OXFORD – Haynes Development is finalizing negotiations with a major grocer anchor and hopes to begin construction in the summer of 2014. The Haynes Group, headquartered in Seymour, CT has owned the development site located at 278 Oxford Road for over a decade and acquired the site for its development potential.“While in the preliminary permitting stage, securing the anchor tenant is our primary focus”, said Kathryn Ekstrom, spokesperson for Haynes Development. Great thought and care is going into the design plan; the center will provide the conveniences and services that today’s consumers are looking for and future residents will come to experience.
Lawmakers hear divided opinions about "Pre-Vailing Wage" mandate
NEW BRITAIN — Signaling a new campaign to narrow the state's controversial "prevailing wage" labor law, speakers at a state legislative forum on Tuesday alternately described it as a valuable protection or a costly waste.Lobbying groups for small and mid-sized communities want the General Assembly to adjust the law so that it wouldn't apply to relatively small building renovations, repairs or construction jobs. They complain the provisions add as much as 25 percent extra to the cost of labor by mandating relatively high wage and benefit rates. Non-union contractors also oppose the law.Leaders of many larger cities along with construction trade unions vigorously defend the law as it stands, and want no changes. They argue that it protects the public from dishonest and slipshod contractors while ensuring construction workers take home a reasonable wage.The law sets out precisely how much contractors must pay their employees working on municipal construction jobs. Some fiscal conservatives want to suspend it altogether, but the two dominant lobbying groups for Connecticut municipalities mostly want to exempt small and mid-sized construction projects..
Remainder of Wethersfield High School goes out to bid.
WETHERSFIELD -- The town has put out to bid the remainder of the $75 million high school reconstruction project, including parts to remove some asbestos and PCBs over Christmas vacation.
"I've had quite a bid of interest and gotten a lot of calls," Lorel Purcell of O&G Industries, the project's preconstruction manager, told the building committee Monday night. "Everyone's aware of this project. They're all hungry for it."In addition to environmental cleanup, the town last week solicited bids for contracts expected to total about $55 million, Purcell said. They will cover most interior and exterior construction.Site preparation and other work on the three-year project began last month.
Architects to present Charter Oak School conceptual plans
WEST HARTFORD — Architects from Perkins Eastman will present conceptual plans for the new Charter Oak International Academy at a meeting Wednesday at 7 p.m.The firm came up with three abstract designs for the building and site layout after holding public meetings earlier this month.The town plans to build the new 86,000-square-foot building in an effort to correct a racial imbalance at the town's two magnet schools: Charter Oak, an International Baccalaureate school, and Smith STEM School; STEM stands for science, technology, engineering and math. The $44.6 million project is expected to cost the town between $9 million and $16.65 million, after reimbursement from the state under diversity school legislation.The current 1929 building will remain standing while the new building, which will hold nearly double the number of students the current school does, is constructed. The school currently holds about 300 students and has three classes per grade.
U.S. Highways in trouble? It could be worse....
The highway budgeting process in our nation's capital is broken, and state coffers for highway work are not exactly spilling over, but things could be worse. Consider Saskatchewan.The western Canadian province is a long and lovely vertical slice of Canada above the states of Montana and North Dakota. It is about 250,000 square miles of plains and farming country.In the 2013 highway construction season, Saskatchewan highway authorities spent some $280 million (Canadian and U.S. dollar values are more or less equivalent) on highway construction and reconstruction. That included 170 miles of repaving and 45 miles of rural highway upgrades. Unfortunately, $280 million was not enough.
Prevailing Wage debate pits towns against labor
Municipal associations asked the legislature’s Labor Committee to support changes to the state’s longstanding and politically secure prevailing wage policy at a public forum Tuesday in New Britain.
Connecticut law requires contractors working on state and town construction projects to pay their workers wages and benefits at least equal to rates posted annually by the Labor Department. The prevailing wage law applies to all new government construction projects above $400,000 and renovation projects costing more than $100,000.Prevailing wage frequently pits organized labor unions against municipalities. The unions believe the policy sets important wage standards for construction workers, and the municipalities view it as a burdensome unfunded mandate.
Although those thresholds have remained unchanged since 1991, they’re often challenged by legislation, usually from Republican lawmakers, seeking to increase the thresholds or scrap the policy. More than a dozen such bills were proposed last year and died in the Labor and Public Employees Committee.Efforts to change the law may face an uphill battle in the committee, which is chaired by Democrats Sen. Cathy Osten and Rep. Peter Tercyak.However, for representatives of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities and the Council of Small Towns, the trigger modification does not seem like a big request. Litchfield First Selectman Leo Paul, a Republican, asked members of the committee to put aside their political allegiances and help relieve towns of costly mandates.