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Three hundred join rally against Three Rivers plan
By DOUGLAS P., GUARINO
Norwich Bulletin
NORWICH -- Nearly 300 people showed up at the Park Congregational Church Wednesday night to voice their opposition to a
$72.2 million plan that would consolidate Three Rivers Community College on Mahan Drive.
Gov. John G. Rowland has named the Mohegan campus as the preferred site for the consolidation, but residents and local politicians
are concerned that the plan would enhance what they say already are serious traffic and flooding problems in the area.
Local lawyer Donald Beebe, who lives in the Mahan Drive residential community and has an office on nearby Harland Road,
organized the public forum. He began the meeting with a slide show of photographs portraying the existing flooding and traffic
problems. The pictures showed traffic backed up at the intersection outside The William W. Backus Hospital and the yards of nearby
houses covered with water.
Beebe said the additional traffic a consolidated Three Rivers would bring to the area, along with additional water drainage problems it
would cause, would "destroy the community."
"This facility in this location does absolutely nothing for the city of Norwich," Beebe said.
Beebe said the college would be better in downtown, where its presence could potentially revive local businesses. But he said the
Mahan Drive area would not be able to handle the additional traffic.
But Lenell Kittlitz, a member of State Community Colleges Board of Trustees, said that while the consolidated campus would bring
more traffic, it would not be as much as some people might think.
"Eighty percent of our population is already at the Mohegan campus," she said.
The college's Thames Valley campus is on New London Turnpike in Norwich.
Former Norwich Alderman Bob Spayne questioned why Gov. John G. Rowland designated Mahan Drive as the preferred site,
despite the fact that the Norwich City Council had voted against it eight times.
Michael Doyle, a representative for Rowland, said that though the site was designated as preferred, environmental impact studies still
would have to be done before construction begins.
"This is a four- to six-year project," he said.
But in what often was a heated debate, many residents insisted the drainage problems have gotten worse over the years and would
continue to do so. Harland Road resident Mary English said that since the 1930s, two sump pumps have been installed in her
basement.
"I'm not putting in a third," she said.
dguarino@norwich.gannett.com