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Military spending bill includes $15 million for Chase cleanup
Oct 8, 08:57 AM
Waterbury Republican American
BY PENELOPE OVERTON REPUBLICAN-AMERICANWATERBURY — The city will receive $15 million in federal money to
clean up the former home of the Chase Brass & Copper Co., and turn
the contaminated 30-acre property into a modern public works campus
and industrial park.
The funding is part of a $487.7 billion military spending bill
signed by President Bush last week. The money will be used to remove a century’s worth of industrial waste from the Thomaston Avenue site, which was once Chase
Brass & Copper’s metal waste processing center. The facility, now
called the Waterbury Industrial Commons, is about half-filled with
viable manufacturing tenants.
One of those tenants is Atlantic Steel & Processing, where U.S.
Rep. Christopher S. Murphy, D-5th District, chose to announce news of
the grant.
“This all started three years or so ago when the city was going to
sell the property at tax auction for the back taxes owed,” said
Atlantic Steel’s president, Joseph J. Vrabely, Jr. “We got worried.
Anybody can walk in and buy the land at auction and then decide to
close the place down. Now the future looks solid.”
Now that it has the grant, the city must take ownership of the property. The owner of the property, New York-based Waterbury Industrial Commons Inc., owes the city more than $3.3 million in overdue taxes. The city has already begun talking with lawyers about seizing the land through eminent domain.
“Nobody is going to shed any tears when the city takes this place,”
Mayor Michael J. Jarjura said Tuesday.
But the city also will have to negotiate a deal with the owner’s
other creditors, including a firm hired by creditors of a now-bankrupt
company that bought the city’s tax liens on the Thomaston Avenue lot
back in the 1990s. That situation led to a dispute with the city that
is now in court.
The city also is negotiating a deal with Watertown to redraw the
city border so that all of the land — which straddles the Naugatuck
River and includes some acreage in Watertown — lies within
Waterbury, said mayoral aide Steve Gambini.
The city has not decided how it will handle the tenants on the
property — continue renting the land, selling parts of it to the
manufacturers in good standing, or selling the buildings but not land
— but wants to use part of the property as a headquarters for the
Department of Public Works.
Jarjura wants to move public works out of its rented facilities on
East Aurora Street.
Murphy said $15 million is the largest single-purpose federal grant
ever received by the city. “There wasn’t a soldier in World War II
that didn’t have something made by a Waterbury brass company,” Murphy
said. “This city stepped up just when the country needed us most. Now
the country is stepping up to help the city.”
