BRIDGEPORT – The city’s school building committee has a lot of balls up in air. Here is what’s up with the following projects:
ROOSEVELT – Structural steel for the $44 million project to rebuild the school is up and masonry walls have started. Things are moving along.
HARDING – Now that the Board of Education has signed off on the first phase of the project and the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection is half way through reviewing remediation plans. Once it is complete and a determination is made, there will be a 45 day comment period. There also will be a presentation on the findings at the next school building committee meeting on June 19.
LONGFELLOW – The $50 million project to replace the school is in the final stages of plan review. Demolition has been bid and are under budget. The school should start to come down soon.
CENTRAL – The Central High School renovation project is waiting for a state traffic review before bids can go out. That the school will have fewer students and presumably less traffic apparently did not convince officials a study should be done. As such it is questionable if construction will get underway before the fall.
BLACK ROCK – The addition at Black Rock is about to about to go up.
DUNBAR – The project is still in the process of collecting permits.
Trees make way for flood control project in Meriden
MERIDEN — The work at the Hub site to alleviate future flooding and to add a park to downtown Meriden is considered the flashier and more complicated project, but about one mile upstream another important part of the city’s flood control effort is underway.
Since the beginning of April, workers have been clearing land off Westfield Road to make way for flood storage in the event of a significant rainstorm. The work is part of the overall flood control project along the 3.44-mile Harbor Brook. A few weeks ago, the Public Works Department and some city councilors began receiving phone calls about the disappearance of some trees along Westfield Road. While some were initially concerned, Associate City Engineer Brian Ennis said the concerns were alleviated when people were told what was going on. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Last year, Connecticut ranked 49th out of 50 states in transportation and infrastructure quality, behind only the island state of Hawaii, in a CNBC poll examining business competitiveness.
For a state marketing itself as the link between New York City and Boston, having such poor transportation infrastructure impedes Connecticut's ability to attract and retain businesses, said Eric Gjede, a lobbyist with the Connecticut Business & Industry Association. The fact that Connecticut is dropping in those rankings (the state ranked No. 43 in 2012) makes the situation all the more dire."All of our needs are so expensive, and we do have a lot of transportation infrastructure," Gjede said. In its latest attempt to fix a transportation system overburdened by costs, complexity, and a lack of marketing and future planning, the state legislature — three years after forming the Connecticut Airport Authority — has created the Connecticut Port Authority, tasked with increasing the marketing and economic impact of the state's three deepwater ports. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
For a state marketing itself as the link between New York City and Boston, having such poor transportation infrastructure impedes Connecticut's ability to attract and retain businesses, said Eric Gjede, a lobbyist with the Connecticut Business & Industry Association. The fact that Connecticut is dropping in those rankings (the state ranked No. 43 in 2012) makes the situation all the more dire."All of our needs are so expensive, and we do have a lot of transportation infrastructure," Gjede said. In its latest attempt to fix a transportation system overburdened by costs, complexity, and a lack of marketing and future planning, the state legislature — three years after forming the Connecticut Airport Authority — has created the Connecticut Port Authority, tasked with increasing the marketing and economic impact of the state's three deepwater ports. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Glastonbury firm begins construction of 829 MW power plant
Glastonbury engineering firm Gemma Power Systems launched the construction of an 829 megawatt Pennsylvania power plant this May.
The Panda Liberty Generating Station in Towanda, Pa. is the first new station in the Marcellus Shale Gas formation, giving it direct access to cheap natural gas to provide power to more than a million homes. Gemma, through a joint venture with The Lane Construction Corp. of Cheshire, is the engineering-procurement-construction contractor for the project.
The plant will employ up to 500 skilled workers at the peak of construction and is scheduled for completion in early 2016.