Cheshire, we’re getting screwed.
A handful of local developers have stitched themselves into the political fabric of this town. For years they’ve used their pull to shape Cheshire as one might design a product or grow a brand. People have come for the schools, the very visible and very charming pockets of farmland, the tree-lined low-crime streets, and a departure from the paved sprawl conveniently located a few minutes to the north, south, east, and west of us. It’s an attractive package. And, if they weren’t selling us a product with a tampered expiration date, we’d all benefit from their actions.
Unfortunately, the insiders that crafted this product have been spending an increasingly disproportionate amount of time tugging the political threads to push their special projects through planning and zoning. They bought property low as undeveloped and unattractively zoned land, and now they’re selling high as planning and zoning bends the rules so they can subdivide and watch the zeros fly. They build up the product, bend the rules, and cash in.
This fantastic piece in the Hartford Courant says it well:
For one thing, the only industry besides bedding plants (flora, not sheets and pillows) seemed to be real estate – the buying and selling of homes, the subdividing of land parcels that had been in ancestral farm families’ hands until the great-grandchildren got greedy, and the legal haggling over the outcomes of these proposed developments.
For another thing, the same lawyers and representatives from the same families seemed to always show up at Planning and Zoning Commission hearings, proposing one project after another, in-filling what were once comforting zones of undeveloped pasture or farmland.
The usual suspects are cashing in across town, but the interchange zone provides an exceptionally large take. So big, that the mall is going to tarnish their product a bit faster than their usual residential chop-job, but that’s OK by them. It’ll take a few years for the real damage to surface. So, they’re about to ‘flip’ 400 acres. In order to do so, they have to get planning and zoning to bend the rules (here(pdf) and here) — it’s the same game they’ve played all along. If you thought you settled down in a small town committed to keeping it that way, you’re wrong. Any long-timer can tell you high-tales of what his or her neighborhood looked like a mere fifteen, ten, or five years ago. We’re changing fast. The local real-estate moguls are cashing in. The only thing that’s different about the W/S Shoppes at Cheshire project is the scope.
However, I think they’re counting on you to keep quiet. Actually, they’re hoping you never notice. The police are patrolling the telephone poles. They take down the ‘No Mall’ signs, but they haven’t bothered with the year old missing dog signs near my place (or elsewhere) or the ancient tag-sale marker down the road. They’re busy. The same goes for the Planning and Zoning site where one just cannot seem find any meeting minutes that matter. Although, they do a great job of getting more-recent and less relevant minutes up and linked. Only the most recent minutes are posted there. I guess server space is very, very limited. All the while, the Cheshire Herald tells you not to worry, that the complaints you hear are just from a vocal minority that spend their time huffing and puffing about everything. Who benefits from their half-assed coverage? Well, new shops mean increased ad revenue for the paper. Judging by their commitment to obfuscation, they want that revenue pretty badly.
You bought into the town. Now, act to preserve it before they sell it out from underneath you. Familiarize yourself with the proposed zoning changes. Get to know the interchange area, learn about the rich history of the property, and take part in the discussion over at councilman Tim White’s blog. Whatever you do, don’t fall for the W/S time-elapsed photo essay. Think about what effect the shops will have on the rest of Rt. 10 to the south. Stores attract stores — would you rather put a new shop along a pass-through with sporadic traffic or next to a strip mall where the traffic never dies down. Even if they don’t expand beyond the proposed changes to the charter, the property owners up and down the road are going make out like bandits. I don’t mind local officials and their friends capitalizing, so long as they don’t misuse the power of their votes to get there (i.e. vote against Cheshire for their own sake).
So, what can you do? To start with, make some calls. You don’t have to be an expert or well-connected. You just have to care about your town. Go through the whole damned list if you have time. Tell them you’re a voting resident and you don’t want the mall. If they tell you they’re not on the right committee tell them to get out there and convince their friends. It often only takes a few calls to place real pressure on local officials. Or, participate on TWL. Someof them appear to post there. They share the whacky screen name, ‘anonymous.’
Contact info (from the CheshireCT.org site) so you can get active! Be polite (they’re your neighbors), but tell them how you feel.
Town Council
Matt Hall, Chairman, D 272-5717
Michael G. Ecke, D 272-1351 michaele584@aol.com
David E. Orsini, R 250-0331 david.orsini@cox.net
Matt Altieri, D 272-1935 maltieri@cox.net
David C. Schrumm, R 272-2689 dsschrumm@cox.net
Elizabeth Esty, D 271-3248 elizabeth.esty@yale.edu
Thomas Ruocco, R 272-8135 tomruocco@snet.net
Diane D. Visconti, D 272-7719 Vis1795@aol.com
Tim White, R 439-4394 timwhite98@yahoo.com
Town Manager
Milone, Michael 271-6660 mmilone@cheshirect.org
Please realize that we’re not going to get a Main-St-USA promenade, we’re going to get taken for a ride, just like the good people of Canton did:
from a very relevant story in the Hartford Advocate
There are plenty of Cantonites unhappy about the Shoppes, especially since they morphed into something quite different from what the developers first proposed.
“It was originally going to be a ‘Main Street’ with little shops, maybe some office and residential space,” Sevigny said. After beginning the project, the scope changed. “Then they said they needed big-box stores like Kohl’s and Shaw’s [because] the market wouldn’t support the little shops.” Furthermore, they also “threatened to pull stakes and leave if they didn’t get their changes approved.”
Being left with a half-finished project would have been an expensive white elephant for the town…
The Strip-Mall Shoppes at Farmington Valley
Over the next two years, working together, we can reinvent how government works. This starts by changing the way your Member of Congress keeps in touch with you. It’s time that government got proactive. Though I always want to hear from you, I am not going to wait for your call. Over the next two years, I’ll be bringing Congress to your corner. “Congress on your Corner” is our new initiative to bring government to every shopping plaza and supermarket in the 5th District so that together, we can set the priorities for our country. My next “Congress on your Corner” is coming up in Cheshire.
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