BRIDGEPORT — More than four years ago, a five-alarm warehouse fire along Seaview Avenue laid waste to the industrial site and threatened the neighborhood of tightly-packed multi-family homes across the street.
Now East End community leaders are fighting what they consider a different kind of threat to those same residents — plans to turn the site of the blaze into an outdoor storage yard for construction materials and equipment.
“We’re tired of being dumped on,” said Keith Williams, head of the East End Neighborhood Revitalization Zone, a community organization that collaborates with the city on economic development. “Every junkyard, or storage facility — they want to bring all that stuff over here.”
“No other city puts those kinds of things right on top of residential property but Bridgeport,” said Ralph Ford, a Democratic leader in the East End.
JCM Service Inc. of Stamford, according to a zoning application filed with the city, wants to purchase the 70,681 square foot site at 2115 Seaview Ave., just off of Boston Avenue, for “crushed stone of various sizes, sand, mulch, topsoil and processed base material.”
In September 2014, a fire ignited at an old building at that address which, unknown to neighbors and city officials, was used by a Norwalk-based company to house hundreds of 55-gallon drums of fragrance oil and other chemicals. Once heated, the drums exploded into fireballs, rocking the neighborhood and causing problems for firefighters who were initially unsure what they were dealing with at the scene.
The U.S. Environmental Protection...
from News https://www.ctpost.com/local/article/Bridgeport-community-leaders-fight-East-End-13727330.php
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