New-Haven-based entry to expand road salt business from Montville redevelopment

MONTVILLE — On Tuesday night, the Montville Planning and Zoning Commission gave the green light to Gateway to expand its road salt business around eastern Connecticut by redeveloping vacant property along the Thames River.

Harry Heller, an attorney for Gateway Terminal, told the commission that the New-Haven-based port operator intends to operate the road salt distribution service before winter. The new facility will fill the void left when road salt supplier DRVN was pushed from New London’s State Pier to build a wind farm overseas – leaving the area without a local salt supplier.

Road salt business is allowed “as is” in industrial-zoned properties, and the commission voted 7-0 to approve the Gateway site plan.

Heller said the site has been used for industrial purposes for “more than 100 years” – most recently the AES Thames Cogeneration power plant and Westrock Corporation’s packaging plant, both decommissioned and demolished.

Montville Town Planner Liz Burdick told the City Examiner that this is the first effort to redevelop the properties she’s known since the two businesses closed. Gateway is leasing the properties from Uncasville, LLC, a St. Louis-based developer named Tom Roberts.

“This is an intermodal facility, it is intended to move goods into the region, and it is also able to export goods outside the region,” Heller said. “It has deep water supply for boats. The former Central Vermont – now the Genesee & Wyoming – has a rail spur to Worcester and New London, and has the opportunity to upgrade the station to increase the station’s intermodal capacity.

The first phase of the project will involve excavating the site on the southwest side of the intersection of Depot Road with the railroad tracks to create a 2.3 hectare concrete pad that will store up to 120,000 tonnes of road salt.

Mark Augur, Gateway’s chief operating officer, said the salt pile at the site is about the same size as the pile at the New London State Pier.

Gateway’s plan is to use a concrete pier already built on the river to handle coal transported to the power plant and use the pier to bring in loads of salt, Heller said. He said the company will install a conveyor belt to unload the salt from the barges, which will then be loaded onto trucks that will take the salt to a storage area on the railroad.

Trucks arrive at the site on Depot Road, load road salt, cross the scales, then return to Route 32 or Interstate 395 on Depot Road, Heller said. According to a traffic study by Hesketh & Associates, the station averages about 25 trips per hour in the mornings and afternoons during the winter, and about 65 trips per hour in the days leading up to winter storms.

Traffic Engineer Scott Hesketh said he expects almost all trucks to exit via I-395 and about 10 percent to use Route 32, mostly trucks bound for Montville or neighboring towns.

Heller said phase two of developing the site would begin by removing the material excavated in phase one to fill the property on the other side of the railroad tracks along the river.

The company needs additional fill to level the entire site and prepare it for future commercial or industrial use, Heller said. Phase two also includes new rail incentives to “transfer bulk construction materials from rail to barge and from rail to rail,” the Gateway proposal said.

Burdick Gateway has not indicated what additional future uses the site will have. Augur declined to answer questions from the City Examiner after the meeting Tuesday night, and the company did not immediately respond to questions from the City Examiner Wednesday morning.

The commission was originally scheduled to hear the application later this month, but Gateway requested a special meeting Tuesday night so it could begin work sooner so it’s ready for the winter season.

“We have a tight schedule on this project to be ready to supply salt to the region,” Heller said. “So even if it’s only a few weeks, two weeks will make a material difference to our construction.”

Road salt is needed in eastern Connecticut, where snow removal companies are forced to drive their trucks an hour to Providence or New Haven at a cost of hundreds of dollars a day.

Gateway in 2010. In 2019, it was selected as the operator for the redevelopment of the New London State Pier. DRVN spread road salt on the pier from 2014 until it was pushed aside last year to make way for the pier’s redevelopment. Gateway is the operator of the Port of New Haven, which operates a large road salt distribution business.

Rick Whittle, owner of Mystic-based Allied Snowvale Removal, said he’s hopeful that bringing a road salt distributor back to the area will solve some of the logistical issues and costs of moving out of New London with DRVN last summer. But he said it all comes down to price and how streamlined the line is in Montville.

“If they’re charging more than I can afford in Providence right now, I don’t care,” Whittle said. “Providence, I can get in and out really quickly, so I want the pricing to be competitive. Shipping costs are through the roof so no one knows what will happen.

A location in Montville could be a good fit for Allied Snowvale, which does a lot of work in Montville, Norwich and surrounding towns, he said. But it all comes down to price and ease of access.

Contractors have previously complained about long lines and a slow process to collect salt from Gateway in New Haven, and Whittle said he hopes the Montville location will work more smoothly.

“So I need competitive pricing, and then I need good order flow to get trucks in and out of there,” Whittle said. But instead of a run to New Haven or Providence, it could be a home run.

The project comes as another major redevelopment is proposed directly across the River Thames in Gales Ferry, where Cashman Dredging and Marine Contracting is proposing to redevelop the former Dow Chemical plant into a business center that will expand into New York and Connecticut.

This project surveyed residents of Gales Ferry, who see heavy lorry traffic on Route 12 – the main artery between the community – and the River Thames and the railway, on the contents of the waste material to be handled during the proposed period. utility, and with possible additional uses on the site.
An informational meeting on that project had to be rescheduled from June 1st and will now be held Monday at 6:30pm at Lidyard Middle School after residents overflowed the meeting room at the Lidyard Public Library.