Author Topic: Waterford Airport article in The Day (New London, CT)  (Read 7752 times)

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Waterford Airport article in The Day (New London, CT)
« on: August 27, 2006, 12:40:37 PM »
Where Nothing Seems To Fly
Once busy airport, Waterford land goes years without development
By Julie Wernau
Published on 8/27/2006
   
Waterford -- In the 1985 sequel “Return to Oz,” Dorothy Gale magically returns to the Emerald City to find a mere shadow of the glittering world she left behind. The city has been stripped of its emeralds, her Yellow Brick Road torn apart.

Here, in Waterford, the large strip of land bordered by Parkway South to the north, Devonshire Drive to the south, Beechwood Drive to the west and Nevins Brook to the east is still “The Waterford Airport property.” But it has been 20 years since the airport's small private planes took their final flights. And, like Dorothy's yellow brick road, the three runways were ripped apart long ago. Trees have taken root amid the bulldozed piles of asphalt.

For years, developers and town officials have touted the property as one of the last prime pieces of land in southeastern Connecticut, noting how it is in the center of the community's industrial triangle, flanked by Interstate 95 and primed for development.

In 2001, as the property was coming out of nearly 15 years of litigation as part of yet another failed deal — this one with Reynolds Metals Development Co., which abandoned plans to build a 26-lot business park — Town Planner Thomas Wagner was optimistic.

“It's one of the largest mixed-use properties of its type in Connecticut, with water, sewer, natural gas and fiber optics,” Wagner told The Day at the time. “It has very high visibility off I-95, with a traffic count of 70,000 cars a day. It is an unusual piece, a significant piece — one that can impact the southeast section of the state.”

But today the land, a 325-acre parcel last purchased three years ago for $15.9 million, is nothing more than a dumping ground for moldy beds, rusty bicycles and appliances. It has developed into an all-terrain-vehicle playground, where people come to ride and negotiate the dirt piles created from the last failed project — an industrial park proposed by Reynolds Metals Development Co. nearly 20 years ago. Once in 1997 and twice in 2002, police were called to the property after bodies were found dumped there.

Next month, on Sept. 12, the property owner, Mathon Fund I LLC of Arizona, will sell the former airport land to the highest bidder at auction. This comes after the previous owner, TMC Partners, a limited partnership out of Corapolis, Pa., was forced into foreclosure in November 2005 after their lender, Mathon, went belly-up in an alleged Ponzi scheme that defrauded 255 investors. Mathon seized the property and now wants to sell off its assets to pay $76.4 million in a settlement with the state of Arizona.

At least one developer has come forward with an interest in buying the property — Meridian Development Partners LLC, based in Manhattan. But with a shrinking tax base and more than three decades of broken deals and pie-in-the-sky developments that never took root at the former Waterford Airport, the town will be looking to the next buyer to build soon and build big.

•••••

Michael Reeves was just 28 years old when his family lost their lease on the airport, where he had grown up with a rag in his back pocket and spent his days fueling the 50 or so planes kept there.

His father, Edwin Reeves, owner and operator of Reeves Air Inc., the airport's maintenance shop, had been running the airport for a decade and leased it from Russell Corser. Originally from Waterford, Corser was the airport's owner and founder, a pilot who built the airport in 1945 from the remains of the Whitman family dairy farm.

At Reeves Air Inc., now relocated at the Westerly Airport, people are always coming in to say what a shame it is about the Waterford Airport, how it should have stayed in operation because nothing's happened there.

“You know, there's a lot of nostalgia about how great the airport was,” Michael Reeves said. “But (Corser) would only give him a 30-day lease, so at anytime he could come in and say he didn't want it to be an airport anymore.”

Today, Michael Reeves is the sole owner of his late father's maintenance shop. His father died this January. The younger Reeves, in the airplane business for 30 years now, bought out his father five years before.

“It was weird,” he said, “I thought he'd be around forever.”

Today, the airplane manufacturers have all but stopped making the small leisure planes Reeve's father once bought for the airport's flight school, which his stepmother, Lori Reeves, ran during the Waterford Airport's heyday. She would go on to become the first female captain for United Airlines.

Today, Michael Reeves has become less of a mechanic and more of an antique expert, working to restore airplanes from as far back as 1941.

It's gotten to be too expensive to fly leisure airplanes these days, Reeves said, with the cost of insurance and expensive radio equipment with twice the channels required in the past.

The last time Reeves went back to the Waterford Airport, about 10 years ago, was to watch firemen burn down the old Whitman dairy barn long after the airport had closed, he said, “It looked like a bomb had gone off.

“It was strange,” he said. “The only building there was the little white building where the flight school used to be. ... Where the hangar was, you could just see the floor and a white spot where we painted my daughter's dresser.”

Near the end of business there, Reeves said, residential developments sprung up behind the airport, and neighbors started complaining about the noise, calling for his father to change the airport's hours.

In 1987, then-property-owners Reynolds Metals Development Co. gave Reeves 60 days to vacate the property. The company had bought the land from the now defunct New England Savings Bank, which had bought it three years prior from Corser. With the airport closed, the airplanes and their owners went to the remaining small airports in the area, Reeves said, and the family eventually moved to Westerly, taking only the maintenance shop with them.

“It was kind of a relief,” Reeves said. “You know, how much money can you invest in something when you have a 30-day lease?”

•••••

Today, from an unfinished road into the former airport, the expansive roof of the Crystal Mall is visible beyond the Lowe's and Wal-Mart across the interstate.

Behind the scraggly trees that have engulfed the airport's abandoned buildings, a small bridge crosses Jordan Brook, a favorite fishing spot. From there, another 140 acres of undeveloped land — added to the airport parcel in the late 1990s in anticipation of an unrealized country-western theme park five times the size of Six Flags New England — rises in a tree-covered slope.

“I haven't been out here in years,” Wagner said, as he made his way around the property in a visit in July.

Wagner and other town officials say they sat down at the table with many interested buyers, but few make it far enough to actually tour the land. Weaving past several couches dumped on the property, Wagner said that any large open piece of land will inevitably become a dump if left undeveloped.

“When they did the Wal-Mart parcel,” he said, “they lined up all the tires along the edge. I think it took something like three tri-axle trucks to bring them all out of there.”

Although the airport land has been untouched for decades now, there hasn't been any lack of ideas for the property.

In 1978, Corser first announced he wanted to sell the land, though it would take six more years before he would seal such a deal.

In 1979, a proposed industrial park never surfaced nor did a proposed 19th-century “Disney Land” complete with horse shows, a hotel and an amusement park.

New England Savings Bank bought the property in 1984, anticipating that the company would outgrow its quarters in New London and need an office park, hotel and convention center. But after $300,000 in improvements to the property, not a single building went up.

Throughout the 1980s, there were rumors and talk about possible interest from Electric Boat and Pfizer Inc., before Reynolds Metals Development Co. purchased the property in 1987 for $3.5 million, nearly three times the price NESB paid in 1984, to build an industrial park dubbed “Waterford Landing.”

But after spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to remediate polluted soil and put water and other utilities onto the property, Reynolds Metals bowed out of the deal in 1997, leaving behind an unfinished road.

New London Attorney Thomas Londregan, who represented Reynolds Metals in the deal, said his impression was that the business felt it was dealing with an “unfriendly” environment after it got wrapped up in multiple lawsuits regarding its wetlands permit.

“Reynolds Metals got so delayed by the lawsuits, all of which they'd won ... that I think the company just decided to unload the property,” he said.

In more recent years, the property has become a blank slate for larger and more glamorous projects for which plans were never submitted. Those schemes include the country-western theme park that would attract 5 million visitors a year.

Joseph Gentile, who has spearheaded the plans to transform the former Norwich Hospital site in Preston into a massive entertainment complex, drummed up media glitz over his proposal to build a “Gallery Studio Campus at Waterford,” for $1.6 million. He said two years ago that he had had a controlling interest in the property.

Evidence of that deal has never surfaced, and Gentile has since said he does not plan to bid on the property in September.

“The town's never been in a super hurry to put just anything on this property,” Wagner said. “Something will happen with this property.”

Ed Standage, asset manager for the Mathon Fund, said that while Meridian is the only developer to come forward with the paperwork and finances necessary to make a bid at auction, he expects there will be others. With the foreclosure, Mathon Fund owns the property free and clear, and any options to buy the property are off the table, he said.

“I think it's going to bid up,” he said. “I think it's worth a lot more than 12 million bucks.”

•••••

The property, while mostly flat and ready to be developed, does have wetlands that could pose a problem for development.

Waterford's first selectman, Daniel Steward, said that land speculation seems to have been driving the various purchases of the property over the years. Some of the owner/developers have said the costs of cleaning up the land would be too steep, he said.

“The marketplace was buying and selling it for different reasons other than developing it,” Steward said.

Now, he added, the town is looking to add to its tax base and hopes to see the property developed into light industry — “white-collar, low-impact businesses, probably not retail.”

Larry Bettencourt, who was first selectman in Waterford from 1977 to 1989 and has since retired to Florida, said he is surprised the property is still untouched.

“I could never understand it,” he said. “That was a piece of property that was ideal to be developed. And for reasons that were unknown — or at least unknown to me — it never materialized.

He called the Reynolds Metals deals “one of the biggest projects that I worked on, besides the Crystal Mall.”

Howard Weitzman, a principal with Meridian — a firm formed in 2004 with several projects under way but none completed — said Meridian has plans for development, but he would not give any details. His firm is redeveloping a former foundry in Southington for a mix of residential and retail uses.

Without “fully vetting” a property cleanup and other issues, he said, he is not ready to talk about specifics for the former Waterford Airport.

“We wouldn't be buying just a piece of raw land to hold onto it,” Weitzman said.

Waterford Airport Timeline

1945-60: Russell Corser of Waterford buys 188 acres of the Whitman dairy farm and builds a grass runway for an airport, which he operates for 15 years.

1960: Corser leases airport and moves to Palm Beach, Fla.

July 1977: Edwin and Lori Reeves, owners and operators of Reeves Air Inc., the airport's maintenance shop, acquire Waterford Flight School and Yankee Airways from Thomas Rolfe, giving them complete control of all facilities at the airport.

September 1978: Corser announces plans to sell all 188 acres. At the time, the area east of the airport was owned by Wendell Peabody. To the west was an abandoned road called Tyke Road. The state owned 100 acres nearby, which it set aside for the planned Route 11 cloverleaf junction with Interstate 95.

September 1978–February 1979: The airport price is set at $8,000 per acre, or $1.5 million. The Boyer Agency, with exclusive sales rights for six months, announces that a Farmington firm is “very interested” in developing an industrial park. Rumors fly that an Arab speculator and Fishers Island heir are interested in the property, which is said to hold more value now that the Crystal Mall is planned. No deals surface.

May 30, 1979: Former Lt. Gov. Robert K. Killian acts as corporate attorney for Americaland Inc., a developer looking to buy 600 acres, including the airport land, for a theme park in Waterford. Plans are said to include an arena, hotel, amusement area, pavilion and equestrian facilities that would compare to Hershey Park in Pennsylvania and Disneyland and would employ more than 1,500 people.

May 31, 1979: Americaland Inc. says it is almost ready to finance $130 million to buy land from 12 owners and build the theme park, which it says will be backed by a German company with $25 million and by state bonding of $70 million to $80 million. Developer says park will have a 19th-century theme, with a 5,500-seat civic center, 300-room hotel, rides, gardens and an annual audience of 15 million.

July 1979: Russell Corser agrees to sign a six-month option with Americaland to buy his property for $1.52 million for a theme park.

August 1979: Theme park delayed because of a failure to gain an option on a single parcel of land near the airport owned by the Peabody family. Deal never surfaces.

1980: Corser offers Reeves a five-year extension on his lease, with a six-month cancellation clause.

April 1981: Resident Louis M. Nassetta complains to Federal Aviation Administration, U.S. Rep. Sam Gejdenson and others and circulates petition about “excessive noise” from airport. He asks town to restrict hours of operation.

July 1984: New England Savings Bank purchases Waterford Airport for $1.2 million and spends $300,000 on improvements. Bank officials have tentative plans for a commercial park with offices, professional buildings and a hotel/convention center. Reeves given lease with 30-day cancellation clause.

March 1987: New England Savings Bank to sell property for $3.5 million to the Reynolds Metals Development Co. to build a multimillion dollar high-tech office park.

June 1987: Electric Boat considering airport property as possible site for an engineering/technology center as part of Reynolds Metals' project.

July 22, 1987: Reynolds Metals notifies Edwin K. Reeves that he must vacate the 45-acre section used by his aviation businesses within 60 days. There are about 50 planes there.

July 1987: About 25 to 30 planes are expected to go to Groton. Other pilots say they need to find another small airport that doesn't require radio equipment.

April 1988: Reynolds Metals submits plans for “Waterford Landing,” calling for the property to be divided into lots of about 2 acres to about 9 acres for offices, light industry and warehouses. There are talks with DOT to widen I-95 to six lanes to accommodate traffic.

August 1991: Reynolds Metals begins construction on 26-lot business park the day after receiving final approvals. Project manager says approvals took longer than expected. No tenants signed.

1991-1992: Robert Fromer of New London and Scott Gardiner of Waterford file suits against the town and Reynolds Metals over land-use issues associated with the project. Reynolds Metals also in a dispute with the town Water Pollution Control Authority over a $1 million bill for sewer tie-in fees.

May 1992: Superior Court dismisses lawsuits.

1992-1997: Reynolds Metals begins clearing the parcel, constructs the beginning of a road and brings utilities to the property, but does not construct a single building.

August 1997: The body of Renee Pellegrino of Quaker Hill is found near the former Waterford Airport. Her case is never solved.

December 1997: Amalgamated Industries Inc. and the Swartz Family Trust of Corapolis, Pa., announce plans for a massive 1,200-acre entertainment park with a country-western theme.

February 1998: Reynold Metals says it has not been approached about selling the property. Pfizer Inc., which had also considered the property, looks instead to New London.

July 1999: Swartz Family Trust purchases the 188-acre former Waterford Airport for $5 million, vowing not to build a theme park. Amalgamated Industries has options on 140 adjacent acres.

August 1999: Town receives a settlement of $412,500 from Reynolds Metals after the company failed to put up a building by 1994, five years after sewer lines were installed.

November 2001: Beazley Co., a residential real estate broker based in New Haven, continues to market the property.

April 2002: Fishermen discover the body of Philip Scaplen of East Lyme in a stream near the former Waterford Airport. Cause of death cannot be determined.

August 2002: The Southern Pequot Tribal Nation announces they are in negotiations to buy land in Waterford to build a casino and bottled-water plant, and there is speculation that the former Waterford Airport is an area of interest.

October 2002: Third body in five years found near the former Waterford Airport. Christopher J. Schmeller, a Westerly native and fisherman, had been reported missing for eight days before his body was found.

September 2003: TMC Partners, a limited partnership registered to David F. Baker III of Corapolis, Pa., spends $15.9 million to purchase 328 acres, including the 188-acre former airport and 140 adjacent residentially zoned acres.

July 2004: Joseph Gentile, chief financial officer for Utopia Studios, announces the company has purchased a controlling interest in the 328-acre parcel owned by TMC Partners and hopes to build 25 studios for film, animation and television production to lease to Hollywood stars. He calls it: “The Gallery Studio Campus at Waterford.”

July 2005: Gentile announces plans to close on the property in September. TMC is making monthly payments on $112,059 in unpaid local property taxes.

November 2005: The lender for TMC, Mathon Fund I LLC, forecloses on the property as part of a $76.4 million settlement with the state of Arizona, which sued Mathon principals Duane Slade and Guy Williams for defrauding 255 investors in an elaborate Ponzi scheme.

May 2006: New York redevelopment firm, Meridian Development Partners LLC, files a purchase-and-sale agreement to pay $12 million for the 328-acre site as part of a bankruptcy case involving the owner, Mathon Fund I LLC.

June 2006: An attorney overseeing sale of Mathon's assets announces the property will be auctioned on Sept. 12. Gentile says he will not bid.

Source Links:
http://www.theday.com/re.aspx?re=41c45f46-fba7-4b04-a375-ea93dca9acc5
http://www.theday.com/re.aspx?re=ec121d3a-d11a-4c86-b29b-8faac350510e

There's also a photo gallery showing Waterford Airport when it was in use, and I have present day photos in my gallery.
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