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The Groton Open Space Association and F.L. Merritt Inc. have won the final legal battle in their nearly five-year struggle to allow GOSA to purchase the 75-acre Merritt property on Fort Hill and preserve it as public open space.

GOSA signed a contract April 14, 2003 to buy the property from Merritt. The next day, a developer asserted its claim of a prior contract, filed suit and placed a legal hold on the land. That began the lengthy legal battle through the Superior Court and then the Appellate Court that now has ended.

Lawyers for the developer said the company hasn’t filed and didn’t intend to file an appeal of a crucial Appellate Court decision from this past December. That decision upheld a New London Superior Court jury dismissal in May 2005 of the developer’s claim to have a contract to buy the land--a contract the developer contended pre-dated GOSA’s contract. The developer had 20 days to appeal following formal publication of the Appellate Court ruling. The developer could have applied to the Supreme Court for a review of the Appellate Court decision. The high court normally takes one to three months to decide on such applications. A review, if one had been granted, could have required more than a year to be completed.

Shortly before signing the contract to purchase the property, GOSA had won a $650,000 grant from the state Department of Environmental Protection toward the $1 million purchase price. The closing is to take place upon payment of the grant, which had been held up only by the legal block placed on the land by the developer. GOSA President Priscilla Pratt said GOSA would move quickly to close. The property, to be preserved for passive recreation, will be known as The Merritt Family Forest. GOSA will be working hard to raise the additional $200,000 needed to close on the property.

Stretching along the south side of Route 1 between the summit of Fort Hill and Fishtown Road, the tract is the keystone of Groton’s eastern greenbelt. The greenbelt begins on the west with Bluff Point and the Haley Farm, both state parks that GOSA was instrumental in saving. Together, they total more than 1,000 acres. They link up with the town-owned Mort Wright Preserve, which through the Merritt property in turn is connected to other publicly and privately protected green spaces to the east. These include Pequot Woods, the former Christmas tree farm on Route 1, and to the south, connected by open space land, is Cutler Middle School, which abuts town owned Beebe Pond Park and Avalonia Land Trust tracts that continue to Beebe Cove off the Mystic River.

For additional information, go to: www.gosaonline.org.

GOSA is a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation.