Paul Bass Photo
The city has ordered a Fair Haven auto-wrecking operation to clean up a public street it illegally turned into a junkyard.
City Building Official James Turcio issued the cease-and-desist letter to Elm City Properties Inc., Elm City Auto Wrecking, the related entities that own and run an auto-smashing and recycling business at 46 Middletown Ave. The letter was issued two days after the Independent reported that, without any apparent permission, the business has been storing junked cars on the Fawn Street, a one-block dead-end road next to its business, and issuing threats about entering what it claims is private property.
Meanwhile, new questions emerged about whether Elm City has the right to operate a junkyard even on its own property.
Turcio’s order, hand-delivered by marshal this past Wednesday, was addressed to Elm City President Richard M. Gaboury and Secretary Stuart Saslafsky of both Elm City Properties and Elm City Auto Wrecking. (Salafasky is pictured in the above video ordering a reporter to leave Fawn Street during a recent visit.)
“An inspection … on June 30, 2015 revealed that you as owner and/or agent are in violation of the New Haven Zoning Ordinance. Said inspection you are in violation of your Special Exception[:] ‘No junk yard related business or activities shall be conducted on Fawn Street,’” Turcio wrote.
“You are hereby ordered to cease and desist the above violation as required in Section(s) 42, 64 of the New Haven Zoning Ordinance within ten (10) days from the receipt of this letter.”
A visit to Fawn Street Monday revealed that the owners have taken initial steps to comply. The portion of the road closest to Middletown Avenue had been cleared of junked cars and vehicles were now parked parallel to the curb as required under a 2007 special permit granted to the business by the City Plan Commission. City Plan granted Elm City Properties/Auto Wrecking the permit to to continue operating its junkyard in return for promises to make environmental improvements.
Only scattered debris remained on the now-passable first portion of the street.
The back portion, which runs up to Amtrak railroad tracks, were another story. Junked Toyota and SUVs and station wagons remained piled two high in two rows (above) leading back to a less orderly dumping pile (pictured at the top of the story).
Upon the arrival of a reporter taking photos, a driver steered a Caterpillar 938G Wheel Loader from the Elm City lot onto the road. Shielding his face with a newspaper (as he had done on previous visits), he declined to answer questions. He was later observed removing a wheel from the pile with his vehicle.
Reached later by phone, Gaboury declined to answer questions. “I don’t think we have anything to talk about. No comment,” he remarked before hanging up.
One question he didn’t stay on the phone to respond to: Why is that back-of-the-street junkyard there in the first place? In his 2007 application for the special permit, Gaboury said his business would like to purchase Fawn Street from the city for storage of vehicles. He submitted designs by the West Hartford-based engineering firm Quense, LLC showing a gate closing off the back portion of the street to contain stored vehicles.
The city never sold the street to the company, according to records and conversations with officials. But those gates are up there, and the cars and other debris are stored back there. For now.
Meanwhile, a search of city records Monday revealed no sign that Elm City Properties/Auto Wrecking had ever renewed its special permit to operate the legal junkyard on its own property at 46 Middletown Ave. That special permit, granted in 2007, was to have expired on May 15, 2012, according to a City Plan report issued at the time.
“We’ll look into that,” City Plan Department Executive Director Karyn Gilvarg said Monday. “The burden is on them to come in to ask for renewal.”
Gaboury’s 2007 application for the special permit noted that the property “has been used for auto wrecking for over 70 years. This site plan and application are being submitted at the request of the New Haven City Planning Department. The plan and application are required in order to obtain a renewal of the permit that allows the business to continue to operate.” The company “takes in automobiles and small trucks that have reached the end of their useful lives” and either saves them for parts or crushes them.
Working with the state Department of Environment Protection (since renamed the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection), the company reported, it planned to relocated its auto rusher “to a new concrete pad … bermed so that any fluids leaking from the crushed autos will be captured inside the berm. A roof over the structure will keep rainwater out of the bermed areas. Any liquid in the berm will be captured and removed in an environmentally approved manner.”
The plan also described a new roof that “will eliminate rain washing over the paid where the [auto] dismantling takes place”; and “an oil-water separator” to “collect petroleum products and water” and “separate and collect any petroleum product and allow only clean water to be discharged.” Acting on a fire department suggestion, the company agreed to start removing gasoline “from the junk vehicles in one area separated from the other operations,” stored in closed containers.