NEW MILFORD -- The new 11,000-square-foot Arnhold Emergency Department at New Milford Hospital is nearly complete and is expected to open in June.
Patient comfort and convenience are key to the design, with a welcoming lobby filled with natural light and easy access with general and handicapped parking close to the front entrance. The ambulance entrance is in the back of the department.
Materials chosen are designed to improve safety from flooring to lighting. A triage room is immediately accessible where a nurse can start medical treatment, set up X-rays and other tests so everything is in place when the doctor arrives.
"The department was designed in collaboration with S.L.A.M., architects that specialize in emergency department and hospital design," said Dr. Thomas Koobatian, the hospital's executive director and director of emergency services.
Koobatian said the "home run" is having 12 private patient rooms, where privacy and infection control are easily maintained.
The nursing staff will be centrally located to all of the patient rooms in a middle quad to expedite response time. The setup is an improvement from the current emergency department that has staff at the end of its corridor of rooms.
There is a bariatric room for heavier patients weighing 300 to 500 pounds. The bariatric room and critical care room, for trauma and cardiac resuscitation, each have controls for two patients, allowing the number of patient rooms to increase from 12 to 16 in the event of a disaster. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Bridgeport's East Side hopes to proper from Steel Point
When Bridgeport Jai Alai opened in 1976, East Side business owners were told it would be a boon for their establishments. In reality, visitors rarely strayed from the facility to check out the local haunts, according to Eduardo Reyes, owner of El Coquito, an East Main Street eatery that sells Latino food and tropical ice.
"The only way it affected us was the (increased) traffic," he said. "And then attendance dropped, it dwindled out and it was gone."
That's why Reyes doesn't want to get his hopes up about the chances of the activity at the massive Steel Point development spilling over into the area.
The 52-acre peninsula is just two blocks away from Reyes' eatery. A Bass Pro Shops, Chipotle and Starbucks are now under construction and are slated to open there later this year.
Once completely built out, the project is expected to have approximately 800,000 square feet of retail, 200,000 square feet of commercial/office, 300,000 square feet of hotel/meeting area, a new 250-slip marina and up to 1,500 residential units.
"The people that go there to buy are not going to come here to eat," Reyes said.
Making connections
The concern that Steel Point will become an isolated tourist area is one that many elected officials in the area share. Some compare it to Stamford's Harbor Point project and the way that development has fit right into the South End and established connections with the downtown through a trolley system.
"We have to be very mindful and very vigilant that we're part of the process," said state Rep. Christopher Rosario (D-128).
He noted that large developments don't always translate into positive changes for the areas they are built in. "We don't want to make the same mistakes as other cities, like Atlantic City," he said. Development there "didn't really weave into the neighborhood." CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
More then $3M in unforeseen changes to Meriden's school projects
MERIDEN — Despite the hundreds of unforeseen changes to construction that amount to more than $3 million at the Platt and Maloney high school projects combined, city and school officials say the work is on track and that the changes aren’t triggering warning bells.
Since work began on the $111.8 million reconstruction and renovation at Platt High School and on the $107.5 million project at Maloney High School, 271 change orders to the design or handling of construction have been approved by members of the School Building Committee, according to a worksheet compiled by the consulting firm Arcadis, which was hired as program manager by the city.
The state defines change orders as “written authorization to a contractor, signed by the owner, authorizing a change in the work, an adjustment in contract sum, and/or an adjustment in contract time,” according to a manual by the state Department of Public Works published in 2006.
In Meriden, these changes range from things like needing to add an $8,840 intercom system to the natatorium at Platt that was never included in designs, to things like needing to purchase $334,552 worth of new steel beams and sheer walls to replace columns that had been miscalculated at Maloney.
Since the start of construction at Platt, 144 change orders have been approved — 127 were included in Arcadis’ report through March 9, and 17 more were approved by the School Building Committee at its April 10 meeting. Some of these changes are credits and some extra costs, so their net additional cost to date is $1,579,497.
At Maloney, the committee has approved 127 change orders through its most recent meeting, totaling $1,668,413.
The chairman of the committee also has authority to approve time-sensitive or emergency change orders, up to $50,000 without full committee approval, though these changes are already included in the final figures. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
HARTFORD — When Connecticut tears down the deteriorating I-84 viaduct and rebuilds as much as 2 miles of the highway, the impact promises to be enormous: Years of construction, delays and detours in the middle of the city.
"At $4 billion to $5 billion, this is the biggest project in today's dollars that the DOT has ever done," said Rich Armstrong, a senior engineer with the state transportation department. Even though the time for payloaders, dump trucks and cement mixers is still years away, planners are closing in on decisions that will affect hundreds of thousands of motorists, employers, merchants and taxpayers. And the state Department of Transportation wants to hear from the public now, before those decisions are made.
For an entire week starting April 27, consultants and DOT staff will be available to talk with anyone with a stake in the project's outcome.In what is billed as an "open planning studio," engineers and designers will be at the Christ Church Cathedral auditorium each day, ready to show maps and diagrams of the elevated highway that takes I-84 through the center of Hartford and the options for replacing it.
Mostly, they want suggestions from those whose neighborhoods, livelihoods and daily commutes will be affected. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE