Nearly $4 million in state grant money will be distributed among two dozen Connecticut communities to fix up blighted properties.
Gov. Dannel Malloy announced the funding today in Norwich, one of the municipalities to receive grant money.
“This is part of $3.8 million in grants that we’re announcing today to 21 communities,” Malloy said.
It’s administered through the state’s Municipal Brownfields Assessment and Inventory Grant Program and will redevelop more than 310 acres at 48 locations, according to a release from Malloy’s office.
Other sites targeted for cleanup and renewal include a property on Bosco Drive in New Britain, the site of a proposed medical office building.
A property in Hartford’s Parkville neighborhood will be analyzed for development potential, along with almost 10 acres near Windsor and Hawthorne streets being considered for transit-oriented development.
A potential transit project is also in the works for 12 acres in downtown Middletown.
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“We’re an old state and we have a great industrial past, but a portion of that indisutrial past is that we have a number of brownfields or polluted sites,” Malloy explained.
Other municipalities receiving grants include Bethany, Bridgeport, Derby, Enfield, Farmington, Meriden, New Haven, New London, Portland, Preston, Shelton, Southbury, Thompson, Vernon and Winchester.
“It’s about cleaning up the property, protecting public health and safety,” said state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Commissioner Robert Klee. “It’s also about putting old lands back into new use.”
Malloy said he expects to also receive federal, local or private funding for each of the projects getting state money.
“If we clean up, we put less pressure on farms to disappear, or forests to disappear,” Malloy said. “We strengthen the property tax bases of communities like Norwich.”
Each municipality can receive up to $200,000.
