Improvements to traffic flow and parking around the Town Green may be welcome, but it hasn’t improved the environment of empty storefronts. The town is working on a new initiative to revitalize the town center.

A town working group formed in February and chaired by First Selectman Noel Bishop has already taken small steps to help property owners better market town center properties to new businesses, but both short-term and longer-term solutions will be needed to help revitalize the areas around the Town Green.

In the short-term action list, town staff has collected and compiled information from town records for each property in town center. This information taps information on the town assessor’s parcel records and from the Land Use Department’s records. This information, which helps characterize a parcel’s septic flow capacity and status of the system, should help property owners in Town Center to market the properties to prospective tenants.

“We’ve already gotten all the information about the buildings in town center, a site-by-site summary of information from Land Use and Assessors’ Office [records] to assist with marketing [sites] in the center of town,” said Director of Health Sonia Marino.

As Marino explained, each property’s septic capacity is unique, so before a property owner can market a potential vacant lease site, he or she needs to know the wastewater flow available to be able to match it to a potential business with similar requirements. With the relatively limited current septic system capacity in town center, new businesses with a high daily water flow—like restaurants—likely would not be good candidates on most sites, but businesses with smaller daily flows could be accommodated. It’s all about finding the right match between site and business.

Colleen Topitzer of the Public Works Department, Health Director Sonia Marino, Town Assessor Pam Fogarty and Town Planner Meg Parulis have been collecting and compiling the town records information on town center properties, with support from other staff and town officials.

Bishop’s working group has also been working to flesh out long-term steps to address the town center area’s septic system capacity limitations. A key component of any solution is to find and test for feasibility a site where a community septic system to serve town center could be installed.

Moving toward this goal, the group asked Town Engineer Nathan Jacobson for a quote to do field testing of the two or three potential sites identified as candidates for the siting of a community system: Ted Lane Field, Wren Park, and possibly even part of the Town Green. When Westbrook Pizza was along the Town Green (it's now in a new location near Water's Edge at 1551 Boston Post Road) and needed to replace a failed septic system and didn’t have capacity on its property, the town at that time approved a request to install a new septic leaching field for that business under a small part of the Town Green.

Any longer-term solution will require a financing plan, however. A community septic system offers the promise of greater wastewater treatment capacity to support town center revitalization, but the costs of such a system—and who would bear those costs—are issues that the selectman have not yet discussed or decided.

The selectmen recently approved funding to support the on-site replacement of septic systems at the Riggio Building located in the town center and at the Town Beach concession stand. Marino secured approval and funding from the BOS to have the town engineer design and then to monitor the pilot septic system design. The pilot project will test the effectiveness of a new design that places a layer of wood chips below the conventional leaching field. As treated wastewater passes through the wood chip layer, nitrogen in the water is converted naturally to nitrogen gas. This design has proven effective in other New England installations including in Barnstable, Massachusetts.