The town’s attempts to divest itself of some properties, such as 3 Main Street, Kent and Shelton Houses at Fairfield Hills, and the Batchelder property, have all been continuing sagas going back years — in the case of the Batchelder property, 40 years.

Every so often, we hear updates on the town’s attempts to sell these properties or otherwise get them off the town’s inventory and back onto the tax rolls.

At the February 17 Board of Selectmen meeting, we heard some interesting developments on all three — whether that means the town is any closer to getting those properties on the tax rolls or not remains to be seen.

3 Main Street, which is the former town hall and police station, has been placed with a commercial real estate agent. This is a change from the town’s previous tactic, which was to attempt to sell the property on its own. While the last several first selectmen have reported interest in the property, it never coalesced into an actual sale. Hopefully a broker can get the property before a wider marketplace and finally get the building out of town hands.

First Selectman Bruce Walczak announced an interesting development in the sale of the Batchelder property, that there is a buyer willing to purchase the property and remediate it themselves. The buyer would add roughly ten feet of dirt over the 12 acre property to “cap it off,” according to Walczak. As part of the agreement, Newtown would have first right of refusal “if we wanted to buy the property back for some reason.”

“It’s an interesting proposition, with no cost to the town to get the property off our hands and onto the tax rolls,” said Walczak.

The aluminum smelting site at 44-46 Swamp Road has been abandoned since 1987. It is a brownfield, or industrially contaminated property, that formerly housed the company until it initiated bankruptcy proceedings in April 1987. It had ceased all operations several months earlier. A fire of unknown origin destroyed the company’s office building in July 1988.

The property has not only gone unused and unimproved, but it has also contributed to a significant environmental contamination risk due to the thousands of cubic yards of metallic dross located at the site — representing literal tons of hazardous waste material. The Town’s Sustainable Energy Commission has been tasked with developing a plan for removing the waste and restoring the property to a usable condition.

While it is a bit early, one would be hopeful that this potential buyer goes through with the purchase, and gets a contaminated site into usable form and onto the tax rolls.

The closest one to sale, Kent and Shelton Houses have long had a potential buyer — Winn Development, which transforms former school, government, or other historic buildings into mixed use retail and residential buildings. Interest has been high in this project as many would love to move into potential apartments on the Fairfield Hills Campus. Winn keeps its designs honoring the historic roots of the former buildings, so its work at school buildings often includes keeping items like the lockers. Holding this project up was initially getting historic credits from the state, which would assist Winn in the cost of renovating and converting the buildings while keeping the historic facades. Having acquired the credits last year, the town and Winn have been negotiating specifics, including the fact that Winn is only looking to do one of the two buildings initially and then possibly move on to the second later.

First Selectman Bruce Walczak reported that he was expecting a phone call with Winn on February 18 in which he hoped to finally get ink on a contract.

The negotiations have been going on over the last few months, so good luck to the first selectman in his endeavors and hopefully he can finally effectuate the sale.