Legislative Bill Proposes Spending $1.5 Million to Study Options for Closing Hartford-Brainard Airport

The state would spend $1.5 million on a new study of Hartford-Brainard Airport, under a bill in the state General Assembly, turning up the heat another notch in the debate over whether the century-old airfield should be closed and redeveloped.

The study would examine the costs and potential obstacles — federal, state and local — to closing the airport in Hartford’s South Meadows; the extent of any contamination and what it would cost to clean up; and options for future mixed-use development.

State Sen. John W. Fonfara, a Hartford Democrat who has long pushed for the airfield’s redevelopment, said Wednesday the study would hire outside experts to assess the future of the airport.

Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin, a Democrat, also has supported closing the 200-acre airport, making it an issue in his first campaign for mayor in 2015.

A redevelopment would bring much-needed tax revenue into city coffers and capitalize on prime land near the Connecticut River at the intersection of two interstate highways, Fonfara, Bronin and others argue.

Brainard, they say, would be better targeted for a mixed-use development, including housing, entertainment venues, shops and a marina, that would draw visitors and new residents into the city.

A public hearing on the bill is expected next week before the legislature’s finance, revenue and bonding committee. A firm date has not been set, Fonfara said.

If approved by the legislature, the study would be overseen by the Capital Region Development Authority. CRDA would work with the Connecticut Airport Authority, which oversees operations at Brainard. A final report would be due Jan. 1.

Airport future debated

The future of the airport in the city’s South Meadows has been debated for decades.

In the last year, the Hartford City Council has ramped up its support for closing the airport, first in a nonbinding resolution supporting closing and then forming a committee to study redevelopment options.

Last week, the council urged the state to conduct an environmental study to determine the extent of any contamination from the city’s industrial past.

“Before we start endeavoring to make plans to start to develop and things of that nature, let’s take a step back to really understand what lies beneath,” Democrat TJ Clarke II, the council’s majority leader, said this week. “Then let’s go from there.”

Clarke and Councilwoman Shirley Surgeon, a Democrat, co-sponsored the resolution calling for the study. The resolution has been approved by the full city council.

“I didn’t want to get saddled, as a city resident, not knowing what sort of environmental issue that’s out there,” Surgeon said this week. “I didn’t know what the amount would be, so that would be nice to know that in advance.”

Concerns about soil contamination under the airport surfaced publicly last week, raised by Mike McGarry, chairman of the Greater Hartford Flood Control Commission, and others.

McGarry, a former city councilman, said he is concerned about coal tar, a by-product of coal gasification plants that existed in virtually every American city at the turn of the last century.

Those plants provided residents with the comforts of heat and light, but left coal tar contamination behind.

McGarry and others argue disturbing the coal tar so close to the Connecticut River could cause as-yet unknown effects on the surrounding environment.

Opponents to closing lining up

Opponents of closing the airport are lining up in force, forming the Hartford-Brainard Airport Association. The association and other supporters of the airport argue the city should use Brainard as an amenity to attract new businesses to relocate to Hartford.

Improvements should be made that would, among other things, allow larger aircraft to fly in and out of the South Meadows airport, they argue.

The association is girding for a fight, vowing to hire lawyers and lobbyists to forcefully make its case.

A study of the airport in 2016 by the legislature’s program review and investigations committee concluded that the airport should not only be kept open but expanded.

Fonfara and others who support decommissioning the state-owned airport have long dismissed those findings.

“That study was never voted on and never approved and that was intentional because they went so far beyond their scope of what they traditionally do,” Fonfara said Wednesday. “I gave it no credibility then, and I give it no credibility now.”

The Metropolitan District Commission, the regional water and sewer authority, spearheaded an airport redevelopment proposal in 2006. The proposal called for nearly 7 million square feet of commercial and manufacturing space, stores, apartments, a marina, a rebuilt trash-to-energy plant, an expansion of its nearby wastewater treatment plant and a river park.

The MDC plan was headed up by William DiBella, a former Democratic state Senate majority leader who remains the MDC’s chairman.

No other conceptual plans for the area exist besides the 2006 vision advanced by the MDC.

Kenneth R. Gosselin can be reached at [email protected].

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