Date: Fri 22-Mar-1996

Publication: Bee

Author: ANDYG

Quick Words:

DOT-garage-FHH

Full Text:

DOT Drops Plans For Garage At Fairfield Hills

B Y A NDREW G OROSKO

The state Department of Transportation (DOT) has dropped plans to build a

highway maintenance garage at Fairfield Hills, the sprawling property which

formerly housed a state psychiatric institution.

In recent years, DOT facilities planners had been considering building a

highway maintenance and storage facility on the site of the existing sewage

treatment plant at Fairfield Hills. That sewage plant will close when the

state sends wastewater generated at Fairfield Hills to a new joint town-state

sewage plant to be built at the end of Commerce Road.

The Fairfield Hills site was one of several sites in the area under

consideration for a new DOT highway maintenance building.

In a memorandum to state officials, James F. Byrnes, Jr, DOT's chief engineer

in the bureau of engineering and highway operations, writes "Due to budget

constraints, the (DOT) is no longer seeking to house its maintenance facility

at Fairfield Hills Hospital."

"The (new) facility will now be housed at the site of the existing (DOT)

Southbury maintenance facility," he adds.

The DOT's construction involvement at Fairfield Hills will be limited to the

construction of a bypass road intended to facilitate traffic flow between

Route 25 and Route 34.

The bypass road is intended, in part, to alleviate heavy truck traffic through

the town center by providing an alternate through-truck traffic route across

the Fairfield Hills grounds. Through-truck traffic is now banned there. Bypass

road construction is projected to start in the spring of 1997, at the

earliest. The projected start of construction on the bypass road has been

postponed by the DOT several times.