Cromwell on Wednesday night rejected a million-square-foot warehouse proposal, the third time in less than a month that a small Connecticut community has turned back developers planning mega-warehouses.

The town’s wetlands commission voted 4-3 against granting Scannell Properties a wetlands permit to develop what angry neighbors had dubbed “Project Donkey Kong.”

Scannell wanted to build on part a 250-acre parcel of woods and former farmland north of Court Street and east of Route 3, infuriating neighbors along streets leading to the site.

They raised more than $17,000 to fight Scannell, created a Facebook page and a web page, and blanketed the surrounding neighborhood with lawn signs against the project.

The fight took more than a year, and neighbors have said it will resume if Scannell or another developer comes back with a revised plan of similar scale.

The Cromwell case was just the latest in a series of setbacks for companies planning enormous warehouses or distribution centers in small or midsized Connecticut communities.

Over the past several weeks, Willington planners rejected a proposed 1.5-million-square-foot warehouse in woodlands along River Road, and East Granby turned down a zoning change that would have permitted new warehouses of up to 800,000 square feet near Bradley International Airport.

In each case, local residents complained that well-funded developers had swooped in with plans for enormous commercial operations that would have changed the face of their communities.

Nationally there has been a boom in construction of large warehouses and distribution centers, fueled largely by the shift toward e-commerce.

Amazon, FedEx and UPS are perhaps the best-known companies where demand is rising, but individual retailers and producers from Dollar Tree and Pepsi to Tire Rack occupy massive facilities in Connecticut.

Connecticut has been a lure to new mega-warehouse development partly because of the extensive highway network that reaches all of New England as well as New York state.

Towns just north of Hartford have been the core of warehouse construction in the state for the past decade because of proximity to Bradley. But in the current wave, developers are looking far afield: Scannell was approved in the spring for a million-square-foot facility in Plainfield, close to the Rhode Island border.

Some communities have begun balking, and this year South Windsor passed a yearlong moratorium against large warehouses until planners get time to decide whether there are conditions that would make such projects acceptable.

Willington residents turned out in sizeable numbers this summer to block Texas-based Hillwood from getting permission to build a 1.5-million-square-foot warehouse on 160 acres of woodlands in their town.

The developer branded the idea as TradeCenter 84 because of its proximity to I-84, but neighbors labeled it a “gargantuan Godzilla.” The facility would have had 228 loading bays, parking for 700 trailers and 500 employees’ cars.

Ultimately, Willington planners sided with neighbors who argued that it would generate noise, pollution and traffic, all while bringing a scale of commercial development that would fit better in Detroit or Houston than a rural Connecticut community.

Cromwell residents put forward many of the same concerns when Scannell’s plans surfaced last October. Since then, the opponents created a wide-ranging campaign to block the idea.

About 150 people belong to the private Facebook group “Defeating Donkey Kong,” which advises members to study Cromwell’s zoning and wetlands regulations and then arm themselves with facts about the proposal.

“An emotional crusade is not going to win the various battles, let alone the war to defeat Donkey Kong,” it says.

Their “Stop the Geer Street Truck and Freight Terminal” GoFundMe campaign raised a shade more than $17,000 toward legal fees and technical help to fight Scannell’s wetlands application.

“The paved area surrounding the building would contain approximately 500 parking spots for tractor trailers, 178 loading docks, and 384 car parking spots,” the site says. “Much of the proposed development would be less than 1,000 feet from Watrous Park, Cromwell Middle School, and the athletic fields surrounding Woodside Intermediate School.”

As of Thursday, 918 people had signed the opponents’ change.org petition opposing the project. The petition also called on town government to refuse any tax abatements or other incentives if the project passed wetlands and zoning reviews.

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