001All right, good evening everyone. Um, I think we're all set. We are taping this work session so uh people have an opportunity to watch it if they're not able to be here tonight. But I would like to call our six o'clock work session to order. We are getting a presentation this evening from uh the Department of Transportation regarding phase three of the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail. I'm not sure if I'm kicking it off directly to the state or do you have a couple things you want to add before we open it up? >> Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Uh just good evening everyone. Um, no, I think we can turn it right over in the interest of time. Um, I'll introduce uh Stephen Hall who's here and um we'll likely make the presentation and uh
002we can certainly go through and have an ample time to uh answer questions uh from the presentation. So, without further ado, >> Great. Thank you very much. So, again, my name is Stephen Hall, a project manager with the Connecticut Department of Transportation. I've been involved with all three phases of the trail. We obviously have one in construction right now, one that we'll finish design plans in the spring, and then phase three we've been talking about for quite some time. The purpose of tonight's meeting is going to be rather high level, right? It's pretty customary for us to um hold a public informationational meeting, come back, meet with the town, discuss what the results were, discuss kind of how we move forward. Uh just quick recap of the team. Um again, myself, Stephen Hall, project manager
003here with Josh Diarazzio. Um Mike, Bill, and Scott unfortunately couldn't make it tonight, but these are the folks been working on these projects for some time. So, as I mentioned, we had the publicformational meeting uh November 20th, 2025, and quite frankly, it was a phenomenal publicformational meeting. And I'm I'm not being sarcastic. Um getting a lot of feedback is the goal. Good, bad, it doesn't matter. Um, when we get no feedback, that's a challenge because that means that perhaps we didn't get the word out to enough people or perhaps we didn't display the design well enough for them to realize what the problem was. So, the fact that we got that much um, you know, outreach that that many people coming out to the meeting to express essentially what they did not like about Hemingway
004was was a great meeting, right? That's part of the process as we talked about going through all the different alternatives that we could have had. Um, so you know, we knew probably a week or two before the meeting after meeting with Hemingway residents that there was a a distinctive disdain for the alignment, but you know, we went with the public info anyway. We still got some good feedback from the publicformational meeting. You know, we we knew that Hemingway would be a hot spot, so we tried to also get some information on the rest of the alignment and perhaps other alignments to try and get something from that meeting. So, I guess the question is where are we now? Um, I said I wanted to keep this high level essentially. Um, you know, no surprise we're
005not proceeding with the Hemingway alignment. I think we we again all knew that months ago. Um, we did get some good information though from the publicformational meeting. Some of which was, you know, people saying, gee, that route 177 alignment didn't really seem that bad. And and that can happen sometimes when we first show an alignment. There's some impacts to private property. To try and avoid those, we go somewhere else. And then you look at the context of Hemingway verse 177 and all of a sudden just because 177 technically has a 1 to2 foot acquisition and Hemingway doesn't necessarily mean that Hemingway is a better option. So all that to say that we got some comments on Route 177 that people thought might be a feasible option. Also talking with the town and the town engineer
006an option we're calling, you know, the southern alignment. Um going south of the park on an old access road and coming up Route 177. So, I've got a bunch of slides to kind of go into some detail. We've got some renderings, but really what I think where where I think we're at now is um obviously the the project is turned over to the town. The maintenance is the town's responsibility. It's the town's trail. We are merely designing the town's trail. So, the question becomes, you know, the town council, town manager, where do we think we are with an alignment that we can eventually go back to the public? And then I think that might look a little bit different than last time. Um but really, you know, high level um big picture, you know, where
007do we think we're at with alignment options? There's certainly a lot of other alignments we looked at that for various reasons have been dismissed. This is basically where we're at. We haven't really vetted the southern alignment too much yet. Um certainly having the interest of the town is a big hurdle for any kind of alignment, right? So that makes us seem like, gee, this might be feasible. Um, so anyway, before I ramble on too far, that's kind of where we're at. We've got the Northern Alignment. Um, we can address some of the issues with the parking lot, and I can get into some of those details certainly. I've got all these details. But before I get any further, I'm just kind of curious what the town's take is on on all of that. Does anyone
008want to comment or >> you want to? >> No. >> Okay. Um, not yet. Yeah, I I think I I mean I agree with the Hemingway is probably off the table and I'm I'm kind of >> glad to hear that. Um you know I guess as we go through this and it may be too soon to ask this question but you know trying to figure out what would be the next steps but I think let me wait for the rest of the presentation we can get into that but you know I think the Hemingway decision is a good one. >> I agree >> based on feedback I've gotten from the community. Um >> did you have something you want to say? >> No. >> Okay. And I'm sure I'll have a bunch of questions later.
009>> The next steps will look about the same for anything we do, right? I think um >> similar to how we met with the Hemingway residents, it that that works well for us. Even though it might have seemed like it worked terribly for us, that works well. That's that's good. That's the feedback that we need. So, anything we do, it would be a smallcale meeting with the most impacted property owners with the town. You know, there's no point in going to public info unless it's something that we feel like we can get on the same page with. Obviously, there's going to be impacted property owners aren't going to be happy. The challenge, the the burden you all have is weighing that all out. We can merely lay those out for you to decide. So, that
010kind of be the process. It'd be a small scale workshop style and then probably into another public information meeting similar to what we had in November. Um, but with that, if you'd like, I can kind of go through what some of these might look like. A quick little update. Again, if you ask specific trail widths, I'm not going to know. My my Bill Hogan has a child issue tonight. He has the details, but but certainly it's it's all drawn to scale. So, the north alignment would continue from phase one uh along Norton Park Road and connect with Route 177, very similar to what we had shown back in the trail walk that we did November of 2024. And that southern alignment would begin again at the phase one alignment and follow the existing sidewalk path
011prior to the Norton pool um and then follow the maintenance road south of Norton Park. >> So, starting with the northern alignment, right? Go back one. Go back one slide where when you >> connects at the intersection of 177 >> Southern Maintenance Road. Okay. So, you're talking coming up? >> Yeah. >> Way up down down down here on Route 177. So, this is that that access road to the park and then hitting 177 further south and taking that north. >> Okay. Okay. >> Yeah. And the reason it the reason that's on the on the table is that that you know there's some problematic issues in in terms of trees and andor uh the field here and encroachment there. So you know again not to put any pressure on see they they have not eval had
012time to evaluate so they have to do this portion to evaluate this one I don't think is a problem and an issue from our standpoint from the town standpoint it's just this area here in terms of the 177 but it was it was thrown out as an alternative so we can move away from some potential problems on the main entrance side and the field side >> irrigation all of that >> and it also relieves a lot of my issues in the park because it does the the trail never actually gets to the pool. >> Exactly. >> Yep. >> Yeah. >> So, looking at the northern alignment, you know, this is kind of what we had talked about, right? The phaser alignment right now terminates at the stone path. We talked about this a little bit
013just because of what we have. We would plan on shifting the entire parking lot down, call it 10, 12 ft to put the path behind the parking lot and run that disconnected from all the cars parking and all the people walking to the pool. And then we could take that on Norton Park Road, not crossing Norton Park Road, which is a benefit, right? So, one of the benefits of having it along Norton Park Road is not having to cross. You know, I mentioned we can do things to improve this site distance, but it still would be better to avoid that crossing on Norton Park Road. So, this location here, again, we would tee up the intersection um that I think we've had some speed problems before. We could tee that up. we can maintain that
014memorial tree and the bench that I believe that we have there um and make that a little bit safer of an intersection. As we move further down Norton Park Road, you know, we talked about the soccer fields and the fence. Um we've got an animation or a a sketch right here basically showing Norton Park Trail or Norton Park Road rather, the Stone Dust Trail and the fence. Basically, we'd be pushing that fence back. I think it was four to 5 ft. >> 7T um four to sorry. So 7 ft back to allow that trail doesn't impact the soccer uh nets. If any kind of irrigation heads had to be moved, we could easily put that in the contract and have those um shifted over where they might need to go. Coming out of the park,
015then of course we cross Route 177. You know, the major movement to Norton Park Road is this right coming down Route 177. So one of the benefits of crossing on this side is we're separating a lot of that pedestrian and bicycle movement from the major movement onto Norton Park Road. And then really one of the major uh cruxes with this design that we had was the private property acquisition on the east side of the road. Right? So today on the west side we have a sidewalk um nothing on the east side. Today on the east side we'd have about a 1 to two foot acquisition right to basically put that new property line right in the back of the walkway um and provide that buffer. A lot of the same treatments that we had discussed
016for Hemingway, right? you've got that four to 5ft grass buffer, 10 foot trail. Um the question is the impacts to those homes and then we start looking at the driveways versus the on street parking looking at the issues that Hemingway brought up and then we can really weigh out what does this have? You know, obviously there's no on street parking today here. So that's not going to be taken away and we have to kind of weigh it out that way. Now looking at the alignment a little further south. Um as Major Paul has mentioned, we haven't had a whole lot of time to look at this, but we have had a chance to kind of look and look at some areas. we have a pretty good level of confidence based on our coordination with the
017town, at least through this section. So, basically, we'd pick up um the phase one alignment a little bit further south. So, we'd have a a section that we could probably spur off to the parking lot and make that a nice connection from the Norton Parking lot to then get to the trail. So, there's actually a benefit to that section as well. Um this would come down beyond behind the soccer field to the south of Norton Park along that um access road. that circle over to the right side would be looking towards the park. So, this is kind of the access road we have today. I believe we discussed that road being closed, but if not, there's still a possibility for some clearing to have a trail next to that road and maintain that access. Obviously,
018with removing that access, that's just more space for the trail to go along in that location there. And then that southern section of Route 177 again. So, we're coming out um across from Chikio Court. There's no way that's pronounced correctly. Um we're coming out on Route 177 and they'll be taking a left to go up Washington Street. Similar scenario where we don't have any sidewalk on the east side of the road today, but adding that facility. So, one of the concerns that I can foresee coming up is if you think about Hemingway, a lot of the issues we had were snow removal. Well, these residents had a sidewalk where they already had to do snow removal and they didn't like the trail coming in. These residents don't have any snow removal today. So that's going
019to be an even bigger issue I foresee for them. Now there's a new incumbrance for them to remove snow. So something for us to discuss before we go to the public and and have a stance as far as how that's going to work. Other issues like where the garbage cans go and all that is is kind of a move point, but the snow removal is a legitimate issue. I would not be happy if I had to remove snow from a trail in front of my house. I can't lie. Um and then similar treatments with the raised intersection at Broad Street, Route 177. Again, you know, we got some good comments on that. Um really no negative comments. You know, we did get some concerns and we talked about the alignment behind Hemingway. Some of the
020Hemingway residents also didn't like the idea of going behind Hemingway in the wetland. So, if we wanted to dive into that deeper, I would recommend we get together with the residents of Hemingway again and say, "Okay, who really supports this?" or was it simply just better than going down Hemingway itself? Um, some complaints on Broad Street, some concerns from residents on Broad Street where we kind of cut through and some of that. So, by no means is the Hemingway Woods alignment a home run, even from a public perspective, I would say. Um, so again, I think we recommend going with, you know, and honestly, if you want to go to the public and show two options and do a workshop style, then that's a great idea. That's something we've done with more challenging designs before
021where we say, you know, we'll be here for two days, everyone come out, draw some sketches, where do you think? Um, and then hopefully from that meeting, one of these two alignments kind of becomes a better choice. Go to the public. Hopefully, it's we get behind and we close the gap. That's really the that's the dream right there, of course. Right. So, um, continuing down Washington, you know, we we've talked about these in the last public info as well. Same idea, same grass buffer, same same trail. So, this alignment is all the same as as the publicformational meeting in November. Um, so with that, any any questions, comments, concerns? I can go back to any of these specific slides to show a little bit of detail on what we're looking at. >> Any questions or
022comments? You would mention having a spur go to the towards the pool. So, we use the the current parking lot to get to the trail. >> I I think that'd be a good idea, right? Because we're going to have that phase one trail that goes to the parking lot. >> And if we terminate the trail further south, there's no reason to remove that 300 ft of trail that goes right to the parking lot. So, that could be a good option as well. >> And then we could actually put an opening at the end at that back corner of the park. >> Exactly. Exactly. Yes. I would have Yeah, definitely. >> Yep. Okay. Any other questions, comments? >> The only So, you I think the best thing to do is what you said about having the
023two different proposals and getting the public's um opinion on which which is the best way to go. Um I I hate 177. It just it it just doesn't seem wide enough to me. >> And I know it's it's only a 1 to two foot acquisition, but that's on top of the state right away. >> So, it's actually like like a 10 to 12 foot. >> Right. Right. >> So, >> and they don't have much yards as it is, >> you know. >> Yeah. For all intents and purposes, that's their yard. Yeah. Where wherever they're riding away, they're mowing it, they're raking it, it's their yard, >> right? Um and then as far as Washington Street, >> is there any way to Put that on the other side of the road. There's less driveways. >> Pardon
024my clicking. So you're saying the west. >> So we're now Okay. So let's see. So further, >> but we'll forward one more. Or now go forward. >> Keep going forward. >> One more. >> So at the top half there of that inter that's Washington Street right there. >> Right. >> Yeah. If we flip to the other side of the road, there's a lot less driveways. I know the telephone poles are >> right. I think I think there was a tremendous number of utility pole relocations that caused us to look on the other side of the road because we're looking at six figures per you know decent case to move those depending on the number of you know um conductors that are on them. So yeah, so that was our goal to avoid it. If we
025weigh out some avoidance features then all of a sudden maybe that utility relocation isn't as big of a deal. That's kind of our avoidance to try to get into all that. >> And the other issue I see with that is actually getting to that side of the road from phase two. >> Right. Right. Right. >> Yeah. >> Okay. >> Mr. Chairman. >> Yes. >> Yeah. Uh I I'm in agreement. I'm not really big on going down 177 and and back in the beginning when they were talking about going in the back of Hemingway through wetlands and all that. Um, as far as my I can recall, there was only one neighbor that was directly impacted that was unhappy about it. Everybody else, all the other impacted neighbors were fine with it. And I think it
026was far enough away from their their homes that they didn't really feel that it would be a significant impact to, you know, quality of their life or whatever, you know, that they were fine with it. So I would I would be uh happy if we could just get them together again and see you know have a discussion about that and have maybe some kind of concept uh drawn up for them to know um to so that they could visualize how it would impact them you know >> yeah I think it's a phenomenal idea right so as we mentioned in the last publicformational meeting you know we we have to go through our process to show that maybe the only viable alignment is through the woods right >> for for deep's purposes But I think it
027would be feudal for us to go to deep and advocate for it if we weren't positive that the residents also wanted it. But then that's a phenomenal idea. We can certainly meet with Hemingway again. >> Um we can kind of show them >> um you know what we have for the woods, >> right? >> And maybe you know less anecdotally say, you know, 90% of Hemingway residents were in favor of this. We we'll grab Broad Street as well because that does affect the square on Broad. >> Yeah. And you know, Broad Street's a wide wide enough road, too, where it would be less of an impact to to the residents there as well. So, I think broad street and the the woods on on Hemingway would be much more uh viable than the 177 um
028idea. >> That's great. Thank you. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Yes. >> No, you know, I'm glad to hear that the Hemingway behind the houses is not really off the table then. Um, >> nothing is really off the table quite frankly except Hemingway because you couldn't pay me to go back >> in the front. The front drawing he >> Yeah. But I also hear what you're saying that when people are really saying, "Okay, we're going to really consider going behind your houses. Do you really want it there?" >> That's something we've seen before, too, is if you if you show something that's the objective, you know, they don't like this seems better, but then once you get rid of Hemingway, all of a sudden, well, wait a minute. >> Referring to, >> right? Right. And
029we have to be cognizant of that. Certainly. >> Yeah. because you know Broad Street is broad and um you know does have less imposition. That would still leave us though with that you know it's relatively short stretch but it's filled with traffic and that's the Washington street. Yeah. >> Which uh is still problem you know pro I think very problematic. Yeah. >> Mr. Chair, >> go ahead. If we were to consider going behind the homes on Hemingway, going back to the parking lot in Norton, how we went behind it and then alleviated the problem of crossing the road there. Would we be back to going across the road to get behind Hemingway at that difficult traffic spot? >> We would have to cross Hemingway somewhere. We could either cross where we had shown the public
030info or we could follow the park and cross maybe middle of the tangent of of Norton Park Road so there's a better sighteline. The issue the issue then becomes how much of a factor are the soccer fields, the sprinkler heads, the fence because that's really what got the crossing over on Norton Park Road around that curve. We'd rather have it on a straight section. We could do a raised crosswalk rapid rectangular flash at beacon. So there are other we'd have to cross Hemingway somewhere is is is the answer and there's certainly options for that. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Um just a real quick question. Have and you might not have had this experience but has the state putting up trails have have you ever had to put up a trail adjacent to an active
031rail line? We have done a lot of that and and the the lore of this basically is that you know rail when I was growing up rails to trails I grew up in Simsbury. Rails to trails was great. They pulled the rail lines out put the trail in it was phenomenal. Worked great. Then all the rail companies started realizing well we're giving up all of our rightway that we are never going to get back. >> So it became a lot more challenging and they were a lot less willing to give up their rail. Even if it's unserviceable and would cost $40 million to repair, they're not going to give it up. Okay. So I talked to him >> and that it's kind of like, you know, I I think I heard you where maybe we
032come up with two or three options and that's just I I just want to know if you had the experience. I know it would probably be a very lengthy conversation to have something like that come to fruition, but >> I talked to Representative Martinez today actually because she called me maybe a couple weeks ago about CSX. >> Okay. >> Um some of the challenges are >> how close we can get to their rail line. I think 25 ft. So a lot of times the rightway isn't wide enough. The other issue we have through here is the flood way. So more than just a flood plane, the floodway the rail is in. Yep. >> It seems crazy to have rail in a floodway, but you think about when it was put in and and that happens.
033You would have to have a 400 foot clear span structure to clear the floodway. So the rail prevents and I responded to her earlier. The rail presents other issues with floodway as well, unfortunately. >> Thank you. >> All right. Any other questions, comments? >> All right. Anything else you want to add? I would just say I think our next step is we'll coordinate with the time manager. We we'll find the time to meet with the Hemingway residents again and Broad Street. Get those ducks in a row and then think about doing a workshop where we show two or three alignments. I think I think really three is where we're at with the the Hemingway Woods and these two here. These previous two I showed have a workshop and and then meet again and say, "All
034right, is there an alignment that that the council can support if there's some some push back from X Y or Z residents?" That's really the goal. So, we will work on that. Coming up with a couple different options in addition to what you just mentioned if we can find some and yeah, we'll start rolling that ball up the hill. >> Sounds how far we get. >> Mr. Chair. >> Yes. >> Can you go back to the slide that shows the woods behind Hemingway? This is riveting. Thank you for being patient with me. Actually, did that >> almost actually the one that has Broad Street part of it? >> It's a big overall one. >> Oh, is it? Is it >> I don't have a pillar plan. >> There we go. >> There you go. If
035possible, could you give a guesstimate how close to the houses it would be? Cuz that's going to be their first question. How close is that trail behind me going to be to my backyard? And I'm guessing the first three or four houses, it's going to be closer than the rest. >> If you mean the three or four up here. Yes. Yes. Yeah. So we so we we showed we have a pretty decent alignment through there that we showed them at the public information meeting. So we have I top of my head I'm not sure. Okay. >> In general they felt pretty comfortable with the distance back there. Basically the yards kind of plateau out and then drop into wetlands. Some construction activities probably pushed them out. So So really it's all going to be back
036behind the slope. It's not going to impact their property. I actually don't know if it goes on on one piece of private property maybe. >> No it doesn't. But all the trees will have to be cleared. There's a lot of tree clearing just because given it's wetlands, these trees uproot. So there'll be a w and that's what we've been saying is we're concerned about how wide of a swath and all those impacts that it would need because you start taking out trees and wetlands, you don't get the the absorption of the water. So that's all the things that deep looks into. Right. >> Privacy now. They wouldn't have privacy when the trees are gone. >> That's that's the concern. Yeah. >> Yeah. That's one of their biggest Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Um when you take
037those trees, is there is there things you can plant >> to to make up for that? I think we could we could plant things that would be low enough that wouldn't be a safety hazard later on. And and honestly, I think that the we built some rapport with the Hemingway residents before the public info. So, I think we could have a fruitful discussion and say, "Here's what we're looking at. Tell me what you all think and and and go from there." >> Okay. >> Yes. Um, you know, when the first number of years that we were discussing the, you know, the various phases of the trail, uh, it seemed to me that rather frequently it would be mentioned that people would have an option in their backyards, for example, of privacy fencing. And, uh, where
038has that gone? you know, uh >> there there is a there has a uh I guess the answer would be a decision above my head that apparently we we no longer do privacy fencing except for some specific criteria that I'm not unfortunately familiar with. Um but yeah, privacy fencing is is as as hot of an issue as garbage removal and snow removal typically for a for a fence going in. Um I know that for other phases we've looked at doing some plantings and then the question is when rights away gets involved are we compensating them for the privacy and the plantings it gets rather bureaucratic. Um but the short answer to that is yeah we we we've gotten away from putting privacy fences everywhere. Um and I would I'd be happy to get you a
039better answer as to why. >> Thank you. That would be that would be >> yeah I would love >> I could use that answer myself quite frankly. So yeah >> yeah I get asked a lot. How come how do I get a privacy fence and You know, I say beg and then pay for it. So, >> all right. Any other comments or questions? >> Okay. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you. Thank you very much. >> All right. So, that actually concludes our work session. Um, thank you to the state, to both of you for being here tonight. Um, we have some homework to do. I'm sure we'll be in touch to set up the next uh steps, so to speak. And uh with that, everybody's got a half an hour until we begin
040our regular meeting. >> All right. Thank you.