BY ANDREAS YILMA
REPUBLICAN-AMERICAN
PROSPECT — Residents on June 6 approved the purchase of property along Center Street that will add to the town’s ownership of property along that road.
Officials called a special town meeting where about a dozen residents unanimously approved the town’s purchase of 27 New Haven Road from Gaetano Mauriello and Geraldine Mauriello for $245,000. (The property lies between New Haven Road and Center Street.)
The roughly half-acre plot has a two-story, 2,591-square-foot house which was built in 1932 and has an appraised value of $166,999, according to the assessor’s office. The house sits directly across Center Street from the Prospect Police Department.
Mayor Robert Chatfield said several past town councils since the mid-1990s have worked to have the town own all the property on that central avenue.
The town obtained property on that street from the Petrauskas family in the 1930s, including where the Community Center is now located at 12 Center St., and, more recently, the site where the library is now located, at 17 Center St.
The town is expected to have official ownership of the property in about 90 days, Chatfield said.
Chatfiield said future plans for the newly acquired land are still uncertain.
“It’ll be torn down and there’ll be a future just like the other properties,” Chatfield said. “It’ll be up to the council and the townspeople what they want to put there for the future, if anything.”
The Town Council is considering the Police Department’s needs. Police Lt. Nelson Abarzua has previously said a proposed location for a possible new police building could be on the parcel directly across from police department headquarters, which is next door to the library.
