Danbury ad hoc committee recommends lease to use Summit for emergency commodity staging

The Danbury City Council ad hoc committee on emergency staging voted unanimously to recommend that the full City Council approve a lease with SCL office LLC to allow the Summit property to serve as a commodity staging and mass distribution area for large-scale emergencies, subject to two contract language corrections.

Peter Mzade, a council member and chair of the ad hoc committee, said the lease would authorize Mayor Roberto Alves to sign the agreement once clerical issues are resolved. "I will correct that," Mzade said referring to a typographical error identified during review.

Matt Casavecchia, Danbury's emergency management director, told the committee the prior commodities distribution plan operated from the Danbury Fair Mall near the Shake Shack but the mall declined continued use because of redevelopment. Casavecchia said the city ran a smaller distribution exercise at the Summit with the state and local partners that "worked very, very well," and that the Summit's size, undercover areas and controllable entrances make it the preferred primary site for a major coordinated distribution.

Council member Kirby Box asked about vehicle overflow and queuing in the event of a large incident. Casavecchia said a traffic plan is part of the site proposal and acknowledged that significant congestion is possible during a catastrophic event, noting that mayoral and state declarations and intergovernmental coordination would be required for large-scale distribution operations.

Corporation Counsel Eric Gotchalk flagged a numeric error in paragraph 2 of the lease and said the figure in exhibit A appears to include an extra zero; participants indicated the correct order-of-magnitude is about 13,843 vehicles, not 130,000. Gotchalk also recommended deleting the word "substantial" before "benefit" in item 5 to avoid ambiguity in the agreement.

Kirby Box moved that the committee recommend approval of the lease between SCL office LLC and the city of Danbury, authorizing Mayor Roberto Alves to sign the lease as presented with the two exceptions: removing the extra zero in item 2 and removing the word "substantial" in item 5. Peter Mzade seconded the motion and the committee voted in favor. The committee then adjourned.

The recommendation will go to the full City Council for final consideration; the committee recorded the requested typographical and language corrections for the final lease document.