Town of Fairfield Awarded $3 Million State Grant
The Town of Fairfield CT recently received a $3 million state grant to furnish a multi-use development with residential and retail space at a vacant lot on Black Rock Turnpike.
The grant will renovate a 4.9-acre lot at 81 Black Rock Turnpike, which has sat empty for about a decade next to the Fairfield Metro Station, First Selectwoman Brenda Kupchick said in a recent town update. The development will feature affordable housing, retail, co-working space and public amenities.
Post Road Residential, the real estate company that developed The Anchorage in downtown Fairfield, requested a non-binding preview of its planned five-story development at the Black Rock Turnpike lot from the Town Plan and Zoning Commission in November. TPZ Chair Thomas Noonan had expressed interest in working with the Post Road Residential developers at the time.
TPZ commissioners amended the developers' proposal at a meeting last month, including adding the co-working space and bicycle parking and increasing the amount of affordable housing from 10 to 12 percent of the total residential units.
The state grant is part of a $23.8 million cash infusion to 15 towns and cities that Gov. Ned Lamont approved late June for projects set to remediate a total of 480 acres of land.
The Fairfield development will feature 240 residential units, 20 percent of which will be considered affordable at 80 percent of the area median income, according to a release from Lamont's office.
"It makes no sense to have old, polluted, blighted properties sitting vacant for decades when we could be using this land to grow new businesses and create new housing," Lamont said in the release. "This state program enables us to partner with municipalities and developers to bring these lifeless properties back from the dead."
The release states the grants — which span 22 properties and come from the state's Brownfield Remediation and Development Program — should generate about $862 million in private funding, 915 jobs and 811 residential units, 223 of which will be affordable housing.
Contact:
Mark Barnhart
Director, Office of Community & Economic Development
mbarnhart@fairfieldct.org
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