A Modern Town Garage on the Horizon for Haddam

By Janice Sina

(June 2, 2025) — When it comes to siting a new town garage, which is more important: a central location with easy access to main roads, or enough acreage for a buffer around neighboring homes, even with possible future expansion? Or is it the cost of the site? Or could it be the environmental impact, especially on area wetlands? “I’ve heard no one in town who has said we don’t need an upgraded, modern town garage,” states Bill Warner, Haddam’s Town Planner. The question is, where? And how does the town make a sound decision faced with so many variables?

The town garage currently operates at 103 Depot Road in Higganum Center with twelve employees. Their normal weekday business hours are 7:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., with no weekends, other than snowstorms. It has existed in its current location since 1938 and has outgrown the 1.5 acre site in an unplanned and unsightly manner.

There were seventeen sites under consideration for this project and each of them had their pros and cons. For example, the 2.8 acre lot on Saybrook Road near the Transfer Station is flat and consists of loamy fine sand, excellent to build on and for accessibility. However, the entire site, which lies between the railroad tracks and the Connecticut River, is zoned wetland and is a FEMA flood zone. Additionally, the 2.8 acres is not enough space for the program and any future expansions.

Another site, town-owned on Old Cart Road, has potential as an 11.5 acre lot on virgin ground with no contamination, no wetlands, and no building demolition costs, but it is in a residential area and a right-of-way would be needed through residential property to access it. It is also a tight street far from main roads at a dead end, making it difficult for trucks to maneuver in and out.

As a final example, the current site in Higganum Center is a centrally located, flat site with 4.35 acres. There is easy access to main roads. However, there is contamination present, there are wetlands in the northern corners and at least one building would need to be demolished. With so many factors, choosing a site could indeed be a herculean task, and could understandably be the topic of much discussion by local officials and residents.

Enter Will Walter, Civil/Site Group Manager, and Andrew Woodward, Project Landscape Architect, of Benesch Engineering (www.benesch.com), a nationwide company ranked among the Top 500 design firms in the country by Engineering News-Record. With an unbiased value-based approach, they ranked the seventeen available sites, both town owned and privately owned, based on measurable criteria, including site acquisition and development costs, the size of the parcel that could be developed, and future expansion opportunities, location and accessibility, neighborhood impact and aesthetics, environmental impact, potential sources of contamination to mitigate, and any demolition costs.

Working with Silver Petrucelli and Associates (www.silverpetrucelli.com), a leading architectural firm in the Northeast, the engineers provided the Department of Public Works with maps of each site detailing topography, type of soil (i.e., rock, loam, wetlands), acreage, and proximity to neighborhoods and main roads. By evaluating each site for each of the criteria, they were able to come up with an objective score and narrow the seventeen choices down to five sites to move forward. The full analysis is on the town website (www.haddam.org), showing all of the original sites and the five with the highest ranking that will go on to the Planning and Zoning Commission.

The five sites that percolated to the top are these:

• 300 Saybrook Road, the current site in Higganum with a total of 4.35 acres available.
• 59-61 Cedar Lake Road, (aka former WFS sandpit), a 76 acre, privately owned parcel, with 8 acres available for development.
• 439 Saybrook Road, (aka Haddam Firehouse), a 34.78 acre town owned parcel, using existing Fire Department utilities.
• Jail Hill Road, (aka land across from Great Hill Park), a 27.5 acre town owned parcel with 5 acres ready for development.
• 733 Killingworth Road, (aka East Coast Salvage), a 35.6 acre privately owned parcel with 9.4 acres of developable land.

This month, the Planning and Zoning Commission and the engineering consultants will meet to combine their insights based on local knowledge and engineering expertise respectively, and then the engineers will draw up preliminary site layouts. Following this meeting, there will be the requisite public hearing signs posted on each property and letters to owners within 500 feet of each of these properties. There will be a legal notice in the paper, and a public hearing scheduled for June 26, 2025 where the top three of the five sites will be selected.

The consulting engineers are tasked with refining the final three site layouts by a meeting with the PZC scheduled for July 17, 2025. This includes sight lines and access points, sight grading, building footprints and storage areas, required buffering for adjoining residences, septic system and storm drainage, and preliminary cost estimates.

From here it is up to the voters. The PZC will forward the three sites to the Haddam Board of Selectmen for inclusion on the November, 2025 ballot. The engineers and the PZC have done their work as objectively as possible with a value-based ranking system. The next step is up to the residents of the town. In the end, the town will have a new or improved town garage that allows the Department of Public Works to take care of its residents by maintaining roads and other public places to the best of their ability.