A business owner in Southington is fed up after multiple drivers have crashed into her building on West Main Street in recent years.
She said there have been five crashes in seven years, and luckily no one has been killed, but she fears for the day someone will be.
“A building can be fixed,” said Cheryl Moran. “But if someone loses their life, that’s gonna really be tragic.”
Moran bought the brick building in 2011. It currently houses her yoga studio and a gastropub. Moran also owns a restaurant on the other side of town.
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“It was fine until about the end of 2015, beginning of 2016,” she said. “We had two accidents within 6 months.”
Then the trend continued, with crash after crash -- the latest happening last weekend. Moran was awakened by a phone call at 3 a.m.
“Here we go again,” she recalled. “It was just like Groundhog Day.”
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Police said a group of teens in a stolen car crashed into a pole, blowing up a transformer, then the car caught fire and barreled into Moran's building. One minor was injured.
“For this last crash, you can see there’s a lot of smoke damage. I have to get the whole thing sandblasted. This entire window and frame burned and blew out, that window has to be replaced,” she explained. “The money that it costs me -- I got dropped from one insurance company already. My insurance went up this past year. I pay almost $10,000 to insure this building.”
Moran blames the busy intersection, with drivers not knowing they need to veer right.
“When you’re sitting at that light coming this way, and you see a green light, you think green means go, go straight,” she said.
In between her building and the intersection is a vacant lot that the town recently purchased.
She said the town did attempt to deter drivers by putting planters with reflectors on the ground, and yellow signs with arrows. But Moran said it’s not enough, and would like a barrier or a guardrail.
“The first time you think it’s a fluke, the second time you think okay what’s going on here,” she said. “It’s ridiculous and it’s very frustrating.”
The Chairman of the Southington Town Council, Paul Chaplinsky, told NBC Connecticut that the town is planning to build a park in that empty lot, and will install temporary barriers while they work to revitalize the area. Eventually, he said they plan to install a stone wall, along with concrete bollards along Moran’s building.
