Norwich
The 24-unit affordable housing complex known as Norwich Senior Housing is located a few hundred feet from the hole in the ground where the old police station once stood, and the larger combined fire-police building called for in the town’s plans will bring the facility even closer.
Workers and subcontractors with Wright Construction in recent weeks cleared a stand of trees between the town facility and the senior housing with an excavator, which some residents said had been grating on the nerves.
“When that big thing hits the ground, the whole house shakes,” Mary Fowler, a resident who has brought concerns to the Selectboard, said on Wednesday.
Emily Dixon, an 80-year-old resident who has lived there for three years and who has worked with the town to minimize the impact, said people in Norwich Senior Housing had given the shovel a nickname — though she would only allow that it was “after something that’s been in the movies.”
Originally funded by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, Norwich Senior Housing now belongs to the nonprofit Norwich Housing Corporation and is managed by The Simpson Companies of Norwich and Hartford.
The complex is located off Dorrance Drive, along the entrance to and behind the old police facility near Main Street.
The $1.4 million project entails the demolition of the decades-old police station and the construction of a new roughly 5,000-square-foot combined fire and police building abutting the existing fire apparatus bay on Firehouse Lane.
Fowler and Dixon said residents had asked the town to save a group of trees between their homes and the construction site, and the workers complied. They and Norwich officials also noted that the town had made concessions during the planning process.
“We had been told pretty much what to expect and that it would come up to the boundary line,” Dixon said. “And these trees are on their side of the line, and they are on town property. We did fight for them, and we did get to keep them.”
“We’ve been working — the architect’s been working, the contractor’s been working — extensively with senior housing,” acting Town Manager Phil Dechert said on Wednesday. “We’ve made changes to the design plan, among other things. Construction is noisy; that’s the nature of it.”
Jay White, the Montpelier-based architect who designed Norwich’s new public safety facilities, said he and town leaders had moved a police-only parking lot and shifted the entire building 8 feet to the south to accommodate the seniors.
The Norwich Conservation Commission will work to replant some shielding foliage once some invasive species are removed, he said. White said there also were plans to add more screening, if necessary, though he said that decision would happen as the building nears completion.
“I think the appearance of the new building buffered by new lawn and large trees will not need much, if any, additional screening,” he said in an email. “Good design does not need to be hidden if it sensitive to its setting. This one is.”
White said Wright Construction also is adding a silt fence barrier to make sure no runoff during construction will drain toward any of the senior property. In the final design, surface water from the town’s property will be collected in five new yard drains, he said.
Senior housing residents lamented the loss of the larger grove of trees, and the seemingly inevitable disruption that a construction project close by would bring, but noted that the town had made efforts to smooth the process.
“It would be silly for me to say I was pleased by what’s going on in my backyard,” Dixon said, “but … they voted on it as a town and it’s their property; they have the right to do with it as they please.”
Plus, she added, “We got the trees.”
Rob Wolfe can be reached at rwolfe@vnews.com or 603-727-3242.