essentially, the argument is that the Cassetti administration intended to sell this land to The Primrose Companies from the get go, a move that stiff-armed other potential buyers and input from the public. Click here for a previous Valley Indy story.
John Feddern, the chairman of the Ansonia Town Democratic Committee, wrote a letter to The Valley Indy on June 22 saying the Cassetti administration circumvented the Ansonia City Charter in an effort to get the deal done.
Feddern previously told The Valley Indy the Cassetti administration is holding a cascade of meetings at the last minute so they can claim they followed the rules. The public input should have happened sooner, Feddern said.
Matt McGowan, an Ansonia resident, is suing the city on the grounds the administration did not follow state and local rules when it comes to selling public land. Click here for a previous Valley Indy story.
His lawyer filed a motion to pause the approval of the sale while his lawsuit is pending. However, a Superior Court judge denied the motion on July 8. The overall case is still pending.
