Demolition of the property, which has been vacant and contaminated for decades, began Tuesday morning and will take until the end of the week or early next week to complete, said Greg Dembowski, Brookfield’s economic development manager.
The 2.31-acre site will be redeveloped with construction of a new 60-unit apartment building, said Allan Rothman of Unicorn Contracting Corp. in Cold Spring, N.Y. In the project, 20% of the units will be designated as affordable, Rothman said.
“After decades of having this blighted property in our town center, it is finally being fixed,” Brookfield First Selectman Steve Dunn said Tuesday.
“The town had spent years trying to get the owner of the property to take down the blighted building and to clean up the contamination. The problem we ran into was … the town could not take ownership of the property, as that would make the town liable for downstream contamination, a massive risk we were not willing to take,” Dunn said.
Brookfield found a grant from the state that allowed the town to clear the blighted building and clean the property of dangerous dry-cleaning chemicals without taking ownership of the property, he said.
The state Office of Brownfield Remediation and Development awarded the $1.2 million grant to the town for the project, Dembowski said.
In the next steps, a pre-bid meeting will be held Wednesday for the remediation of the soil and groundwater at the site, Dembowski said.
“We remove all the contaminated soil and treat the bedrock with chemicals. We’ll be awarding that bid in a couple of weeks,” he said.
Construction of the new L-shaped building will begin next April and will take 14 months to complete, Rothman said. It will contain 12 studio apartments, 33 one-bedroom units and 15 two-bedroom units, he said.
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