Simsbury resident, local leaders want state police shooting range somewhere other than their town. But other Connecticut towns don’t want it either

At least one prominent Simsbury resident is working to reverse the state’s decision to improve the frequently flooded police shooting range in town rather than build a new one elsewhere.

Bob Patricelli, a former president of Cigna’s health care group, is trying to build community awareness that Connecticut taxpayers could end up spending more than $10 million to put the range’s buildings on stilts to protect against future flooding.

“It’s the wrong plan in the wrong place,” Patricelli said Monday. “This is not a NIMBY issue, it’s a matter of getting the state police the kind of training facility they need.”

Selectmen are expected to take up the issue at a meeting this month, and Patricelli is hoping a vote condemning the idea would help the case for Connecticut to find a different location altogether.

First Selectman Wendy Mackstutis said the selectmen have all been receptive to signing a letter against the plan; a copy will go to Gov. Ned Lamont.

“From the town’s perspective, the question is ‘Is it good to have it there?’ We think it negatively impacts residents, businesses and the environment,” Mackstutis said.

Some opponents of the plan fear that discarded shell casings are a pollution risk to groundwater and the nearby Farmington River, which has flooded the range’s buildings more than a half-dozen times in the past decade.

“And you can hear the sounds of guns throughout the town, even at one of the elementary schools,” she said.

Connecticut’s bond commission last spring authorized $2 million to design improvements for the range, which was built before zoning and has been unpopular with neighbors for decades.

The chief complaint has been the noise from troopers’ shooting practice, which can include automatic weapons fire.

State officials have had no success finding a new location, though.

East Windsor residents objected to preliminary talks about moving the range to their town seven years ago, and Glastonbury residents celebrated in 2013 after persuading the state to drop plans for relocating there.

In 2015, about 50 homeowners in Willington protested at the state Capitol when the state was eying a Ruby Road property, and even formed a community group called Unwillington. The state department of emergency services ultimately gave up on that alternative, and since then has abandoned another option — rural Griswold — after running into local opposition there, too.

State police have been pressing for a modern indoor range with related training resources for years. The Simsbury facility is too small and outdated, they said in 2018, and suffers the costly problem of being in a floodplain.

That’s more than a brief inconvenience. The facility has been flooded several times in the past 15 years, each time resulting in anywhere from $40,000 to $300,000 in damages as well as costly rescheduling of training and trooper recertification sessions, police said.

But the latest state plan is for up to $10 million to rehab buildings in Simsbury and put them on pillars more than 10 feet high to keep the building safe from future floods. The plan would provide about 5,200 square feet of building space on less than 13 acres.

Just four years ago, the state police and the department of administrative services were proposing a 55,000-square-foot training center for Griswold with parking for 125 cars. That property was 200 acres.

“That’s what they need, that’s what the state should do: Build a large indoor facility with pop-up targets and simulations,” Patricelli said.