HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — The University of Connecticut is breaking ground Monday on a new campus in downtown Hartford.
A ceremony is planned to mark the start of construction for a campus that will be anchored by the former Hartford Times building. Classes there are expected to begin in the fall of 2017 with about 2,300 students and 250 faculty members.
The university's board of trustees last month approved a $115 million development plan to relocate its satellite campus in West Hartford to downtown Hartford.
The school is planning to share some space and resources with the nearby Hartford Public Library. It's also working with the Wadsworth Atheneum, Connecticut Science Center and Connecticut Convention Center to integrate the campus into the neighborhood.
Construction crews will soon be busy as officials move forward with plans to make the area more attractive for visitors and safer for pedestrians.
The effort is an expansion of an original streetscape project completed more than a decade ago along Greenwood Avenue that included paver sidewalks, old-style street lamps and decorative trees. The latest project, funded with a $290,000 state grant, will include improvements on adjoining side streets, including Library Place and School Street, as well as a new brick patio on P.T. Barnum Square.
"The downtown really says a lot about a town, and we want to make sure ours is as attractive as it can be," said Janice Chrzescijanek, Bethel's economic development coordinator. "An attractive and safe downtown will not only attract new visitors, but also new businesses."
Chrzescijanek spent nearly six months pulling together the grant application through the state's Main Street Investment Fund, and received word last fall of its approval. Local officials have also applied for a $500,000 state grant for a second phase of the project that would extend streetscape improvements further along Greenwood Avenue to Grassy Plain Street. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
America's rail system is slowly falling apart
NEW YORK — The trains that link global centers of learning, finance and power on the East Coast lumber through tunnels dug just after the Civil War, and cross century-old bridges that sometimes jam when they swing open to let tugboats pass. Hundreds of miles of overhead wires that deliver power to locomotives were hung during the Great Depression.
The rails of the Northeast Corridor are decaying, increasingly strained — and moving more people than ever around the nation’s most densely populated region.
The railroad’s importance became all the more apparent after Amtrak Train 188 derailed Tuesday as it sped around a curve in Philadelphia, killing eight passengers and injuring more than 200.
Federal investigators will take months to determine the cause of the crash. Speed, not equipment failure, has emerged as a key factor.
Still, the crash refocused attention on the slow-motion deterioration of vital infrastructure with a seemingly endless to-do list. By one estimate, it would take $21 billion just to replace parts still in use beyond their intended lives.
“The stakes are enormous,” Amtrak’s president, Joseph Boardman, warned in his 2015 request to Congress for funding. He said the corridor was experiencing a “crisis brought on by decades of chronic underfunding.” CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE