Simsbury residents speaking against proposals to build senior living homes

Yahoo

27-03-2025

SIMSBURY, Conn. (WTNH) — Residents of Simsbury are up in arms after the town announced plans to build new senior living residential homes on 20 acres of woods and open space.
'The idea of calling a place Meadow homes when you're literally destroying the meadows to build them, is irony that is not lost on me,' Jessica Franks, a Simsbury resident, said.
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Prior construction on wetlands has been a problem in the area, and some neighbors say they're still feeling the effects.
'There have been neighbors that have experienced problems from prior construction, and they are still experiencing flooding in their basement and so forth, and we have heard from them, we have not experienced the problem ourselves, but we hear that a lot of those issues have not been resolved,' Kevin Grigg of Simsbury said.
The firm proposing the project has a comprehensive plan, laid out in 11-page document discussing the wetlands, drainage and mitigation. The neighbor say it's not what Gov. George McLean would have wanted. He established two nonprofit foundations, one for senior living and the other a private game refuge.
They say he was also known as on environmentalist, the author of the migratory bird act, and Franks says there is a documented colony of 19 Eastern Box Turtles on the land.
'Building here would destroy their habitat and eliminate this population which we have scientists who have said it's unusually large and vibrant diverse population of box turtle,' Franks said.
'There are alternatives that they're not looking at, I think there's other land in the Simsbury area that is not far away that they could also be looking at and I think we're going to be impacting something that has been here for 80 years untouched,' Grigg said. 'Doing so much environmental damage and damage to the neighbors I would encourage them to other places.'
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