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STAMFORD, Conn. A working boatyard will return to Stamfords South End, says a letter from Harbor Point to the citys Land Use Bureau. But not everybody in the city is sold on the announcement.
Were not settling for anything less than a 14-acre, state-of-the-art working boatyard, said Maureen Boylan, a Stamford resident and organizer of Save Our Boatyard, a group that has advocated and petitioned against the removal of the boatyard. She said she does not trust Building and Land Technology and wont believe what it says until plans come to fruition.
Harbor Point closed the boatyard, the last working one in Stamford, when it failed to renew its lease with Brewer Yacht Haven West, which previously occupied the 14-acre property next to the Ponus Yacht Club, said Norman Cole, acting chief of the Land Use Bureau. Building and Land Technology, the development firm that owns the property, said it closed the property to perform remediation work. It described the site as severely contaminated.
The developer then received a demolition permit from the citys building department without the knowledge of the Land Use Bureau, he said. Condition No. 7 of the General Development Plan of Harbor Point says the property where Brewers was located needs to be a working boatyard.
Had we been asked, we would not have allowed it, Cole said of the demolition.
After hearing about the demolition, the Stamford Zoning Board told Building and Land Technology to stop all work at the boatyard. The board also told the developer to provide a projected timeline of state permits and a plan for re-establishing a boatyard within 30 days.
We will work with you; we will work with the staff, John Freeman, executive vice president of the firm, said during a zoning board hearing on another Harbor Point project. A call was made to Building and Land Technology for this story but was not returned.
Boylan said that if the development firm were to reach out to her and others in Save Our Boatyard, they would put them in touch with boatyard developers and work out a plan that could benefit all. That would be the first step needed to begin to mend fences, she said.
They went too fast with closing down the boatyard, she said.
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