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A BRIEF HISTORY
Griswold Airport opened for business in 1931 in its
current location, between Route 1 and the Hammonasset
River in Madison.
The property is situated directly adjacent to Hammonasset State Park, on the edge of the tidal
wetlands.
The Griswold
family offered to sell the land to the town of Madison
in 1985, but it never came to pass. In
November 2000, Leyland Development Corporation of New
York obtained an option to purchase the land, and
submitted plans for a 260-unit housing development on
the site. Many citizens were opposed to the
proposal, and organized to fight it.
Grassroots opposition rapidly
mounted. The pressure from Attorney General
Richard Blumenthal, the Department of Environmental
Protection (DEP), and numerous environmental groups
including Audubon Connecticut, the Connecticut Fund for the
Environment, the Madison Land Conservation Trust, Rivers
Alliance, Stop Griswold Over-Development (SGOD),
Citizens for a Clean Hammonasset River, Trout Unlimited,
and others, was so strenuous that Leyland withdrew its original
proposal.
The developer,
newly renamed LeylandAlliance, returned in the fall of
2003 with a revised proposal, to build 131 units on the
Griswold Airport site. They had responded to some
of the objections to the initial site plan, but still
intended to cram an average of six housing units onto
each acre of land, and use a massive wastewater disposal
system that had never been tested on a similar flood
plain, adjacent to sensitive tidal wetlands.
In May 2004, the
Madison Planning & Zoning Commission approved the
controversial proposal, paving the way for Leyland to
submit its first application for a
wastewater treatment system to the DEP in June 2004.
The opposition raised many concerns about the pollution of the
adjacent tidal
marshes that would inevitably result from this system, and fought
the proposal for the next two years. In May 2006,
Leyland abandoned their initial plan, and instead proposed another system
called a Zenon wastewater system.
In February
2007, presumably anticipating approval of the wastewater
permit, Leyland exercised its option to purchase the
Griswold Airport property.
For more than two
years, numerous environmental organizations attempted to
dissuade the DEP from approving the wastewater permit,
through a series of hearings and appeals as well as
through legislative and lobbying action in the General
Assembly. Ultimately, however, the DEP approved
Leyland's permit in September 2008, removing the last
major obstacle to breaking ground for the development.
Fortunately, the
grassroots opposition was relentless, and with the help
of the Madison Board of Selectman, enlisted the
assistance of California-based nonprofit The Trust for
Public Land (TPL). TPL spent 18 months
communicating and negotiating with the developer, the
Board of Selectman, and the environmental groups
fighting against the development, and emerged
successfully in September 2009 with a contract to
purchase the property from the developer, and a plan to
transform the property into a new coastal park in
Madison.
On
January 26, 2010 the town of Madison voted 3275 to 2444
at referendum to appropriate $9 million to purchase and
restore the property.
On
May 10, 2010 the Town of Madison and the Trust for
Public Land purchased the property, preserving it
forever!!!!
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