Groton ― A town committee is working on revising the town’s process for re-purposing more than 50 vacant, town-owned properties.

For some town councilors, it is taking too long in a hot market, driven by hiring growth at Electric Boat.

But those eager for the town to move faster will have to wait.

The Property Re-Use Committee said it plans to wrap up its work within two months, and Town Mayor Juan Melendez, Jr. at last week’s Committee of the Whole meeting asked the councilors to submit their feedback now so they’re not at square one when the committee returns to the council.

He asked the committee to consider including in the proposal ideas that have strong support from the council because the council will be the one voting on it.

Jon Reiner, the town’s director of planning and development services, said earlier in the meeting that while the town continues to get the word out about properties, it can’t move forward on selling them because it can’t issue a Request for Proposals and doesn’t have direction on what the future use should be. The properties include the former Groton Heights, S.B. Butler and Pleasant Valley schools.

Paige Bronk, the town’s economic and community development manager, said the town is seeing an uptick in interest from developers looking for opportunities after the COVID-19 pandemic and amid the publicity about Electric Boat’s increased hiring.

At Tuesday’s Town Council meeting, seven people spoke in support of the committee’s work and urged the council to let the committee continue, while a couple of people spoke about the importance of getting vacant school properties back on the tax rolls.

The council had been working on revising the guidelines and rules for disposing of the town’s excess properties, based on feedback from the community that it wanted to be involved earlier in the process. Based on a referral from Councilor Portia Bordelon, the council created a committee to work on the process, and the committee was later expanded. Bordelon said residents requested a transparent, accountable, accessible, and predictable process.

Town Councilors David McBride, Bordelon, and Scott Westervelt; Larry Dunn of the Conservation Commission; Bob Frink of the Groton Housing Authority; Hal Zod of the Planning and Zoning Commission; John Goodrich of Historic District Commission and Mystic Oral School Advocates; and Lauren Gauthier of the Representative Town Meeting and State Contracting Standards Board are members of the Property Re-Use Committee.

Councilor Rachael Franco said she would like the council to now complete the work of the committee or return to the original document the council had been working on.

“With the expansion of Electric Boat, housing needs, and developer interest, I believe this is the time to begin the RFP process and marketing of these properties without delay,” Franco told The Day.

Melendez said with the council working on the 2023-24 budget and other items, it is unlikely it would have the opportunity to discuss the taking over the committee’s work before the Property Reuse Committee completes its work.

McBride, the committee’s chair, said the committee is proposing a more detailed process and procedure than what was previously being utilized. He said the committee’s objective, which is “based on substantial community feedback, is to develop a more detailed, transparent, and community involved procedure and process that serves the best short and long term interest of the residents of Groton.”

The next steps for the committee, which has been working for the past nine months, are to continue to refine, within the next two months, the town’s Request for Proposals process and policy, research what other communities are doing, incorporate the Town Council’s comments, and form a proposed committee to discuss and evaluate vacant properties and make re-use recommendations to the Town Council, McBride, the committee’s chair, said at the March 28 meeting.

The proposed Town Owned Property Evaluation Committee would be comprised of 14 members with representation from the Town Council, Representative Town Meeting, town staff, Board of Education, and town commissions, along with ad-hoc members for specific properties such as neighbors and Representative Town Meeting members.

“We believe this is needed, and we believe it’s very important in order to begin to review all the town-owned property so we can better determine how to move forward with these vacant properties,” McBride said.

Some councilors raised concerns about the proposed Town Owned Property Evaluation Committee, including getting enough members to attend meetings if the committee was that size, the time the Property Re-Use Committee was taking to develop the new rules, and potentially creating a document that is too large and unwieldy for people to understand how to follow it.

Committee members pushed back against the idea that they were delaying the process and said forming the new committee would allow the town to move forward with the properties. They said a detailed document would protect the town and they welcomed feedback.

Reiner said the town follows a multi-step approval process for redevelopment of properties.

The Property Re-Use Committee calculated that the TOPE Committee’s responsibility would be for 54 unused town-owned parcels, or about 190 acres of unused land. Dunn said 87% of that land is on 12 of the parcels.

That number does not include the Mystic Oral School property, which is owned by the state. The state canceled last fall the sale of the property to Respler Homes LLC., and the town later terminated its development agreement with Respler Homes.

Westervelt said the council decided to proceed with revising its guidelines, which was based, in his opinion, on the “resounding discomfort that townsfolk of Groton had with the RFP process, as it was before, and with the development at the Mystic Oral School.“

At Tuesday’s Town Council meeting, Town Manager John Burt said he wouldn’t be inclined for the town to participate in any process to seek proposals for the Oral School property in the future. The property is still subject to local zoning.

k.drelich@theday.com