The city will buy a 23-unit Canal Street apartment building to make way for part of the lower Lisbon Street redevelopment.

Councilors inked a deal to purchase the apartment building at 480-482 Canal St. from owner Ray Frechette Jr. for $735,000, plus another $108,000 in heating and relocation expenses, and incentives to help the tenants move.

Frechette called the deal traumatic. The building has been in his family for 30 years and he would prefer not to sell.

“But the threat of eminent domain is very real, and I don’t want to go through that,” Frechette said. “I don’t want to sell it, but you do what you have to do when you don’t have a choice.”

Frechette said he currently has 18 tenants.

The sale is part of a plan to revitalize the block of buildings surrounded by Lisbon, Maple and Canal streets. The first phase began last month, with crews tearing down the old FHP Engine Building to make way for Oxford Networks headquarters.

As part of the next phase, the apartment building would come down to make room for a parking lot.

Wilton:

Plant repair ends under budget

Two major pieces of equipment have been replaced at the town’s Waste Treatment Plant in nearly half the time projected, said the plant superintendent. Preliminary figures show that the project is about 10 percent under budget.

Plant Superintendent Russ Mathers said two rotating biological contractors were installed in 8.25 days rather than the 15 days that had been estimated.

The project was to replace old equipment with two new 22-foot shafts and media, a plastic material where microorganisms are housed to treat wastewater. Preliminary calculations, Mathers said, show that the project cost about $15,000 less than the $150,000 projected.

Each of the shafts weighs 3.5 tons, he said, and full of the plastic media and microorganisms, it weighs about 10 tons. Once the plastic is installed on the shafts, the wheel is about 10-feet in diameter.

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