Nothing Is Ever Final At Fairfield Hills

We predict, taking into account the makeup of the new Fairfield Hills Management Committee appointed just last month and the inclinations of the town’s administration and land use agencies, that the town will seek to preserve much of Fairfield Hills as open space for a variety of future passive and active recreational purposes along with a mix of other possible uses, including town offices, some economic development, and perhaps even affordable housing. This prediction comes not out of a crystal ball, but out of history.

Ten years ago this month, the very first Fairfield Hills Task Force issued its “final” report, recommending precisely this list of uses. Of course we know now that that 1994 report was anything but final. The Fairfield Hills Task Force was followed by the Fairfield Hills Advisory Committee, the Fairfield Hills Selection Committee, the Fairfield Hills Master Plan Committee, and most recently the Fairfield Hills Management Committee. What we should have learned by now is that nothing is ever final when it comes to Fairfield Hills. But as we have seen, nothing ever changes much either.

In the coming weeks, Fairfield Hills will once again occupy our attention. The town’s agreement to purchase the 189-acre core campus from the state will be finalized and executed, and a team of public opinion experts from the University of Connecticut will once again assesses public preferences for the future use (or nonuse) of facilities and land to be formalized in a master plan. Once those preferences are known, the new management panel and the town’s Planning and Zoning Commission, which will ultimately regulate the use of land under its emerging Fairfield Hills Adaptive Reuse regulations, will start laying the groundwork for the first steps in the evolution of Fairfield Hills as a town-owned entity.

As the process begins again, we need to resist the temptation to settle things once and for all. More than a decade of work on the same issue is bound to lead to frustration and an impulse to get on with it — to stop ruminating and to start excavating. We have heard as much from several sources. The great value of Fairfield Hills to Newtown, however, is that its potential can easily exceed the needs of a single generation. So as the new Fairfield Hills Management Committee and the Planning and Zoning Commission go about their business once a master plan is in place, they should always remember their obligations to those generations still on the way and understand that a master plan for the 189-acre campus should permit but not require. The people of Newtown, now and in the future, should be the ones to decide what is required.

Nothing is ever final when it comes to Fairfield Hills — nor should it be.