Environmental education center planned
FAIRFIELD — Town officials want to open an environmental education center with an adjacent parking lot across two properties along Sturges Road.
Tim Bishop, the director of Fairfield’s Conservation Department, said the town plans to place the education center inside the house at 798 Sturges Road, furnishing it with laboratory space, display tanks, microscopes with samples of underwater wildlife and more. The facility would abut 58 acres of open space surrounding the Perry’s Mill Ponds and Mill River, which environmental leaders said they see as a strategic location for a public environmental center that would be the first of its kind in Fairfield.
“We’re not going to rip the house down, so it makes most sense ... that we use it for something having to do with nature,” Bishop said. “And since this town doesn’t have a facility that can do that, let’s use this to our advantage.”
Bishop said the town will offer $887,500 for the house and the neighboring
vacant lot at 816 Sturges Road. He’s been fleshing out plans for the site with the Conservation Commission and Mill River Wetland Committee and said the space could host students and an array of other local groups like Scout troops, the Connecticut Audubon Society and the Sustainable Fairfield Task Force.
The Conservation Commission
has been discussing the properties since October. Bishop said the town found about the opportunity late last year while working with the owner, who plans to move soon, to address violations involving tree clearing. Bishop said the owner is willing to work with the town on a sale and has not placed either property on the market.
He said the house is already in shape for the new use, with laboratory potential in the basement and storage space in the bedrooms and kitchen. He added that grants could cover necessary equipment purchases.
“It’s great inside,” Bishop said. “It’s got a beautiful kind of cabin-feel interior, stone fireplaces — not that those will be used, but it already has that out-inthe-middle-of-the-woods type of feel, so I think it’s already appropriate for this kind of scene.”
Bishop said the parking lot on the neighboring vacant property would keep vehicles like school buses from parking on the shoulder of the road when they visit the open space, which has been a “constant concern” with student programming. Jon Dilley, president of the Mill River Wetland Committee, said he’s seen has similar safety hazards while leading the committee’s River-Lab educational program for local students in grades 2-7, where students and volunteers would walk along the side of the road to enter the open space.
Dilley said the land acquisition would address safety concerns and give the students on-site lab experience and envisions an instructional space with audio-video technology, where local environmental groups can also teach guests about local conservation, whether it’s ways to control stormwater runoff or learn about the history of tidal gates in Fairfield.
“This type of property near an open space doesn’t become available but every generation or so,” he said. “So I think we don’t want to miss an opportunity to do something like this that I think could have a widespread benefit.”
Bishop said he hopes to buy the properties by the summer and to open the educational center by early 2025 after getting approval from the Board of Selectmen, Board of Finance and Representative Town Meeting. He said the parking lot would likely be ready sooner.
Luke Thomas, the chair of the Conservation Commission, said the learning center could enhance Fairfield’s work to raise awareness about vernal pools — shallow seasonal bodies of water that the town started tracking last fall. Thomas said both children and adults can learn more about the climate, environment and conservation inside the renovated space.
“This is all preliminary, but I believe having the building as a resource to teach the importance of our environment and our relationship to it would be a huge benefit to the town and its residents,” he said in an email.