BRIDGEPORT -- The city and developer Salvatore DiNardo are trying to settle their legal fight over train tracks removed from the old Remington Arms plant in the East Side before the lawsuit the latter's Remgrit Reality filed nearly four years ago heads to trial.
DiNardo has claimed that the city in December 2013 under then-Mayor Bill Finch improperly tore up tracks on the blighted manufacturing site that Remgrit, which owns an adjacent parcel, had access to under decades-old agreements.
DiNardo, according to records filed with the state superior court, has claimed the rails were worth at least $1.4 million and wants them replaced.
The trial was scheduled to begin Thursday, but been has been moved to September 27 while the parties pursue an "alternate dispute resolution" before a judge.
"There are a lot of issues still to be resolved," Russell Liskov, an attorney for Mayor Joe Ganim's administration, said
"With the intervention of the court, hopefully we'll be able to resolve (them) in a satisfactory manner."
The former Remington property is located along Barnum Avenue near the Metro-North rail line and is a well known landmark,
parti cularly its historic shot tower. It was purchased by DiNardo in the late 1980s.
In doing so Remgrit assumed the liability for prior owners' outstanding taxes.
Around a decade ago the Finch administration foreclosed on Remington for that unpaid debt and gained control of most of the property.
But DiNardo kept about five acres on Arctic Street. According to DiNardo’s lawsuit, filed in November, 2019, a pair of agreements — one from 1922 the second from 1986 — guaranteed his Arctic Street land “unrestricted and perpetual” access through the Remington property to the nearby main train line “to transport freight and materials.”
That access was lost when the tracks were removed in late 2013 by the city. Meanwhile the city, according to court documents,
has argued the tracks to Remgrit's remaining slice of Remington Arms were not used for years and no harm was caused Remgrit.
DiNardo is a well-known real estate figure in Bridgeport and surrounding municipalities and brother to Nancy DiNardo, longtime head of the Connecticut Democratic Party.
As for the old Remington factory, the Ganim administration earlier this year began demolishing the structures there, some of which the building department concluded were in imminent danger of collapse from the elements and neglect.
At some point in the future the property will be cleaned of environmental contaminants and redeveloped, with only the shot tower remaining.
