A nonprofit group, Save Historic Middlebury, has brought a lawsuit against the Connecticut Department of Transportation over its approval of traffic plans for a distribution center in town.
The proposed development at 1535 Straits Turnpike, the former Timex property, is for a 171,000-square-foot distribution center. The proposal has already been the subject of lengthy legal challenges.
This latest suit, brought by the nonprofit and a number of local residents, challenges the DOT’s administrative approval in June of a major traffic generator application from the developer, and also names the landowner and applicant, Swamp Brook LLC, and the record owner of 1535 Straits Turnpike, Straits Industrial LLC.
The suit says that the decision “authorizes a tractor-trailer warehouse and distribution facility, and a single new commercial driveway serving it, on a segment of state highway that is already heavily congested, substandard in lane and shoulder width, and the site of documented traffic fatality caused by the very road conditions the development will aggravate.”
In an email to supporters this month, Save Historic Middlebury founder Nicholas Stuller claimed that the development could mean 300 or more additional tractor-trailers driving on the adjacent highway every day.
This is the second legal effort to stop the warehouse development. In December 2025, a superior court judge ruled that the Middlebury Planning and Zoning Commission followed local land-use regulations in granting approval for the site plan.
A group called Middlebury Small Town Alliance had contended that the commission failed to follow its own rules and that the proposed development should be regarded as a “trucking terminal” rather than a warehouse.
