Part 6 (1/2)

The good news came with some bad news. ”It appears that the local Reuse Committee is still considering public auction as an option,” Abromaitis told Claire. ”As you know, we made a commitment to develop the site on a concurrent timetable to that of Pfizer.”

The message was clear enough: the state would go after the navy base, but someone had to go after Basilica and get him to back off his public-auction plan. Navy officials were scheduled to arrive in town within days to meet with Basilica's committee and to finalize the auction plan. Any hopes of stopping them required immediate action.

With a mock test sheet in front of her, Susette rested one elbow on a green paperback edition of Taber's Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary Taber's Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary. Yellow Post-its with handwritten notes stuck out of the badly worn pages. She started filling in the blanks next to the abbreviations.

QD: Daily.QOD: Every other day.BID: Twice a day.TID: Three times a day.QID: Four times a day.ACHS: ...

Her mind went blank. ”Oh, my G.o.d,” she said. ”I have to focus.”

ACHS: Before meals and before bed.

She checked her answers. All were correct. She pushed aside her study manuals. Unable to stop thinking about the letter Claire and the broker had sent her weeks earlier, she called City Hall and asked to speak with the mayor. Beachy took the call. Susette introduced herself and provided her street address.

”Do I have a reason to be concerned?” she asked.

”Yes, you do have reasons to be concerned,” Mayor Beachy told her.

Beachy had spent the previous day in Hartford, meeting with the governor's economic-development team overseeing the New London project. He didn't like what he had heard. Pfizer, the NLDC, and the state were on a fast track to clear the Fort Trumbull peninsula. The city had no intention of saving any of the houses in the neighborhood. Beachy came away convinced the project had taken on a new course, one that spelled trouble for anyone standing in the pathway of progress. Susette's house was in the way.

”What can I do?” Susette asked.

Beachy paused. Pfizer and the state had already committed hundreds of millions of dollars to the plan. Powerful business and political forces were combining to remake the neighborhood. The only way to stop the momentum would be to stir up a real controversy, a political storm.

”There's only one person I know that can help you fight this,” Beachy said.

”Who?”

”That would be Kathleen Mitch.e.l.l.”

”Who's she?”

Beachy hesitated.

Fifty-three-year-old Kathleen Mitch.e.l.l had grown up in nearby Groton. When she was a child, her mother wouldn't allow her to visit New London, calling the place a ghetto. But as an adult, Mitch.e.l.l had moved to New London and become a social worker and a political activist working on behalf of the poor and underprivileged. When the government had threatened to cut off funding for day-care centers in the city, she had organized protests and walkathons. The press had come, and the day-care centers had been saved.

Beachy viewed Mitch.e.l.l as a bit crazy, cra.s.s, edgy, and unpredictable. But she cared deeply about people, especially the poor and the powerless. Poor herself, Mitch.e.l.l volunteered much of her adult life, helping the disadvantaged. And she had a gift for drawing a lot of attention to a problem.

”Kathleen is a stirring stick,” Beachy said. He gave Susette her number.

Susette called Mitch.e.l.l immediately and introduced herself. ”I live in Fort Trumbull,” she said. ”There's a development coming, and Pfizer is behind it.”

Mitch.e.l.l had been following the news coverage. Always itching to fight for the underdog, Mitch.e.l.l a.s.sured her the NLDC could be stopped. ”There's ways to go about fighting this,” she said.

”How?” Susette asked.

Mitch.e.l.l suggested an initial strategy meeting at Susette's place. She recommended inviting Mayor Beachy to join them. Susette agreed, and they set a date.

14.

PUSH BACK.

Rich Voyles lived two doors up from Susette. He had moved into the neighborhood eleven years earlier and remodeled his home, and he had just eight years remaining on his mortgage. For him, East Street offered a dream location: a quiet, dead-end road with great neighbors and an un.o.bstructed view of the Thames River. He kept a telescope on his porch and spent lazy afternoons looking at boats coming into and going out of Long Island Sound.

Middle-aged and balding, Voyles had recently been laid off from nearby General Dynamics, where he had helped build submarines. The loss of income had forced him to invite his brother to move in to help him keep up with the mortgage payments.

Voyles spotted Susette working in her flower bed one afternoon.

”Did you get a letter in the mail?” he asked her.

She laughed. ”I have a bunch of letters.” She took him inside and showed him. None of them resembled the one he had just gotten.

”I'll be right back,” he said. Moments later, he returned and handed her a letter addressed to him.

”The time is rapidly approaching when those fort area properties not already optioned will be moved into the governmental process,” the letter began. ”The implications of this are considerable and I believe not in your best interest.

”We are empowered by the New London Development Corporation to offer you the City's Appraised value of $67,300.” The letter outlined two conditions for getting the appraisal price raised. It continued: We antic.i.p.ate demolition and construction to begin in April with the removal of the powerhouse in Fort Trumbull, removal of unneeded buildings at the NUWC site, repairs to the City Waste Water plant, removal and remediation of the salvage yard, and ground breaking for the Pfizer building at the New London Mills property.Rich, I am very concerned that your best opportunity will slip by for lack of action. If there is any question you might have, or any a.s.sistance I might provide, please do not hesitate to call. I want to make the inevitable dislocation as easy and stress free as possible.

The letter had come from Hamilton (Tony) Lee, a broker working for Steve Percy at the New England Real Estate Group.

”This guy can't say this to us,” Susette said.

”Are they going to evict me?” Voyles asked, fearing he'd end up homeless if he got forced out. ”I don't know what I'm going to do.”

”Well, I know what I'm going to do,” she said.

”What?”

”I'm going to bring this letter to the newspaper, and everyone will see what's going on down here. And then we'll get help.”

Voyles let her keep the letter.

”They think they're going to push us around,” she said. ”Well, we're going to push right back.”

Later that evening, Susette showed Voyles's letter to Von Winkle and told him her plan. ”Once this becomes public, they'll have to stop because this is illegal,” Susette said. ”They can't do this to us.”

Von Winkle liked Voyles; he didn't like the letter. He agreed that the public needed to know about the NLDC's tactics. But he really didn't think public exposure would stop it.

The next morning, Voyles's letter ended up on the desk of a reporter covering Pfizer and the NLDC.

April 2, 1998 With a s.h.i.+ny silver pen in his s.h.i.+rt pocket and wire-rimmed gla.s.ses to go with his perfectly groomed, graying black hair, fifty-five-year-old John Markowicz could easily have pa.s.sed for a chief financial officer at a Wall Street bank. With corporate experience and military training, Markowicz had been tapped to serve with Tony Basilica on the LRA. Basilica had the political and business connections in the city, while Markowicz was an expert on the defense-industry and navy regulations.

Selling off a navy installation is not easy. Over a two-year period, Markowicz had worked with Basilica to form a plan. The northern and southern tips of the base property had environmental problems that made the entire parcel unmarketable. As a result, the committee had decided to part.i.tion the thirty-two-acre base into three parcels.

The southern tip containing the old Fort Trumbull would go to the state for a public park. The Interior Department had already signed off and the state's Department of Environmental Protection had approved the plan too. The northern tip of the base would go to the city for a marina. All the federal and state approvals were in place for this transfer too. The middle parcel of the base property, which included all the buildings and labs, was the most marketable piece. The committee planned to sell the middle parcel to the highest bidder at public auction. The city stood to harvest millions in tax revenue once the buildings were sold and reoccupied.

Basilica and Markowicz were nearing the end of their work. The navy had already audited the plan. Early in the evening on April 2, Markowicz left his downtown office and walked the two blocks to City Hall. Numerous officials from the navy's real-estate and budget offices were in town to iron out details. Markowicz antic.i.p.ated an uneventful meeting focused on procedure and timelines.