Meadowood

I, Too, Have a Dream… But No Answers
Meadowood, Simsbury
November 2024

I try, with varied success, to be fairly politically neutral on this site. And I will continue to try on this page about some old tobacco barns in a farmed field in northern Simsbury as well. Mostly because I honestly don’t know where I’d land in any debate on this particular property and how it should be handled.

Anyone who has lived in Simsbury from the early 2000’s through today is surely familiar with the issues at Meadowood. And, as I understand it, most residents have strong opinions on the whole thing. I am not a resident, but I do like protecting open space and I like protecting historically significant properties… but I also have an issue with NIMBYism and denying affordable housing to people trying to make a life in a town like Simsbury.

On one side, you have those who decry the many towns like Simsbury in Connecticut that do not provide affordable housing. From The New York Times in 2009:

IN 1998, when a developer came knocking with a plan to build affordable housing on 360 acres of farmland in Simsbury, it reacted the way an affluent suburb might be expected to react to a perceived threat: It fought.

Eight years and some $1.5 million later, the town still hadn’t won. So last year it settled, in an agreement that limited the project, called Meadowood, to 299 homes, 25 percent of them priced below market rate, for moderate-income households.

What is the “perceived threat” to Simsbury? I think you know. This isn’t the only development the town has fought, but Meadowood is different.

Different because the town didn’t give up fighting and came up with a rather interesting way to win. A way that is tough to argue with on its face – but easy to argue with with cynicism.

Where were we? Oh yeah, after the decade of wrangling, Simsbury agreed to let the developer develop the land. In 1999 it was to a be a 640-home subdivision that would include around 160 (or 25%) affordable dwellings which wound up being 296 homes — including 88 affordable units — as long as the owner remediated the site. The cleanup was completed in 2014, town records show, but the development never happened.

The state supreme court was involved, ruling against the town and forcing it to pay the developer some compensation. But here I am in 2025 and as you can see from my pictures, no houses have been built.

And no houses ever will be built here, “affordable” or otherwise. Why?

Well, again, because Simsbury didn’t want that. One of the arguments was that there are places in Simsbury better suited for “affordable” housing projects that are “located closer to downtown where there is easier access to public transportation.” I can’t really argue with that, Simsbury First Selectman Eric Wellman. The town, with 4% of its housing considered “affordable” according to a 2018 data analysis by the nonprofit Partnership for Strong Communities, said, “I’m all for affordable housing. This isn’t the spot I would have chosen.”

Would he have chosen somewhere along the bustling Route 10? In the heart of Simsbury? On the bus line?

Apparently not there either. That’s right. In 2023, the town rejected a different project:

The commission cited a lack of parking that would result in overflow parking on Hopmeadow Street, a need for a traffic signal, and fire safety concerns related to access to the complex for fire apparatus, as well as a lack of play space for children in its decision. It was also noted that the complex would be the tallest building in town and bring an “urban density” with it.

The proposal had come under fire from vocal residents during more than 4 hours of public comment over a variety of factors, including concerns over its size, traffic safety, physical damage and plunging property values to abutting property owners, flooding, water pollution and harm to local wildlife.

Here is the “tallest building in town” they rejected:

The four-story complex, to be built by Vessel Technologies, which specializes in modular building techniques designed to reduce costs and construction time, was originally slated for 77 one-bedroom and 3 two-bedroom units with 24 of them set aside for reduced rent affordable housing.

Now that, my friends, is NIMBYism at it’s finest. In other words, Simsbury simply doesn’t want “affordable” housing anywhere. Not in a field in the rural northern part of town, and not in its “downtown” sector. But let’s stick to that rural track out on Hoskins Road. Just how did Simsbury win that battle?

They convinced everyone that it is historically and culturally significant. They also got the Trust for Public Land to help with the cost. Simsbury residents authorized $2.5 million for the purchase of the Meadowood property with a vote that passed by a resounding 87 percent. Man, they really don’t want “affordable” housing! And they got help – additional funding for protecting the land comes from the State of Connecticut through the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, Department of Agriculture, and State Historic Preservation Office, the US Fish and Wildlife Service through the Highlands Conservation Act, the George Dudley Seymour Trust, and many generous individuals, foundations and funders.

As part of the purchase, the State of Connecticut will hold an easement for recreational access on nearly 130 acres and about 120 acres is to be preserved as working farmland. The Town of Simsbury has 24 acres set aside for future municipal needs and 2 acres are designated for historic preservation, including interpretive elements that share the special history of the land.

“The permanent protection of this historic site, including prime and important farmland soils, is a testament to collaboration among partners at the local, state, and federal level,” said Connecticut Department of Agriculture Commissioner Bryan P. Hurlburt. “Together we will ensure that a cornerstone of Connecticut’s agricultural and cultural legacy remains intact.”

Hold on, sir. Simsbury forced the 1998 property purchaser to remediate those “important farmland soils.” Anyway, at this point you non-Simsmburians are wondering what’s the deal with this place. What’s so culturally and historically significant about it? Because clearly, no one’s excited to hike around a flat field looking at dilapidated old tobacco barns here.

“To any person driving down Firetown or Hoskins Roads, Meadowood is a recognizable remnant of Connecticut’s impressive tobacco industry, but what is not readily apparent are the consequential experiences of the people that lived and worked there,” said Cathy Labadia, Deputy State Historic Preservation Officer for the State of Connecticut. “Preserving this place allows current and future generations to discover the past, reflect on the present, and perhaps also inspire the future.”

What?! No one cares about tobacco farmers from 75 years ago! What gives?

As a 15-year-old freshman at Atlanta’s Morehouse College, Martin Luther King, Jr. spent the summer of 1944 working as a farmhand at the Cullman Brothers shade tobacco farm in Simsbury as part of a tuition fund-raising seasonal employment program. In 1947, he ventured north again alongside a group of fellow students to work those same tobacco fields.

Ooooohhhhhhhh…

These summers in Connecticut were eye-opening for King, to say the least, as it exposed him for the first time to a world outside of the racially divided Jim Crow South. When not working the fields during the day, King and his fellow student laborers, who were put up in a dormitory on the farm, dined in unsegregated restaurants in town and partook in other activities unimaginable back in the South. Although Connecticut was still rife with inequality and prejudice at the time, New England was a world away from Georgia and these summers afforded King and his fellow classmate-laborers with basic freedoms that they had never known before.

It was the first time he was out of the South for an extended time. People up here like to say that it was Connecticut’s inclusiveness that compelled King to fight for the same in the south. It’s super cool that MLK worked in Simsbury for a few months of his all-too-short life. It’s awesome that historians have found letters to his mother extolling the virtues of Hartford and its progressive ways.

And it’s great that this farm and a few barns have been preserved. It’s funny it took two decades for someone to realize the MLK hook here though. And that’s what makes Meadowood so vexing in some ways.

NIMBYism is blatantly denying the ability for low middle income folks to gain a foothold in Simsbury. Many of them are black. The town taxed itself to avoid these houses to be built on the land where the face of racial equality and opportunity lived and worked for two summers in the 1940’s. I love Simsbury’s commitment to open space. I also think a town that actively denies housing options for non-typical Simsbury families is bad for doing so. Meadowood is complex.

We’ll see down the road what happens here, but preliminary plans call for an open-air museum of sorts with interpretive elements telling the story of King’s time in Connecticut’s Farmington Valley as a college student. There are also plans to eventually rehabilitate the existing historic tobacco sheds at the site (the three-story dormitory building was burned to the ground during a 1984 exercise by the town’s volunteer fire department) and, most likely, include Meadowood as a site on the Connecticut Freedom Trail. There’s also talk of trails connecting to both Massacoe State Forest and McLean Game Refuge, but who knows.

I personally think the MLK in Connecticut thing is a bit overblown, but I’m glad there’s going to be something noting it here at Meadowood. I understand why communities fight development and I agree with that fight most times for my own reasons. And I think more affordable housing should be made available around our state. Fortunately, I’m just a schlub who doesn’t need to solve any of these problems.

Meadowood
Aside from sources linked above, more from HBJ as well
CTMQ’s Houses, Ruins, Communities & Urban Legends