Douglas Anderson, the operator of the historic Stony Creek Quarry, has been ordered to stop using the town-owned quarry as a contractor’s yard for outside business ventures. If he refuses, he faces multiple zoning penalties, including possible eviction.
Laura Magaraci, the town’s zoning enforcement officer, notified Anderson last week that he faces specific zoning violations. They include the transfer of cement between trucks at the quarry and transporting sand, top soil and excavated materials from “off site projects” to and from the quarry. She said the violations were observed at a site visit on Feb. 5.
The cease & desist order said that contrary to the town’s zoning regulations for residential zones the quarry was being used as a storage facility for top soil and excavated materials from off-site projects unconnected to the quarry’s operations. Magaraci said she also found that the quarry had become a site for a retail operation centering on sand and topsoil. None of these activities has anything to do with the quarry’s operations, she added.Anderson has ten days to comply with the cease and desist order. The next inspection is scheduled for March 19. If he fails to do obey the order, it will be placed on land records, an action that could lead to other violations and state penalties. He may appeal the order to the Branford Zoning Board of Appeals.He said he has not seen the order, which was sent to him by registered mail. He denies any wrongdoing and suggested a sub-tenant might be responsible.
In a separate action, First Selectman Unk DaRos sent Anderson a two-page letter saying he had defaulted on the lease for nine reasons, including failure to pay rent due March 1, failure to pay royalties due the town, failure to operate within the zoning laws and failure to end the practice of allowing other people to use the Quarry without town consent.The zoning order and the default notice are designed to force compliance with the lease. If Anderson refuses, then eventually the quarry could be shut down, though that might take court action down the road.DaRos charged that Anderson has “committed waste, injured and misused the property,” a description Anderson said was ridiculous considering the appalling state in which he found the property when he first took over 18 months ago.Within a day of taking office as the First Selectman last November, DaRos began an official inquiry into the quarry’s controversial lease after residents wrote a letter protesting the quarry’s new functions. The quarry’s new addendum has caused an uproar in the tiny hamlet of Stony Creek, prompting an ongoing citizen outcry at numerous RTM and other meetings. It came up again at Wednesday’s RTM meeting.The quarry, whose distinctive pink granite, adorns the Statute of Liberty and Grand Central Station, pre-dates the town’s zoning laws. Former First Selectwoman Cheryl Morris and Ed Marcus, her town attorney, approved the lease without a zoning compliance certificate and without valid notice of the meeting where the vote was taken. The meeting was later deemed invalid by the Freedom of Information Commission. DaRos said he had met with Anderson since he had taken office. The stumbling block, DaRos said, was Anderson’s desire to use non-Stony Creek materials at the quarry, a move that changes the function of the place. “Hopefully we will try to get it resolved,” DaRos said.Anderson said he was surprised by DaRos’s default letter, saying he thought he had a good relationship with the first selectman.“I didn’t expect it. I called him after receiving the letter. My preference is to sit down and try to work out a new lease that puts everyone at ease. I got the indication he wanted to do that. I am hopeful that that still will be feasible.“I am of the philosophy of trying to work things out. Maybe things have gotten misconstrued with our involvement down here but for whatever it is worth we are completely respectful and sensitive to the community and want to be a good neighbor not a bad neighbor.”Anderson said he had tried for months last year to resolve the lease issues with the Morris administration and members of a special RTM sub-committee. But with an election at hand, the group decided to put it off.“We all agreed mutually that let’s just put it in abeyance and we will agree to operate under the terms of the second addendum and square up with the town what we owned them for rent. We even made an advanced royalty check. We agreed to an audit, which would be a new process.”After the election, Anderson said, he talked with DaRos. “He wanted to see if we could work out something new. So did I.”DaRos said the sticking point was that Anderson was “changing the use of the property. That was our problem.”In an interview, Anderson said his company had nothing to do with changing the use of the property, including any Quarry violations. He denied bringing in any non-Stony Creek material —- a key part of a new addendum to the lease that he wanted when it was negotiated in 2006 by Morris and Marcus. Anderson raised the issue of a sub-tenant operating on the property. Magaraci said that was possible, though no one was named.Anderson said that prior to assuming the lease in January, 2007, there were other tenants at the quarry. And the tenants, he indicated, “may have something to do with it.” The sub-tenants issue has not been resolved. “Lessee is permitting others to occupy and use the leased premises without the prior written consent of Branford,” DaRos wrote in his letter to Anderson.DaRos’s letter says that the property has been hit with a federal tax lien totaling $82,225, an action that encumbers the property without the consent of the town.But Anderson said the town got it wrong, that the $82,225, while perhaps still visible on some town documents, was in fact the former lessee’s lien, not Anderson’s.Over the years he said the lease had become so convoluted that he believed a new one was necessary. DaRos seemed inclined, he said. He added that he was amenable to “eliminating the section” of the lease that has given the town great concern, but would hope he could keep “a small amount of ancillary materials to compliment our product.”There’s a lot riding on negotiations. If they fail, DaRos said he will move to close the quarry, an idea that surfaced about a year ago. But he seemed to want to avoid that if he can.####