Town loses grant but plans to see project through

The good news is that the City Meadow project, which would transform the sunken wetland below Station Place into a public park, finally got the green light from Connecticut’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.

The bad news is that, coming on April 8, the approval doesn’t leave the town enough time to construct the park before the state’s funding deadline. The Main Street grant of $500,000 can only be awarded if the work is completed by September of this year.

“With DEEP’s approval coming so late, there is no possible way to get construction completed by September 5,” said Molly Ackerly, chairman of the City Meadow Committee.

The project would have to be put out to bid to contractors, a process that in itself takes 30 days, and approval from the town’s Inland/Wetland and Planning and Zoning Commissions is still needed.

“We have lost the grant,” says Pete Anderson, a member of the City Meadow Committee.

Both Ackerly and Anderson are confident that the money can be raised privately. ”The town doesn’t have the money to do this,” says Ackerly. “But tying the town center together is an important goal, and we are confident that we will find like-minded people who will be willing to help fund the project.”

The present plan calls for a staircase from Station Place down to the meadow, through a breach in the low stone wall along the north side of John J. Curtiss Road. A series of platforms,, built on pilings,would punctuate the stairs.

A small parking lot would be created on the grassy space just north of Haystack Pizza, with a wheelchair-access ramp leading down to walkways and a watercourse in the meadow. There would be further access from Shepard Road.

First Selectman Sue Dyer has been advised by the state’s grant administrator, Dimple Desai, to ask for an extension, given that the delay was basically not the town’s fault. “They might take pity on you,” he said.

—Wiley Wood