New Goals for Old NBPD
By Chris Seymour | Correspondent at November 13, 2023 | 6:15 pm | Print
After the city secured a roughly $2.7 million Brownsfield Grant from the state earlier this year, demolition of the old police station could happen “once the weather breaks,” according to Municipal Department Director Kenneth Malinowski.
Grant funds will be utilized to examine the extent of potential abatement (asbestos is known to be on site, for example), for any required abatement, as well as the demolition of the old police station (which has sat vacant since the new one opened in late 2012) on Columbus Boulevard.
“There are a couple of things we want to do over the winter,” explained Malinowski. “We want to determine the extent of the problem at the police station, put it out to bid for the demolition, and potentially put out RFP’s (request for proposals) for potential developers for that parcel and possibly some other parcels that are in the area.”
Malinowksi said the hope for the former police station site is that it will eventually become a mixed-use development.
“We want to determine a reuse of this space because we find it vitally important to the area because of its proximity to the CTfastrak,” said Malinowski. “We would like to see—or the idea so far has been—that there would be commercial and some type of residential on that site or some mix of commercial, office and residential—we aren’t sure. But I think that over the wintertime, we will be putting out a request for proposals in terms of potential developers for the site.”
With respect to the police station, Malinowski said that the city knows “there is some environmental risk” there. He continued, “We know there is asbestos in it, we know it has underground storage tanks that were utilized for heating oils and we know there are transformers for the electrical portion of the building that are on site and old transformers can be problematic because the oils they used in the transformers” could be laden with PCBs.
Prior to receiving the $2.7 million Brownsfield Grant for the police station site, the city had already secured state grants of $500,000 and $200,000 to address potential urban fill in the area from the old police station to Pearl Street.
Malinowksi said last week the city had gone through an RFP process and would soon hire an environmental consultant who will examine the police station site as well as that area between Columbus Boulevard and Pearl Street.
“We are hiring one consultant to do this, one environmental consulting firm, which is going to take care of the consulting portion of everything we are doing,” explained Malinowksi. “That’s the determination of what’s out there and putting together the plan as to how we are going to address those environmentals once we have determined what they are.”
From there, any necessary abatement work would also go out to bid. “If we are going to do any abatement, the abatement work itself will have to go out to bid, and that would be done by a separate contractor,” said Malinowksi.
The ultimate goal, according to Malinowski, is to make this area more desirable for developers.
“What has happened over the years is when people look at buildings within the downtown area or where originally the footprint was that of a manufacturing facility, they are less likely to look at these because of either real or perceived environmental conditions,” he detailed.
“And that basically is the definition of a brownfield—it’s a property that is either unused or underutilized due to either real or perceived environmental conditions,” added Malinowski. “The problem is the perception that there may be something there; once it’s identified it’s much easier to deal with at that point.”
Knowing exactly what is out there, and how to fix it, will make it easier for developers and banks to commit to this area of the city, noted Malinowski.
“From a developer’s standpoint, it’s the unknown they don’t want to get involved in; from a financial standpoint, the banks will not get involved unless they know exactly what is out there, so the hope of what we are doing here is pretty much to identify what’s out there and determine how we are going to deal with it going forward and give the development world that sense of relief,” explained Malinowski.
