Michael McGarry understands plans for nearly 70 apartments on the banks of the Park River’s north branch in Hartford’s West End may technically meet the city’s flood control regulations. But McGarry, the chairman of the Greater Hartford Flood Commission, also knows what he sees a couple times a year behind the condominium tower on Woodland Street where he rents that’s about a half-mile downstream on the same river.
The mostly placidly-flowing north branch can suddenly swell, rising 10 or more feet — overflowing its banks and flooding nearby properties, McGarry said.
Three weeks ago, the flood commission unanimously voted to reject the proposal for the rentals on the upscale Scarborough Street, fearing future intensified flooding would accompany the development. McGarry said the flood control measures proposed by the developer may meet the regulations as now written, but they won’t be enough to address the frequency and intensity of storms in the future.
“The problem is, we are seeing — these hundred year floods don’t mean anything, anymore,” McGarry said. “Look at Texas. Look at Seymour-Oxford. Look at Vermont. Vermont has had three, 100-year storms in the past 10 years. So these things come now. So the idea that building something based on those old figures — it’s senseless now because we know that it isn’t ‘if’ it’s ‘when’ we’re going to get hit with it.”
The developer filed an appeal in Superior Court in Hartford last week seeking to reverse the flood commission’s decision.
Oxford and Seymour suffered particularly severe damage from flooding in August 2024. The towns have largely recovered, but are not completely back to 100 percent. Flood waters washed out part of Route 188 at the Oxford and Southbury town line. (Aaron Flaum/Hartford Courant)
The pushback by the flood commission comes as the state recently passed the one-year anniversary of the massive flooding in western Connecticut. In just hours, 16 inches of rain fell and turned the Little River from its usual trickle to a torrent of raging waters in Oxford and surrounding towns, causing $100 million in damages to roads and businesses. Two people were killed.
Earlier this year, Gov. Ned Lamont called for reducing development in areas prone to flooding. Scientists are attributing more frequent and intense storms to climate change.
In July, just days after the devastating flash flood in Texas that killed more than 100, journalist and author David Wallace-Wells, known for his writing on climate change, wrote an opinion piece in The New York Times with the print headline: “The flooding in Texas is the future we need to prepare for.”
“…however we choose to apportion causality for such disasters, what they reveal to us above all else is our shocking and distressing ongoing vulnerability to them,” Wallace-Wells wrote. He went on to observe that the global community should be able to manage weather events much better, rather than to be “overwhelmed, again and again, by weather horror.”
On Hartford’s Scarborough Street, homeowner David Jorgensen lives with his family just a few properties downstream from the site of the proposed apartments.
Jorgensen, a vocal critic of the apartment proposal, already sees his backyard — bordering on the north branch — flooded at least a half dozen times a year, accompanied by significant erosion since moving to the street in 2017.
David Jorgensen, a homeowner on Hartford’s Scarborough Street in Hartford, stands at the rear of his property, which borders the north branch of the Park River. The river overflows its banks at least a half dozen times a year, Jorgensen said. (Kenneth R. Gosselin/Hartford Courant)
Jorgensen praised the courage of the flood commission’s decision, which went against the recommendation of city staff following a review of the proposal. The flood commission also did not fall in line with a previous approval by the city’s inland wetlands and watercourses commission.
In a text, Jorgensen said, in part: “Too often, city staffers expect commissioners to rubber stamp proposals without proper due diligence and common sense. Out of town developers can hire all the lawyers, consultants and engineers they want to push their agenda, but that does not mean the city and the stakeholders have to buy what they are selling.”
Flooding from the Park River’s north branch has gotten out of control in the West End and Blue Hills neighborhoods, Jorgensen said, “and clearly the commissioners realize this project would only make these conditions worse.”
Headed to court
The developer of the proposed apartments, Anisha LLC, whose principal is Matthew Dean Haubrich of West Hartford, is now challenging the flood commission in court. The developer purchased the property in 2022.
In the 32-page appeal, Anisha argues that the flood commission’s denial is illegal “and not supported by substantial evidence in the record, in that it ignores a consensus of experts that the application satisfied the regulations and is not based on any criterion for denial in state statutes or the (flood commission’s) regulations.”
The developer disputes the flood commission’s contention that the redevelopment would cause trees to fall into the river and erode its banks; and that the complex’s management would push snow into the river instead of using a designated area for that purpose. Both those issues would cause flood waters to rise and pull parked cars into the river, a point also disputed by the developer
Earlier this summer, an attorney for the developer, Andrea L. Gomes, a partner at Hinckley Allen in downtown Hartford, told the Courant that the developer recognizes “that flooding is an existing issue in the area, although not attributable to our property and the proposed development will improve flooding conditions on- and off-site as confirmed by city staff.”
Gomes also noted that a robust storm water management system would be installed where none now exists, reducing runoff and increasing penetration into the soil. A system would be constructed to store flood waters beyond what is required by flood control regulations.
The rentals would replace on the long-vacant Hartford Medical Society building at 230 Scarborough St. The developer has, so far, declined comment on the cost of the project.
The former Hartford Medical Society property at 230 Scarborough St., near Albany Avenue in West Hartford is proposed for an apartment redevelopment project. (Aaron Flaum/Hartford Courant)
McGarry, a former city council member and current Republican registrar of voters, said his central concern is that the development would weaken the river bank, cutting through roots of decades-old trees that hold the bank in place but would be disturbed in order to install the new storm water management system. In a major storm, river waters rushing by the property could overflow the bank, at best submerging motor vehicles but potentially sweeping them down the river.
McGarry said he well remembers a similar situation occurring just a short distance upstream a decade ago at the University of Hartford. The north branch overflowed its banks, submerging and damaging vehicles.
McGarry said he skeptical that the developer’s plans to plant young trees along the river bank would stop motor vehicles from being swept into the river in a major storm.
Jorgensen, the Scarborough Street resident, argues it is a mistake to consider the Anisha proposal in isolation because that perspective ignores that it part of a broader pattern of development affecting the north branch of the Park River.
The watershed that flows into the north branch extends upstream well beyond the Scarborough neighborhoods to encompass three towns, all active with development affecting the river, Jorgensen said.
“So you have basically three towns worth of watershed and development pouring into this one little funnel we have behind our houses and behind our street,” Jorgensen told the Courant earlier this summer.
‘A burden on everyone’
The developer’s appeal will be the second court challenge to the apartment redevelopment.
Michael McGarry, chairman of the Greater Hartford Flood Commission, said he is concerned that development upstream on the North Branch Park River could lead to back-ups where the river goes underground, causing intensified flooding in the area around St. Francis Hospital.(Aaron Flaum/Hartford Courant)
Last fall’s approval by the city’s inland wetlands commission also is being contested by a property owner on Scarborough.
The city must defend the opposing actions of the two commissions, placing it in a potentially tricky legal situation. The city says it is proceeding in both cases but declined further comment. However, the approval and rejection may raise different issues, even though they pertain to same proposal.
Separate from his vote on the flood commission, McGarry said, he is concerned long-term that a major storm could sweep motor vehicles from the development down the river, clogging up the entrance to the conduit that takes the north branch underground and eventually to the Connecticut River. The entrance to the conduit is located near the intersection of Woodland Street and Farmington Avenue.
The north branch of the Park River near Woodland Street in Hartford crests its banks in a recent storm. (Photo courtesy of Michael McGarry)
McGarry said if the cars were washed away and clogged up the conduit, it would not only affect the properties that directly border the north branch but those that are in the wider area. The area includes Saint Francis Hospital, a school and churches.
“Sooner or later, it’s going to be a burden on everyone,” McGarry said. “The water is going to back up.”
Kenneth R. Gosselin can be reached at kgosselin@courant.com.
