Town Looks to Mixed Uses for Superfund Site

"This is all very preliminary," Michael Taylor, who helped draft the town's plan, tells GlobeSt.com. "We're probably three years out before a redevelopment shovel hits the ground." During that three-year time period, says Taylor, the president of Vita Nuova, a Sandy Hook, CT-based consulting firm that specializes in the redevelopment of contaminated land, town officials will need to confer with the federal Environmental Protection Agency about a cleanup plan. They will also need to negotiate a consent decree from the property's previous owners and sign on a developer to begin work on the project.

According to a draft report on the site prepared by the town, one developer, OMLC of Everett, has already expressed interest in developing a portion of the parcel for residential use. Town officials have not yet made any commitments to that project.

The site, which was originally used for saw mills and later for the manufacturing of machinery, cotton yarn, lampwicks, iron nails and snuff, is contaminated with asbestos and heavy metals from its use as by a cotton manufacturing firm and a company that made asbestos brake and clutch linings. It was put on the EPA's National Superfund Priorities List in 1995. Taylor says interest in Superfund-designated sites has been increasing in recent years as developers find limited land availability and high prices in metropolitan areas and look to infill locations for an alternative.