One FFH Building Falls, Another Prepares For Reuse

By Kendra Bobowick

Demolition work is in progress at Greenwich House, a once-thriving former state hospital building that now sits empty atop space slated for other uses.

Broad brick walls are in the way of reuse plans for Fairfield Hills, specifically a central parking area and green to collect parked cars for Bridgeport Hall, which soon will serve as the new suite for education and municipal offices, the new 90-foot baseball diamond, and the privately built Newtown Youth Academy, which has brought new activity to a long-vacant cluster of buildings and roads.

Huddled on the crest of broad meadows and open fields, Fairfield Hills redevelopment is slowly taking shape. (See related story in this issue about Woodbury Hall.) Highway and Public Works Department head Fred Hurley said, “Things are floating along …” Already finished with its large outfield, lighting, mini bleachers and teams lining up to play is the baseball diamond. Immediately beside it is the sweeping indoor sports and fitness space at the Newtown Youth Academy, where parents bring children to programs, teams stop to practice, or residents using the fitness space carry a fresh stream of visitors to an area dormant since the state closed the hospital in the late 1990s.

Two buildings away is the single-story Bridgeport Hall, undergoing renovations to the interior wings for use by the education department and town offices that will relocate from Edmond Town Hall. The building will be ready for occupants this fall. “September seems about right,” Mr Hurley said. Looks are deceiving, however. “People might say, ‘How much longer can it be?’ But it will be fall before it’s done,” he said. Much interior finish work must be completed, although from the outside, he said, “It’s starting to take on the look of a town hall even more.”

Between the two buildings is Greenwich House. At a glance it obscures the new youth academy from one side, and blocks a view of Bridgeport Hall from the other. A few steps closer reveals that all the windows are out, and inside are crews removing materials as demolition preparations move ahead.

The end of Greenwich closest to the baseball field was a wood-framed space that has been torn apart and now rests in piles of dismantled debris near the foundation. With that end of the building down, Mr Hurley’s crews can continue underground tunnel work and infrastructure installation that will at last bring gas lines, for one, to the youth academy. Soon drivers aiming for either the ball field or youth academy will have an unobstructed view of their destination and find a central parking area for the academy, field, or refinished town hall.