What began as a dream is becoming real.
Nearly 75 people on Saturday toured what will one day be the Bedford Family Center -- the new home of the Westport Weston Family Y on the 32-acre Mahackeno campus in northern section of town.While the building is still far from finished, Erik Melingonis, superintendent with Turner Construction, was able to lead a tour through the areas of the structure that will house the pool, locker rooms and lobby.If construction continues on schedule, Y officials hope to move from their longtime downtown home in late 2014, making way for the new Bedford Square complex of commercial and residential space."The last three weeks have been a big change," he said. "We're looking to be substantially completed by the summer," for phase one, encompassing 52,000 square feet of what long-range planners hope someday will be a 102,000-square-foot complex."Right now, we're around 70 workers," Melingonis said. "Over the last month it's ramped up from 40," with specialists focusing on electrical, plumbing, duct work and the exterior walls.
Faster CT-to-NYC trains face stumbling blocks
NEWINGTON, Conn. (AP) — Many of Connecticut's shoreline commuters would love a faster trip to New York City, but aging railroad bridges and a backlog of transportation projects pose a pricey stumbling block of at least $3 billion.Both politicians and a Fairfield County business group argue that such an investment is worthwhile because faster trains between the two states would improve the region's traffic flow and Connecticut's economy. A recent 12-day disruption along Metro-North Railroad's New Haven Line caused a $62 million drop in the gross state product, a measurement of economic output."This is the life blood of the economy here," said Joseph McGee, vice president of public policy for the Business Council of Fairfield County.McGee has advocated the "30-30-30" plan, which calls for 30-minute rail trips between Hartford and New Haven, New Haven and Stamford, and Stamford to Grand Central Terminal in New York. He contends faster speeds on the New Jersey Transit commuter rail line gave an economic boost to northern New Jersey. Connecticut legislators included $200,000 in the state budget to study the plan.Democratic state Sen. Toni Harp recently proposed an hourlong ride from New Haven to New York as part of her economic development plan in a bid for mayor of New Haven. The trip currently takes about two hours.
BRIDGEPORT -- The state Public Utilities Regulatory Authority this week approved a plan for UIL Holdings, parent company for United Illuminating, to install solar panels on nine acres at the old city landfill in Seaside Park, paving the way for the latest of Mayor Bill Finch's "green" initiatives.
"That's going to change the image of the city of Bridgeport," the mayor said, when making the announcement about the solar park at Captain's Cove. "I know it's been a long crawl to get here, but we made it."The plan for the solar panels -- likely about 1,000 of them, the mayor estimated -- has been in the works for nearly three years. The panels would produce 5 megawatts of power.
The landfill is separated from Captain's Cove by Cedar Creek and has been unused for decades, except for a few years in which Connecticut Community Boating ran its program out of the facility.
Early estimates place the project's cost at between $25 million and $30 million, said Tony Marone, senior vice president of customer and business services for UIL Holdings, which is funding the installation of the solar panels.Finch said UIL would likely make payments-in-lieu of taxes for use of the landfill, which would go from tax-exempt park space to a new revenue-generating property.
Finch said it was too early to determine the amount of that payment, but cautioned it can't be too high if the project is to be viable.Plans for the renewable energy park also include installing two fuel cell units at the landfill, each producing about 2 megawatts of power. Although officials said a company has not been chosen to install those, representatives from Danbury-based FuelCell Energy were at Thursday's announcement.
Construction on Boys and Girls Club underway
BRISTOL — Construction is getting underway on the new Bristol Boys & Girls Club and Family Center on West Street.Carpenter Construction recently erected a chain link fence around the lot where the $11 million club will stand and began moving in equipment to knock down an old triple-decker house that has to come down.Michael Suchopar, the club’s director, said demolition of the house should take place soon.Both mayoral candidates, Democrat Chris Wilson and Republican Ken Cockayne, said they’re glad to see the project underway.
Meriden HUB project comes in under budget
MERIDEN — Bids on the $13.5 million Hub redevelopment project came in under budget Friday, allowing work to transform the downtown parcel into a park to begin next month.
Eight companies submitted bids, with Meriden-based LaRosa Construction as the apparent low bidder. LaRosa submitted a base bid of $8,931,014. Though the city has secured all of the funds for the project, the State Bond Commission is yet to release $3.15 million. Because of that, three aspects of the project had to be bid as alternate pieces of work and will be added when the commission approves the funding. LaRosa’s bid on alternate pieces totaled $4,304,371 with a total bid of $13,235,385.City Manager Lawrence J. Kendzior said he was pleased the bids came in under budget
Construction adds 20,000 jobs in September
Construction employment rose by 20,000 in September and the industry’s unemployment rate fell to a six-year low of 8.5 percent, while construction spending increased for the fifth consecutive month in August, according to an analysis of new government data by the Associated General Contractors of America. Association officials cautioned that the data does not address any potential impacts from the recent federal government shutdown.“Both of these reports show the industry was doing relatively well before the federal government shutdown forced many firms to hit the pause button,” said Ken Simonson, the association’s chief economist. “But the shutdown likely disrupted a wide variety of projects and may have caused private investors and developers to delay decisions about new projects or plant expansions. As a result, future spending and hiring gains may be weaker.”Construction employment totaled 5.8 million in September, a gain of 20,000 from the August tally, which was revised up by 8,000 from the Labor Department’s initial estimate. The September figure is 3.4 percent higher than in September 2012, while aggregate weekly hours of all construction employees rose 4.2 percent over the year, indicating that companies are adding to existing workers’ hours in addition to hiring new employees. Employment climbed for the month and year in both residential and nonresidential construction.