Town Hopes to Use Grant Money to Demolish Blight

BROOKFIELD, CT — The Town is investigating whether it can use grant money to tear down a former dry cleaners that is hindering downtown development, The News Times is reporting.

The Town hopes to turn the condemned building at 20 Station Road into a parking lot. The 2.3-acre property with its 4,700-square-foot building served as a dry cleaning business during the 1960s and 1970s, before it was condemned in 2011.

Chemicals from the business have already infiltrated into the bedrock of the property. The town received $145,000 from the state Department of Economic and Community Development last year to study the extent of the contamination, only to learn it was impossible to clean up.

Now the Town hopes it can use the remaining $50,000 from the grant to take the building down and eventually turn it into a paring lot to support the burgeoning downtown streetscape.

For more on the story, see The News Times.