Thomas Breen photo
Suzio truck rolls on out of the Chapel St. concrete plant.
Expect 4,000 fewer truck deliveries per year to an industrial riverfront stretch of Chapel Street — as a Meriden-based concrete company plans to build out capacity for train transport, instead.
The City Plan Commission signed off last Wednesday on that site plan and coastal site plan proposal for the construction of a rail spur at 340 Chapel St.
That’s the 12-acre site on the western banks of the Mill River that is owned by York Hill Trap Rock Quarry Co., an affiliate of the L. Suzio Construction Company.
Triton Environmental Vice President Stephen Benben, a contractor speaking on behalf of the owner/applicant, told the commissioners that that site is home to “an existing ready-mix concrete plant. They provide cement concrete” to be brought out to L. Suzio construction projects. Private contractors can also come in with their own trucks to pick up concrete. This site has stockpiles of stone and sand, he said, and other “aggregate for use in manufacturing, or mixing, concrete.”
This now-approved new rail spur construction project would create a 1,200-foot “branch that will come off the main line of the P&W [Providence and Worcester] Railroad” that already exists adjacent to the site.
“The spur will connect to the site from the northwestern border and run south following the property line,” across land owned by the state Department of Transportation (DOT), according to the City Plan Department’s staff report for this application. “Site work includes the construction of freight rail infrastructure, aggregate conveyance infrastructure, and stormwater infrastructure improvements. The goal for this project is to reduce the number of truck deliveries to the site by instead employing freight rail deliveries for the raw materials used in the production of concrete. The applicant anticipates the freight rail spur will result in a reduction of up to 4,000 truck deliveries to the site per year.”
Benben said that the concrete-making materials currently trucked in to the Chapel Street site come from a rock quarry the Suzio company owned in Meriden. They want to use the “existing freight rail system” instead of trucks to carry this “aggregate” material.
What’s the anticipated timeline for this rail spur project? Westville Alder and City Plan Commissioner Adam Marchand asked.
“As soon as we get approval, they’re ready to go,” Benben replied. The owners are hoping to construct the rail spur “by the end of the year.”
With that, the commissioners voted unanimously in support of the rail spur proposal.
The concrete plant at 340 Chapel ...
... as viewed from across the Mill River ...
The existing P&W railroad tracks off of Chapel.