Amaral Negotiations Stall—

Selectman Tells Hook & Ladder To ‘Start Looking’ For New Site

By John Voket

After hearing that Newtown Hook & Ladder members reached what they believed was a final purchase agreement for a site to build a new headquarters only to have the property owner change his mind, Selectman Will Rodgers advised volunteers to “start looking” for another parcel.

Hook & Ladder member and building committee spokesman Rob Manna, along with company President Rick Camejo, went before the Board of Selectmen on September 4 with long faces and tales of ongoing frustrations dealing with local business owner and Legislative Councilman Dan Amaral. Mr Amaral initially agreed to sell about 1.1 acres of a larger parcel across from his garage and adjacent to the Chintz-N-Prints fabric shop on South Main Street as a site for a new Hook & Ladder headquarters.

Mr Amaral said he negotiated a $400,000 selling price for the property, which contains a residential home and two vintage barns.

But according to Mr Camejo, on the day Mr Amaral was scheduled to sign a 27-page sales agreement with Hook & Ladder, “Dan changed his mind again.”

Mr Manna told the selectmen since the beginning of negotiations, Mr Amaral caused the company to run up a bill of $5,000 redrawing plans, in part, because he decided he wanted to keep the residential building on the site. The house was originally slated to be razed as part of the site’s redevelopment.

“We’ve been meeting with Danny weekly,” Mr Camejo said.

Mr Manna said the ongoing changes being requested by the property owner stymied the company’s attempts to close the deal. Among the changes initiated were “multiple revisions” to the plot plan and its “lot line drawings,” Mr Manna said. “We can’t nail down the cost of a building without a firm plan on the site.”

Mr Manna said that Mr Amaral most recently began expressing concerns about the need for possible future expansions of the fire company facility.

“We’re trying to stay within budget and he’s concerned about expansion — it’s a tight site,” Mr Manna said. “His intention [now] is to sell us the entire [parcel] with a cutout to keep his house on the rear of the property.”

First Selectman Pat Llodra reminded the volunteers that the town had committed to a three-phase capital grant to help Hook & Ladder establish its own independent headquarters. The company is currently housed in a structurally compromised garage behind Edmond Town Hall that is owned by the town.

“We thought we’d be in the second year of construction” by now, Mrs Llodra said.

Selectman and Borough Warden James Gaston said one party or the other needs to set a “drop dead” date after which Hook & Ladder could walk away from the proposal.

Mr Manna said the challenge is to find an appropriate parcel in the borough when there is an extreme premium on developable land. Mr Camejo said he has even resorted to looking at residential homes going on the market whose property might have the characteristics needed for the fire station development.

Mrs Llodra said she has had several conversations with Mr Amaral regarding the Hook & Ladder project, and “frankly, I think you reached the end of the line on this.”

“I’m sensing it’s not going to be successful for you,” Mrs Llodra said. She then pitched the volunteers to reconsider locating their headquarters on the Fairfield Hills campus.

But Mr Manna countered that developing on the town-owned site might further drive up costs because of requirements to pay prevailing wages to construction workers, and the need to establish a Hook & Ladder substation.

A substation would presumably be required to offset response time to some of the farthest neighborhoods of the fire district if the headquarters needs to move to Fairfield Hills.

Mrs Llodra then suggested the town might have to step in by eventually barring the company from continuing to use the dilapidated structure behind Edmond Town Hall. Besides offices and some use by the volunteer personnel, the current facility houses more than $1 million in town-owned fire apparatus.

“There’s no perfect option,” Mrs Llodra said. “There’s going to have to be some compromise. We have to find a way to get this done.”

The town has committed $1.5 million in capital borrowing to help the company become independent, and the Hook & Ladder funding is one of three bonding proposals that will not be affected by a one-year moratorium on bonding initiated by the Board of Finance for the current fiscal year.

After a failed attempt to build its fire station on donated land off Sugar Street behind the Newtown Police Headquarters, the company explored building in the rearmost lower lot behind Edmond Town Hall. But that site was determined to be unfeasible because it would reduce the overall number of parking spaces and would add up to $500,000 to the project to reconfigure and renovate the town hall parking area.