By ANDY GARDNER

MASSENA -- The Massena Fire Deparment foreman says a plan to build a trailer park that has since been canceled would have resulted in “an inferno” because of how the park was originally planned. Also, the mayor says he didn’t think the park would have benefitted the town.

At the end of November, Michael Wachs submitted plans to the village and county to build a 227-unit trailer park on East Hatfield Street. Some of the units would have been behind Riverdale Apartments and others on the south side of the road.

“I see absolutely no value in that proposal to this community,” Mayor Tim Currier said at Tuesday’s village board meeting.

Wachs, who also owns Harte Haven Plaza, pulled the plans from consideration.

He needed a use variance because the lots would have been 100-feet by 30-feet, instead of what the village code calls for, 100-feet by 60-feet.

“He’s in violation of a number of fire codes. The roads aren’t wide enough. There’s dead ends. He wants to put the trailers on top of each other. If there was a trailer fire, you’d have an inferno,” Massena Fire Department Foreman Ken McGowan said at Tuesday’s village board meeting.

Wachs also needed a zoning variance because the land is zoned residential B and commercial auto-related.

“You can only have trailer parks in the village in residential C, but there’s so small sections of residential C I don’t even know where you’d put it. It’s all so populated … maybe he’ll put a commercial property in there, which would make great sense,” McGowan said.

Wachs still has the option to tweak and resubmit the plans.

“Hopefully he comes back with something better,” McGowan said.

The board got into the discussion at the behest of Trustee Tom Ahlfeld, who said he wanted to set the record straight in light of inaccurate public rumors.

“Might as well get some facts out now. I don’t think there’s a lot of facts running around town,” Ahlfeld said.