Grassroots Group Targets Costco Plan

“Alarmed” by an application to locate a Costco warehouse and other stores on light industrially zoned land at Exit 56, a group of residents has mobilized to stop Costco from obtaining a zoning change they say will ​“subvert” the zoning laws applicable to this area of town. 

While Costco has long attracted shoppers to its doors in other towns and cities in the state, especially in nearby Milford, popularity is not the issue for members of this group, which is named Branford Citizens for Responsible Development (BCRD). They say they know the store is popular. 

Their concerns center on the impact of a regional shopping plaza at this particular site.  At this juncture, Costco Plaza includes Costco plus seven other stores, a development they say will transform the landscape and life style of a community, both literally and figuratively. This section of town, they say, has never been meant for retail development and intense traffic. The BCRD wants to keep it that way.

They BCRD group has taken their name and their approach from the successful effort of Guilford Citizens for Responsible Development (GCRD), which kept Costco from Guilford in 2010. The GCRD raised similar arguments. The BCRD website went public this past weekend.

Here is how the group describes itself: “BCRD is a non-partisan group of citizens alarmed by the proposal to locate a Costco warehouse, chain restaurant and additional retail on industrially zoned land at Exit 56. We are concerned that the thoughtful and consistent planning for this area — retail has been excluded from Exit 56 since 1973 — would be subverted, and that traffic will overwhelm not just the area around Exit 56 but other roads and streets as residents seek alternative routes in order to avoid the entire Exit 56 area. We support the continued development of research and development, high-tech, office, biotech and biomedical enterprises in this area.”

A Costco hearing for a Planned Development District (PDD) before the town’s Planning and Zoning Commission (P&Z) is scheduled for Thursday April 2 at 7:00 p.m. at Branford High School. The BRCD plans to present testimony that night and is urging residents to attend.

Costco Seeks Another Way In

Unlike with prior efforts over the years, this developer is not starting with the Inland Wetlands Commission, (IWC) which in the past has not been receptive to development in or near this area because of potential wetlands infringement. In the past if Inland Wetlands denied an application or indicated to a developer there would be rough sailing, the effort ended. It never got to the Planning and Zoning Commission. And if the issue was raised at P& Z, the commission “has repeatedly rejected retail at Exit 56,” the BRCD says.

Now Costco is seeking another way in. This time it wants to place a PDD over 44 acres of land that stretch from Route I to East Industrial Road. (See top photo.) When the town’s zoning regulations were amended in 2011, new requirements were added for submission of a Master Plan with a PDD application. Costco delivered its application to the town’s planning department on February 18. 

If successful in getting a PDD, then Costco’s developers will submit detailed site plans for review and approval by IWC and P&Z.

Costco Plaza consists of a main warehouse store, typically one that takes in 140,000 to 150,000 square feet or more, plus a series of other types of retail stores. Costco, the fourth largest discount retailer in the United States and in the world, has long sought to build a store in this area of the shoreline. It failed in Branford in the past and it failed in Guilford in 2010 when it wanted to place a warehouse on the so-called Rock Pile site; the town rejected a 150,000-square-foot store.

According to financial analysts, as of November, the company employed 189,000 full and part-time employees. It has 671 warehouses worldwide and 76.4 million cardholders, according to its website. If its application is approved Costco will bring 225 new employees to its store in addition to employing those who will build the store, a process that could take under six months.

Costs to the Town

In recent weeks, Democratic members of the Representative Town Meeting (RTM) have voiced concern about additional costs to the town for police and fire services. RTM member Doug Hanlon, former chair of the RTM’s Public Services Committee, asked the RTM to consider budget increases for additional services, but the Republican RTM moderator Dennis Flanagan said the RTM was not the right venue to raise the issue, even though the RTM oversees the town’s budget. Hanlon tried again before the Board of Finance (BOF) but didn’t succeed there either.
Click here to read the story.

BOF chair Joseph Mooney told the Eagle afterwards that if either the police or fire departments heads were concerned about the impact on their 2015 – 16 budgets, ​“they would have raised it” or noted it in their budget requests. But top police officials say a professional study is essential in order to determine these costs. 

Chris Sullivan, the Democratic minority leader on the RTM, recently wrote to First Selectman Jamie Cosgrove to say that during recent budget hearings before the BOF ​“it has become apparent that no evaluation has been requested or pursued to determine the scale of this increased demand on Town service budgets.”

Sullivan told Cosgrove ​“it is striking that your administration, which has been strongly pro-development at Exit 56 since 2013, has not evaluated the potential costs to our Town services.” The 2013 reference is to one of Cosgrove’s major election campaign themes, which was to bring a Costco store to the Exit 56 area.

Cosgrove has said many times since that a Costco in this part of town would bring needed tax revenue to the town. Others argue whatever taxes Costco and the other seven stores may pay to the town on a yearly basis will be eaten up by as yet undetermined additional services for police, fire and sewers. 

Sullivan said Cosgrove has a line item in the budget for consulting services. “I am requesting that some of those funds are used to evaluate the potential costs to our Town departments.” 

The P&Z also has a consulting budget and it is likely that is where such a study will be addressed.

The BCRD also raised this issue on its website, saying there were 192 police service calls to the Milford Costco in 2014. Based on Branford’s rate of calls to the Branhaven Plaza and Walmart, and pro-rated for size, ​“we can expect approximately 162 police calls for the additional, non-Costco, 93,000 square feet of retail use proposed at Exit 56. This represents 354 calls per year to service this proposed project. Branford must properly assess the cost of these services.”

Developer Promises Town Fire Substation for $1

As for the fire department, the BCRD says on its website that the developer has offered to ​“to construct a fire substation near the proposed development. They propose to construct the building at their own expense and lease it back to the town at $1 a year.

“That substation, if this development is approved, must be equipped and staffed to be useful. A piece of fire apparatus currently costs approximately $400,000. One additional firefighter, counting salary and benefits, currently costs the Town $82,443.50 a year. Branford must properly assess the cost of these services,” the website says.

Linda Reed, a former member of the Zoning Board of Appeals, and an officer in the Stony Creek Association, said in a recent article published in the ShoreLine Times that ​“it seems a bit disingenuous that whoever has the information (about town service costs) even if only preliminary, is holding those cards close to the chest.” 

SCA Takes No Stand

A number of Stony Creek residents are engaged in the effort to stop the Costco development but the opponents are not limited to the Stony Creek section of town. 

The Stony Creek Association (SCA) has decided to sit this fight out. It will take no position on Costco’s recent application. 

Dan Bullard, the president of the SCA, told the Eagle that after a general discussion at a recent SCA meeting, those at the meeting decided against a pro or con position.

“While we believe Costco will adversely affect the traffic in and around Stony Creek,” he said, ​“the project is not within Stony Creek and does not fall within our jurisdiction.”

He said some people in the room indicated opposition to the big box store, and he noted a grassroots movement had begun. He referred to Kate Galambos, who lives in the Brushy Plains section of Branford and who has circulated her views about why Costco is not good for Branford. She spoke to SCA at one of its meetings.

She said she wants to preserve local businesses, which the Shoreline Chamber of Commerce recently advocated in its ​“Be Loyal To Local” campaign. Costco can eat into local businesses, especially when it comes to grocery stores, gasoline stations, pharmacies and clothing stores. Click here to read story.

The town’s Economic Development Commission (EDC) heard Galambos’s views at a recent meeting as well. She urged the EDC to continue to advocate on behalf of local businesses.

The EDC also heard from Richard Shanahan, a Short Beach resident and the director of Raymond James financial services. He praised the EDC for its major effort on behalf of the bio-tech companies now choosing to locate in Branford.
 
​“This is where the future of Branford lies. This is the type of development that Branford must continue to attract,” Shanahan said. ​“The best tax revenue originates from industrial development, not from retail and not from residential. Proper industrial development brings in more tax dollars with minimal impact on town services. This is where our focus should remain. And this is what the current Town Plan provides for.” He says a PDD for Costco would undermine that.

“The Costco proposal is not just removing 44 prime acres from desirable industrial development; there is a much more profound impact. Like Silicon Valley or the inner beltway around Boston, oftentimes development attracts like development. Big box development will attract additional retail/commercial development. Light manufacturing, biotech/medical research, healthcare facilities attract similar industries. Having a huge retail development in the middle of the planned industrial zone will undermine the entire industrial area. It loses the very features that would attract light manufacturing and companies in the biotech/medical research arena.” Click here to read a recent story.

In a subsequent letter to the Sound, Shanahan wrote: ​“I ask our leaders and the various board members reviewing the Costco proposal to do their job by asking penetrating questions to properly represent the citizens of the town. Do not be blinded by corporate promises of nirvana.”
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