Whole Foods Plus Norwalk Developer Equals Fairfield?
I admit, I’m obsessed with Whole Foods. Normally I avoid grocery stores because they figure in a lifestyle that engages in cooking, which is not something I do. Some people can take random ingredients and create something edible. I generally end up with something that catches fire. Thus my obsession with Whole Foods would seem a bit odd. Unless you’ve been to a Whole Foods, and that you might start to understand why I travel to the one in White Plains.
Whole Foods hires real chefs to create their prepared foods. So you can go to the food trough, and find grilled wild alaskan salmon with some green stuff on it and it tastes good. Real good. The problem with most healthy prepared food as it is sold by “health” stores is that it tastes like cardboard. Sticking curry on tofu and passing it off as chicken is not my idea of a dish I’d be interested in. Real chicken in curry, now that’s more like it.
But onto the news article, apparently a Norwalk developer is building out a Whole Foods plaza in Fairfield.
A Norwalk developer’s plan to build a 108,000-square-foot retail complex on Kings Highway East, anchored by a Whole Foods store, met little resistance at its first public hearing Thursday night.
But a controversial part of Summit Development’s plan — blasting a 45-foot-high rock cliff that would cut deeply into woods that shield its 10.5-acre property from Vermont Avenue neighbors — was not included in the Inland Wetlands Commission’s review.
The venue for that battle is the Town Plan and Zoning Commission, which also must vote on Summit’s proposed development.
“We’re hopeful those issues will be resolved between the applicant and neighbors prior to, or at, that meeting,” said Mark Barnhart, director of the town’s Department of Community & Economic Development.Barnhart said Summit’s development would provide $200,000 in annual tax revenue to the town, create 100 permanent jobs and dozens of temporary construction jobs and give residents more shopping options.
But Summit won’t get to build its development if it can’t get the project through the Inland Wetlands Commission and TPZ.
William Fitzpatrick, Summit’s lawyer, said the 10.5-acre property, once the site of Handy & Harman’s precious metals processing factory, does not have wetlands.But the Inland Wetlands Commission gets to vote on the project because Summit wants to discharge storm water from that property to an adjacent property that has wetlands and that is heavily contaminated by industrial pollutants.
Annette Jacobson, administrator of the town’s Conservation Department, wants to make sure the discharged storm water is clean.Steve Strange, the only member of the public to speak Thursday, wants to make sure the adjacent property isn’t rendered undevelopable.
Summit’s consultants said the storm water would be detained and cleaned before it left the property. They said less water would flow off the property in heavy rains because of detention chambers.
Handy & Harman sold the 10.5-acre property to Summit for $8 million in 2003 on condition Handy & Harman knock down its factory and clean that parcel of industrial pollutants.
Handy & Harman spent $20 million to clean the 10.5-acre property, Fitzpatrick said.
Adam Henry, a geologist hired by Summit, said the cleanup is largely complete. He said groundwater was still contaminated but not at levels high enough to warrant remediation.The groundwater, which is mostly underneath bedrock, will eventually clean itself because contaminated soil above it has been removed. The DEP is requiring periodic testing of the groundwater to ensure that happens, Henry said.
So Whole Foods is stymied in Darien and Fairfield. Too bad they can’t see the potential in a site here in Norwalk.
source: Connecticut Post Blasting could blow up Whole Foods project, By ANDREW BROPHY, December 7, 2007
