BRIDGEPORT — A minority-owned construction management company is relocating to downtown Bridgeport after operating in Waterbury for several years.
Construction Management Systems of America has taken space in the RBS Building at 1000 Lafayette Boulevard, according to the Fairfield Business Journal. The firm did not disclose the number of employees who will work from the new location.
“My family’s roots are here in Bridgeport and we are proud to be a part of growing and developing the city,” company president Vernon Austin Jr. said in a statement CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
GHS closed for summer for upgrades and soil cleanup
Greenwich High School and the grounds around it are closed this summer as soil clean-up and parking improvements continue.
Putting the school off limits is being done to accommodate the clean-up and remediation of PCBs and other toxins found in 2011 and first discovered in the middle of trench work for the construction of the new auditorium.
Last summer's work focused on a clean-up at the southern end of the school's grounds, which contained arsenic and pesticides.
This summer’s work will include moving and grading stockpiled soil to be used for the latter stages of the soil clean-up, according to school and municipal officials.
A full-time environmental inspector on the site is monitoring the remediation, according to administrators.
Because of the work, no classes or athletic events are scheduled at the high school until late August. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
City removes 112 year old water tank
BRISTOL – With deep groans as an excavator ripped away at its thick steel walls, a 240,000-gallon steel water tank that’s stood on a hill behind Westminster Road began to fall Monday morning after standing at least 112 years.
As operator Greg Villeneuve tore into the side of the old tank, he said he could hear rivets shooting off into the woods around him.
Villeneuve tore a gash along the rear of the tank, leaving the 45-foot high tower twisting and quivering back and forth as if it had just come out of a Jello mold.
Every time it flexed, a small crowd of contractors and municipal officials gasped in the expectation that it would collapse in on itself. But instead, the sides just flexed as the tower wobbled.
“I didn’t want it come smashing down,” said Villeneuve, who makes a living tearing down large tanks, bridges and other detritus of earlier times. “It’s tricky.”
He said the hill where the tank sits offers so little room for maneuvering that he hesitated to rip at it too much.
“There’s no room, nothing at all,” Villeneuve said.
Water Superintendent Rob Longo said the city spent two years studying what to do with the tank, whose inside rivets were beginning to rust, before deciding that taking it down was the only good option.
He said he’s not sure when the city built the tank, but it shows up on maps dating back to 1903.
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Workers finishing retaining wall for upcoming work at train station
Work is proceeding on the replacement of two railroad bridges in Old Greenwich, with the removal of electrical equipment completed.
Workers are now building a retaining wall at the Old Greenwich train station as part of the preparatory work that needs to be accomplished before the actual construction begins.
“The utility relocation work wrapped up in the spring, and a retaining wall is going up now,” said Connecticut Department of Transportation spokesman Kevin Nursick.
The $14.87 million project will replace the railroad bridges at Tomac and Sound View avenues. Other improvements will also be carried out at the Old Greenwich station.
Workers began laying a foundation for the retaining wall in mid-June. After the foundation is set, the wall will be completed. The area will then be used as the staging area for the railroad overpass at Sound View Avenue. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Demolition of old auditorium delayed a month
Construction of the new MISA auditorium at Greenwich High School is still on track to finish before the start of the school year, but the second phase of the building work will be delayed about a month.
The demolition of the auditorium, where new music classrooms will be built, is now expected to start in August, according to Joe Ross, chairman of the building committee overseeing MISA construction. Committee members said they want to make sure the new auditorium has secured all of its building approvals before knocking the old one down.
“It’s just to make sure we’re not without an auditorium,” Ross said. “It’s a precaution, not a concern. There’s no risk of not having sufficient (auditorium) space for the students to start in September.” CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Bethel seeks extra $442K to fund water tank
BETHEL — A $2.4 million plan taxpayers approved in December to build a new water storage tank was underestimated and costs are expected to increase by nearly 20 percent, officials said this week.
A special town meeting to consider adding $442,000 to the project will be held at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Clifford J. Hurgin Municipal Center.
Town officials learned about the overage in June after the project’s winning bidder, Bristol-based D'Amato Construction, said the tank would require more work than originally estimated.
Director of Public Works Douglas Arndt said additional blasting and pipes were some of the new expenses the company identified. He said the amount town engineers presented in the December referendum was the best figure they had available. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Officials laud transit-oriented development
MERIDEN — Calling it “a day that’s been long in coming,” Gov. Dannel P. Malloy headlined a ceremonial groundbreaking for a new mixed-use building and parking garage that also marks the first building construction in downtown Meriden since the early 1970s.
Malloy was joined by numerous city and state officials as well as representatives from the private development group Westmount Development Group, who along with Meriden Housing Authority officials are overseeing work on a mixed-use residential building at 24 Colony St. The project, which will include 63 apartments and more than 11,000 square feet of commercial and retail space, as well as a 275-space parking garage, got underway in recent weeks, but city and state leaders took the opportunity Wednesday to celebrate the state of work on the site.
“This is a project that’s absolutely related” to larger-scale updates along 62 miles of railroad track between New Haven and Springfield known as the Hartford Line, Malloy said.
The local development is expected to generate $36.67 million in regional economic activity and create 259 new jobs, according to a statement from Malloy’s office. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
While the 98 assisted living and memory care units were originally slated to be completed first followed by the 81 independent living units, Masonicare Chief Operating Officer Jon-Paul Venoit said Tuesday the plan now is to try to complete both phases as close to each other as possible.
Worked ceased on the project March 12 when the original contractor, Klewin Construction of Mystic, said that Senior Living by Masonicare LLC owed it more than $1.9 million for work it had completed.
Klewin has filed a mechanic’s lien and also a lawsuit against Senior Living By Masonicare LLC and project architect Bessolo Design Group seeking damages and possession of the property and improvements. Those actions are pending in Superior Court.
The project is located on a portion of the former Coogan Farm off Clara Drive and can be seen on the approach to McQuade’s Marketplace. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Costco Construction halted by DOL
A tip from Ironworkers Local 15 led to a stop-work order at the Costco construction site in New Britain Tuesday. Joe Toner, business manager at the Ironworkers local, said an organizer went to the site at 405 Hartford Road but was not welcomed by the workers.
"Typically when these out-of-state contractors come in, they don't have the proper workers' comp insurance," he said, and when Toner checked online for workers' compensation coverage, he found that Span Construction of Madera, Calif., was not covered.