Home-builders are dealing with a new reality.
While commercial projects are dominating the construction industry in the Danbury area — with particularly strong demand in the medical sector — some contractors report that residential work is finally starting to pick up after a seven-year lull.
That doesn’t meant that contractors are building single-family homes again. In fact, most report that the industry has changed significantly in recent years. But with an increased demand for apartments, many larger national developers like Toll Brothers and Greystar have been coming into the area to meet that need.
And many of the smaller contractors in the area who made living in the past off single-family home construction have had to change the way they do business to survive.
“For the past seven years, the work is totally different than it was in the past, and those who have been able to adapt have hung on,” said Peter Schneider, a general contractor from Bethel with more than 25 years of experience in the industry. “In the past you would have investors who subdivide a property and sell them off to builders. Those are few and far between these days, and even when you can secure a property, the numbers just don’t pan out.”
Schneider and other industry experts noted that while material and labor costs have escalated in recent years, the values of single-family homes have remained stagnant. As a result, builders aren’t seeing the kind of profit potential from single-family home construction as in years past.
Many subcontractors, he added, have been traveling to southern Fairfield County where home construction is gaining more momentum, while others have relied on smaller additions, remodels and service work to keep busy. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
View of Bridgeport shows sign of life
The view from the highway has long been unkind to Bridgeport.
With 135,000 cars passing through the city each day — most of them on their way someplace else — motorists have for years been greeted by a string of abandoned buildings and empty lots alongside Interstate 95, a front door that the state’s largest city has been trying to improve since the factories started closing in the 1980s.
“For a lot of people in Fairfield County, I-95 is their only experience of the city,” said David Kooris, director of the city’s Office of Planning and Economic Development. “What they see is such a visible monument to the city’s past. We’re always getting questions about it, in every public meeting.”
Coming from points west, the view has included to one side the former Bridgeport Metal Goods factory, with its broken and boarded-up windows. To the other is what was once the United Pattern Co. plant, with its sturdy facade belied by a burned-out roof and empty window frames. Nearby is a square block between Hancock and Howard avenues dominated by graffiti and shattered glass.
Past downtown, motorists for years caught site of a vast lot known as Steel Point, long promised for development but mostly empty.
Today, with a slate of projects in the works or near completion, officials believe the view is finally due for a change. And with the improvements could come significant benefits, both physical and psychological. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
O&G a major player in state construction projects
Known for the extensive I-95, I-91, Route 34 interchange project in New Haven, described by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy as the “largest and most complex transportation renewal initiative ever undertaken in the state of Connecticut, O&G has completed hundreds of construction projects on highways, schools and museums across the state.
The fourth generation family owned company employs more than 1,000 highly skilled construction industry professionals in the state and is uniquely positioned as one of the most diversified construction companies in the region.
For the first time, the Torrington-based company has been ranked in the annual Hearst Connecticut Top Workplaces survey in the fifth spot of the large-sized brand.
“We’ve been around for 92 years and run 15-20 major projects at any given time. That doesn’t even include the 40-plus facilities we operate. You don’t have that kind of success without talented, dedicated people making contributions at every level of the organization and at every site,” said David Oneglia, president of O&G.
He said the true testament to the company’s culture is its employees’ tenure and family roots.
“Almost half of our workforce has been with O&G for over a decade. We have 50 employees with 30 or more years of service and two employees with over 50 years of service,” Oneglia said. “We also have over 200 employees who are either related in some fashion or who are part of a multi-generational O&G family.”
Though the workplace environment might change from the project site to the main office to the quarry and to the equipment maintenance facility, one thing stays the same.
“The one constant across those sites is family,” Oneglia said. “A lot of companies throw around that term to make employees feel a part of something but our team is truly a family. Not only are we a fourth generation family owned company, the family theme also extends into our workforce. We have over 200 employees who are either from a multi-generation O&G household, or are related through a family relationship. Add our long employee tenures to that context and it all leads back to the success of a family culture.” CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Stamford bridges to be rehabbed and replaced
STAMFORD — The state Department of Transportation plans to rehabilitate a bridge on East Main Street, less than a half-mile from a bridge it is replacing entirely.
DOT officials will hold a “public information session” on Monday at the Stamford Government Center to field questions about their plans for the Route 1 bridge over Interstate 95.
About 500 meters east, the DOT is also gearing up to replace the Route 1 bridge over the Noroton River into Darien.
The river bridge reconstruction should begin in early 2016, while the span over the interstate will likely not begin to be rehabilitated until next autumn.
The DOT estimates the bridge over I-95 will take until spring 2018 to finish, and will cost $17 million, funded by the federal Highway Bridge Rehabilitation and Replacement Program.
The city’s Engineering Department announced the information session on Sept. 1.
“The construction to remove and replace the bridge superstructure will be performed utilizing a weekend roadway closure bypassing I-95 traffic on temporary lanes, using the existing and temporary ramps, detouring U.S. Route 1 onto Courtland Avenue and Hamilton Avenue in each direction during each stage,” the announcement said.
The meeting begins at 7 p.m. Monday in the cafeteria of the Stamford Government Center, 888 Washington Blvd.
CT Transit plan spares stately Merritt Parkway
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — In a bid to unclog Connecticut's notorious traffic jams, the governor has put forward a plan to rip up and widen two major highways, Interstates 84 and 95.
A third highway, the stately Merritt Parkway, would remain little changed from when it was completed in 1940, a 38-mile roadway dubbed the "Gateway to New England" that winds through the wealthiest part of the state beneath old-growth trees and stone bridges.
"People do treasure it as it is," said Jill Smyth, executive director of the Merritt Parkway Conservancy, an advocacy group.
The powerful conservancy has a history of pushing back against plans that would bring in bulldozers. Its chairman, investor Peter Malkin, is also chairman emeritus of a trust that counts the Empire State Building among its properties, and its honorary board includes Vincent Scully, professor of the history of art in architecture at Yale University, and Robert A.M. Stern, the dean of Yale's architecture school.
A proposal to widen a section of the parkway was defeated in the 1970s, according to Smyth, and this time around officials said there were no serious discussions about major changes. The conservancy insists that widening the Merritt is not a possibility because its distinctive overpasses would have to be destroyed or significantly altered.
The state has proposed a new interchange with a local road and a recreation trail that would run along the parkway, but those are opposed by the conservancy.
Connecticut Transportation Commissioner James Redeker said officials often work with property owners, advocates and others with stakes in improvement projects, but the support for the Merritt is different in its passion and organization. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
According to a press release, the project comes in the wake of a recent change in state law led by state Sen. Cathy Osten and supported by Courtney to enable Connecticut towns to use 40-year financing terms.
“USDA’s Rural Development program is a critical source of funding for small towns like East Haddam to access financing for projects like this one. During debate over the most recent farm bill, access to rural development for eastern Connecticut towns was threatened by a new definition of ‘rural’ that would have excluded our region,” Courtney said in a prepared statement.
Mark B. Walter is first selectman of East Haddam. “The Rural Development loan for both of our projects will enable our small town to rebuild our municipal complex in an unused middle school building opening up a great economic area for tourism across from the Goodspeed Opera House,” he said in the release. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE