Trudon property decision needed, mayor says

Five years after the city bought the former Trudon & Platt Trucking property on Downs Street, officials may be ready to decide its fate.

“The time has come to make a decision” about what to do with the decrepit former trucking terminal near the eastern end of Memorial Boulevard, said Mayor Art Ward.

Ward said the site, which borders the Pequabuck River, has “a lot of potential.”

When the city bought the former blight target in 2003, officials had no solid plan for the site. They talked, though, about the possibility of handing it over to the park department and creating a fishing area for handicapped people on the property. A farmer’s market might also find a home on the site, they said at the time.

But since then, the city has done little with the site. It’s long-term project list includes nothing for the future there, either.

Park Director Ed Swicklas said recently that it will probably remain as it is for the time being.

Ward said, though, that it’s a visible and interesting piece of property that shouldn’t just languish.

He said it needs to be cleaned up completely in order to make it look enticing. Returning it to its natural state is a likely option.

Ward said that he is anxious to hear ideas and suggestions from the public about how best to utilize the property.

“It might require a public-private partnership,” the mayor said, to get the massive concrete trucking platforms demolished.

Last year’s Pequabuck River Watershed Management Plan said the city could create a trout park near Downs Street and make a handicapped fishing area from the former trucking company site.

The Trudon & Platt Trucking firm operated on the site from the 1920s until a Teamsters strike put the independent trucking company out of business in the mid-1970s.

The trucking property was the soon-to-be-defunct Blight Committee’s top target a decade ago.

It forced the owner to clean up rusting trailers, graffiti-covered walls and much more, after socking him with more than $6,000 worth of fines that were ultimately waived.

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Copyright 2008. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

Pedestrian bridge remains stalled...

A plan to put a pedestrian bridge across the Pequabuck River near the Veterans Tribute Walkway remains stalled in the hands of state and federal regulators.
City officials say they’re frustrated at the lack of action by the state Department of Environmental Protection and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in approving the permits needed before work can get underway on the project.
Mayor Art Ward said he’ll ask U.S. Rep. John Larson, the East Hartford Democrat whose 1st District includes Bristol, to push for an expedited review of the application.
The goal of the project is to put up an 80-foot long pedestrian bridge that would span the river between a city-owned parking lot on Riverside Avenue and Memorial Boulevard. It would allow easier access to the memorials and monuments along the historic parkway.
Public works officials said years ago they did not expect much trouble with regulatory agencies because the bridge abutments on both sides would be located outside the river’s channel. The bridge walkway would be more than 3 feet higher than the expected flood crest of the worst storm in a century, according to permit paperwork.
Jonathan Rosenthal, the city’s economic development director, said that a city projects review last spring put off the allocation of about $400,000 for the project.
The city applied for the permits a year and a half ago.
The city used downtown revitalization money to acquire the Riverside Avenue property for $179,000 during Mayor Frank Nicastro’s tenure in 2002 and tapped Community Development Block Grant aid to pay the $43,000 demolition fee to knock down the old Hubbard & Co. Feeds & Fertilizer building there in 2003.
Offiials planned to construct the pre-fabricated walking bridge over the Pequabuck and to use the former Hubbard’s Florist shop on the site for handicapped-accessible bathrooms, meeting space and perhaps more.
The demolition of the old barn on the 296 Riverside Ave. property was former Mayor Gerard Couture’s first major action at the helm at City Hall. The day it came down, in November 2003, Couture said he would push the project through quickly.
"It’s going to really put the icing on the cake to the Boulevard," Couture said at the time.
Now, more than four years later, nothing has happened with the property, though the city has brushed off a few developers with an interest in it.
Rosenthal said that he anticipates that someday it will become park property.

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Copyright 2008. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com