Source: http://www.nhregister.com, April 13, 2016
By: Luther Turmelle
It will take a $3 million environmental cleanup before a former manufacturing facility on West Main Street can be turned into an arts center, one of the project’s founders has told town officials.
Jeffrey Guimond told the Town Council Tuesday that an environmental assessment of the Ball & Socket factory and the property that it sits on turned up a plume of perchloroethylene or PCE, a chemical used commercially as an industrial degreaser, spot removal and dry cleaning.
“It was used in this case to remove grease from the buttons that were manufactured there,” Guimond said later. “It (the plume) is believed to have come from a burst pipe under the floor.”
Regular exposure to PCE can cause damage to the liver, kidneys and central nervous system. It may also result in an increased risk of cancer.
Guimond said the price tag for environmental cleanup was more than he and his partners had expected. But he called the completion of the assessment “a milestone.”
“It is a magical moment for us because now we have all the information we need to begin fundraising,” he said.
Guimond said he was uncertain how much money would need to be raised, but in 2014, he told the New Haven Register that it could take as much as $10 million over the next three to five years to completely renovate the building and open it for business. And that was before the cost of environmental remediation was known.
The remediation would not require the demolition of any of the buildings in the old factory complex, Guimond said.
Because PCE is a volatile organic compound, it readily vaporizes. So part of the cleanup would involve an aeration system that would be used to remove the vapors from beneath the building.
Guimond said Trumbull-based environmental engineering firm Fuss & O’Neill has estimated that an abatement system will have to in place for three to five years to fully remove all of the PCE plume under the building. But Ball & Socket Arts, the nonprofit group that is converting the factory into an art and performance center, plans to open the first of three phases of the project sometime in the second half of 2017, he said.
In order to do that, Guimond is asking the town to apply for a $750,000 Remedial Action and Redevelopment Municipal grant on behalf of the nonprofit. The grant is available through the state Department of Economic and Community Development.
The deadline for the town to submit the grant is April 26. Grant recipients would be announced in June or July.
If the town were to receive the grant, Ball & Socket Arts would use the money this summer for asbestos cleanup in the front part of the building, which would be the first part of the complex to open.
Town Manager Michael Milone said because the town is applying for the grant for the nonprofit, it has a responsibility to make sure the work is done properly.
“If there was some kind of mismanagement, we would be responsible for it (the money involved),” Milone said.
Ball & Socket Arts bought the 64,000-square-foot former factory in September 2014 for $725,000 from Dalton Enterprises, a Willow Street business that makes driveway sealer.
The purchase was funded from a $1.69 million loan from the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community (DECD). After deducting the money spent purchasing the building, the remainder of the loan, plus a $400,000 grant that DECD gave to the town specifically for the project, will be used to pay for environmental cleanup of the site.
Guimond, Kevin Daly and Ilona Somogyi, who met as teenagers at Cheshire High School, formed Ball and Socket Arts in 2011 in an effort to preserve the historic factory and turn into an arts center.