Repair of Fairchild Park on tap

BY ANDREAS YILMA

REPUBLICAN-AMERICAN

NAUGATUCK — The borough looks to repair drainage issues and ultimately bring some energy back to Fairchild Park as well as fix flooding issues on surrounding roads.

The Board of Mayor and Burgesses approved moving forward with drainage improvements at the park, located at Sharon Avenue and Cherry Street. Earthworks Excavating and Landscaping, Inc. of Oxford will be performing the work.

Borough officials applied for and received a $1 million small cities grant and have since begun engineering work in the area. There’s a host of problems there, including on Hunters Mountain Road, the park, Charles Street and many other streets in the area, Mayor N. Warren “Pete” Hess said.

Public Works Director James Stewart said this work will resolve flooding issues on Cherry Street. The total cost of the project is about $975,000, which will cover approximately two-thirds of the project.

The remaining third of the project will be done sometime in the future once officials figure out how to get the remaining work finished.

“There’s about four or five separate problems and it’s quite complex from an engineering standpoint,” Hess said.

“So when we got to the end, we knew we couldn’t do the entire project for $1 million so we broke it up to get the maximum return for our dollar that we can get.”

The ultimate goal will be to get the drainage through the Uniroyal property, which is close by, and down to the Naugatuck River so the area won’t be adversely impacted. The borough will look how to get funds to complete everything, Hess said.

There are plans to bring some more vitality back to life at Fairchild Park.

“Rebuilding that detention pond at Fairchild Park is also part of the project.” Stewart said.

Hess said that is being done to ultimately create a skating area at the park. There was previously a skating pond, a hot chocolate shed and a tow for skiing.

“Someday in the not too distant future we would like to bring some of that back,” Hess said.