Business View Magazine | December 2019

320 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE DECEMBER 2019 universities are growing at a time when, across the country, the college-age population is in decline and college enrollment is following that trend. Here, both universities are having building sprees, which is a big boon to our town’s building permit fees because they’ve been adding various business schools, nursing schools, as well as dorms on campus, and keeping our building inspectors very busy.” Barnhart picks up the thread: “The two universities obviously add to the cultural vibrancy of the entire region, and contribute to one of our strengths - our talented workforce. It provides a pipeline to young talent coming out of the universities. You’ll find more finance, IT, and management professionals per capita in Fairfield than you will in many larger metropolitan areas and cities; 62 percent of our population has college or advanced degrees. So, it’s a highly educated and talented workforce.” The Town of Fairfield, itself, has some major projects going on, some of which are part of its first-ever, town-wide strategic plan. One recently completed project was a decades-long effort to clean up the former Exide Battery plant on Mill River. After ceasing operations on the site in 1981, Exide began removing 30 years of lead contamination under orders from the Department of Energy & Environmental Protection (DEEP). In 2013, unsatisfied with the company’s progress, the Town of Fairfield and the organization, FairPLAN (Fairfielders Protecting Land and Neighborhoods) intervened, calling for improvements to the remediation proposal. Since then, the cleanup operation has dredged more than 20,000 cubic yards of lead-contaminated soil from Mill River, and this past June, DEEP issued Exide a Certificate of Compliance, officially acknowledging the completion of the cleanup project. Exide is reportedly looking to sell the property to an outside buyer for development, and FairPLAN has called upon the property’s would-be buyer and developer to incorporate into its plans for a mixed-use development on the site, a iHub interior