The city of Bridgeport can soon knock down a dilapidated building on Stratford Avenue to make way for potential new businesses and eliminate an eyesore across the Yellow Mill Bridge from Steel Point.
Bridgeport officials announced the city received a $200,000 grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to demolish and clean up the abandoned site of the former AGI Rubber Co., which is now owned by the city.
- The former AGI Rubber Co. site in Bridgeport. Photo by Danielle Brody
Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch said the initial investment could attract more money to remediate the site.
“With these funds, we”™ll soon begin knocking down a run-down property that has plagued a central location in our city for decades,” Finch said. “Doing so will make the property more attractive to job creators and investors, allowing us to continue developing the waterfront.”
Curt Spalding, New England regional administrator for the EPA, said the AGI site contains polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, contaminants and other hazardous waste. Presenting the oversized check, he said the money comes from an EPA brownfields program.
“There”™s a limited amount of money,” Spalding said. “They”™ve got to be A-plus-plus proposals to get funded.”
Stratford Mayor John Harkins said the grant is a turning point to making blighted properties that often don”™t pay taxes productive again.
“These are eyesores; they attract bad activity sometimes,” he said. “This is a good sign today that this neighborhood is in transition.”
The city also announced the Greater Bridgeport Regional Council received a $400,000 grant from the EPA to complete seven phase-one and phase-two environmental site assessments in Bridgeport, Stratford, Trumbull, Fairfield, Monroe and Easton. Spalding said developers often don”™t want to fund the assessments, so the grant will help the process.
The money will be ready to spend in October, according to Brian T. Bidolli, executive director of the council. The land needing assessment “has a past of contaminants ”“ now we”™re just trying to figure it out,” he said.
