SOUTHWICK — Carvana, the online used car retailer recently named to the Fortune 500 list of the country’s biggest companies , promises to make buying a used car quick and hassle free.
Caravana’s proposal to build here — already winding its way through the Planning Boaard for months — is proving to be anything but quick and easy with opponents raising more than $11,000 to fight the project in court, demonstrating Saturday at Southwick Town Hall and contending that — despite the allusion to a state of bliss in Carvana’s name — the company wants to pave a paradise to park its cars.
“It’s going to be turned into a giant impenetrable surface,” said Kevin Meder of Southwick, an organizer behind Save our Southwick.
Meder is worried about the traffic impact, too.
“The thing is it also spills over into the surrounding towns,” Meder said. “The city of Westfield can’t handle all this truck traffic. It doesn’t belong here. This kind of development belongs in someplace that’s already developed, closer to the highways.”
But Douglas A. Moglin, who was on the Planning Board, said the proposed Carvana site — on 137 acres of tobacco fields at 686 College Highway, the corner of Route 10 and 202 with Tannery Road — has been zoned for industrial use since the 1970s. The conditions Southwick places on Carvana’s special permit — like wastewater handling, required traffic patterns and mandated improvements to the intersection — will soften the blow.
“It’s a potential economic driver,” said Moglin in a recent interview. “We have a need for smart balanced growth in the town of Southwick.”
The project could end up generating $900,000 a year in taxes, Moglin said. Carvana asked for no tax breaks or development incentives and promised 400 jobs.
Carvana’s been the subject of nearly every public meeting in Southwick the last few weeks. The town’s Agricultural Commission has voted to oppose the project unanimously to state their opposition to the project, citing environmental concerns and infringements on the town’s Right to Farm status.
The Water Commission was deluged with questions and said last week that improvements will be required to the town’s water infrastructure if Carvana is allowed to proceed.
But officially, the Carvana proposal is in front of the Planning Board. The next meeting is at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Southwick Town Hall or via Zoom with a link also available at the Planning Board webpage.
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Interim Town Planner Jon Goddard said this week that Carvana’s most recent plans were amended to change the way storm water is handled at the site. He doesn’t expect a vote Tuesday, but that could change.
Neither Carvana nor its local planning consultants, R Levesque Associates, Inc., responded to calls for comment this week, Levesque specifically referred questions to Carvana’s unresponsive media operation.
Carvana proposes a facility big enough for 8,200 cars and big enough to generate 2,600 vehicle trips a day including 90 trips by car carriers.
The 66 acres will take up a portion of the 137-acre site that’s also constricted by wetlands and set back requirements. The properties are owned by Griffin Land Trust, now INDUS Land Trust, with an office in Bloomfield, Connecticut, and the neighboring Radwilowicz property.
The project would have more than 400 employees working in two shifts, according to testimony before the Planning Board.
The building Carvana plans will be just less than 200,000 square feet in size, said interim Town Planner Jon Goddard. He said it will be back from the roads and shielded by berms and landscaping.
To put the building in perspective, the CRRC rail car factory in East Springfield is 204,000 square feet.
Carvana sells cars through its mobile app and customers have them delivered to their homes and then get a chance to test drive and have the car checked out over the next seven days during a money-back guarantee.
Carvana started doing business in Hartford and Greater Springfield in 2018.
There will be no car sales on the site.
Moglin said its likely the town will have Carvana pay at least some of the cost for a light at Tannery and College Highway, an improvement needed in Southwick for some time.
Also, the town can ban Carvana traffic from busy Tannery Road, often used as a cut though to Westfield.
Carvana said it will use less than 10,000 gallons of water per day. But Meder and other opponents question this, pointing out the number of cars that’ll need to be washed and that Southwick is under a water-use restriction right now.
Daniel Hess, a Southwick resident and president of Southwick Insurance Agency, said he wished the town was more upfront about he project. He questioned why the project showed up on agendas with names other than Carvana making it hard for residents to know what was happening.
“They have really done a terrible disservice to the community,” he said.
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