🔒Study: Costs to prep Hartford’s 80-acre former trash-burning site for residential redevelopment range up to $333.87M

An 80-acre site in Hartford’s South Meadows received garbage from most of Connecticut for decades, processing it in a massive facility that burned trash for energy.

The quasi-public Materials Innovation and Recycling Authority shut the faltering plant down in 2022, and local officials have been pushing to prep the large site in Hartford’s industrial South Meadows neighborhood for redevelopment.

That preparation will take years and cost anywhere from $27.87 million to $333.87 million, depending on how many of the existing buildings are demolished, and what sort of future development is pursued, according to a recently completed study.

“That study is basically setting the groundwork for a starting point for a future development of the site,” said Mark T. Daley, president and chief financial officer of the MIRA Dissolution Authority. “This is everything under those various scenarios that would need to be done to turn the site over to a future developer and put the site into a future use, whether it’s commercial or residential or industrial.” 

Those cost estimates are also based on a 2026 start date, and rise sharply with delay. 

The dissolution authority was formed by state lawmakers in 2023 to oversee the winding down of MIRA operations and the disposition of its various transfer stations and, most dauntingly, the South Meadows site.

The dissolution authority has sold two recycling properties in Hartford and a transfer station in Watertown to companies tied to USA Waste & Recycling. A sale of an Ellington property is in the works.

The dissolution authority also hired Rocky Hill engineering and environmental company Weston & Sampson to outline the likely steps and costs for getting the South Meadows property ready for various redevelopment scenarios. 

With that study, dated March 10, in hand, the authority is nearly ready for its own dissolution, which is expected to be completed by June 30.

After that, management of remaining MIRA properties will be in the hands of Gov. Ned Lamont’s administration and the state Department of Administrative Services.

Lamont administration officials have asked staff at the Capital Region Development Authority to consider if the agency can organize the South Meadows site’s redevelopment preparations, CRDA Executive Director Michael Freimuth said Thursday.

CRDA – a quasi-governmental agency responsible for economic development efforts in Greater Hartford – is a logical choice for the job, Freimuth said. But his 13-staff agency already has a hefty workload and would need additional manpower and money to take on the South Meadows site, he said.

“We have been asked to assess whether CRDA can play a role,” Freimuth said. “It would be a major undertaking of our staff and resources. Hopefully, we would get more resources if that comes our way.”

Hartford Mayor Arunan Arulampalam said his administration is focused on getting the South Meadows site back into productive use to its maximum potential, whether that means new housing opportunities or industrial development that brings jobs. Arulampalam said he’s not set on any particular use case.

“The city is 18.5 square miles, half of it untaxable, so it is really important to maximize every bit of land that we have,” Arulampalam said.

Long industrial use, hefty cleanup

The MIRA site in the South Meadows has seen more than a century of heavy industrial use. Even with two decades of cleanup to present-day industrial standards under MIRA and its predecessor agency, preparing it for reuse isn’t a cheap or short-term prospect. 

The Hartford Electric Light Co. completed a coal-fired power plant on the site in 1921. The plant transitioned to petroleum fuels by the 1940s. The trash-to-energy plant began operations in the 1980s.

Today, the 80-acre site along the Connecticut River, just north of Brainard Airport, hosts the repeatedly upgraded power plant and a sprawling waste-processing facility. The waste-processing facility includes a 202,000-square-foot main building, 38,000-square-foot storage building and a handful of smaller ancillary buildings and structures.

Getting the site ready for redevelopment would vary in cost and time depending on future use. Containing or cleaning pollution to accommodate the state’s residential standards, for instance, would be far more costly than getting it ready for continued industrial use.

Daley expects the MIRA Dissolution Authority to wrap up with about $50 million in reserves, which he notes would be enough to cover the cost of preparing the site for continued industrial or commercial use.

The Weston & Sampson study considered several redevelopment scenarios including:

• Industrial or commercial use with demolition of the “power block facility” alone. This scenario is estimated to take three years and cost $47.7 million if work begins next year.
• Industrial or commercial use with demolition of the waste processing facility alone. This would require just over three years of effort at a cost of $27.87 million.
• Industrial or commercial use with demolition of all structures. This would require three years and six months of effort at a cost of $68.49 million.
• Residential development with environmental land-use restrictions in place to keep pollution undisturbed. This option would take six years of effort and cost $250.84 million.
• Residential development with 13 feet of imported, clean fill over much of the site. This would allow much less restricted use of the site. But it would also require eight years of effort and $333.87 million in expense.

The far higher costs of getting the site ready for residential development is driven, in large part, by the cost ($178.54 million) of moving an Eversource electrical substation in the middle of the property, Daley noted.

It would have to be moved for residential purposes because a required buffer from the high-voltage equipment would rule out a large section of the best land for redevelopment, Daley noted. Also, he said the station would be a huge aesthetic turn-off to potential residents.

“I would say the marketability of a large residential development with a large switchyard right in the middle of it is diminished greatly,” Daley said.

The study notes that its cost estimates could vary widely up or down.

As a development scenario is picked and specific designs are drafted, cost estimates will become more precise, noted Robert Carr, senior technical leader with Weston & Sampson.