We’re invited to a bridge party!
No, not a card game, but an event that will celebrate the grand opening of the southbound lanes of I-95’s Pearl Harbor Memorial Bridge in New Haven. From 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 19 you will have a once in a lifetime opportunity to walk on the southbound bridge before it’s open for traffic this fall.
The state Department of Transportation says there will “family-friendly activities, refreshments, stunning views and great photo opportunities.” DOT is also hoping to start a social media buzz by encouraging all participants to share their photos from the event by tagging @QBridgeProgram on Twitter and #IwalkedtheQ. It also has its own Facebook page.
Access to the bridge will be provided at the intersection of Hamilton Street and Ives Place. Pedestrians and bicycles will be allowed on the bridgem but no motor vehicles. The event will span 1.5 miles on the new southbound Q-Bridge and the I-95 southbound off-ramp to Hamilton Street. Staff will be onsite to assist.
The bridge is named in memory of the Japanese attack of Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on Dec. 7, 1941. In June 2012, several Pearl Harbor survivors attended a ribbon-cutting ceremony on the bridge. Four of the six surviving Connecticut Pearl Harbor attack veterans were there to witness the event and participate in the wreath-laying ceremony. There were 17 men from Connecticut who died in the “Day of Infamy” attack.
The 10-lane bridge (five lanes in both directions) is the main crossing of New Haven Harbor. The bridge is the first “extradosed” bridge in the United States. The extradosed system is a hybrid design that is a combination of a concrete cable stressed girder bridge (such as the Baldwin Bridge on I-95 over the Connecticut River), and a cable stayed bridge (like the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge in Boston). It was built to last a century, engineers say. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Newtown pushing ahead on Fairfield Hills projects
NEWTOWN — The planned demolition of a large 1930s-era building at a former psychiatric hospital is part of a slow but persistent effort to transform the once-secluded place into the town’s center for culture.
A recent taxpayer vote authorizing $5 million to raze the 225,000-square-foot administration building of the former Fairfield Hills state hospital will help make the site look a bit less institutional.
But it will be years before the rest of the red-brick buildings on the 185-acre site can be restored or torn down and the town can start attracting stores, restaurants and offices to replace them.
“We want this to be a destination for recreation, culture, municipal services and events,” said Christal Preszler, the town’s grants coordinator. “There is so much to do even though so much has been done.”
Counting the latest $5 million bond voters authorized in mid-August, Newtown has invested $33 million in Fairfield Hills, starting with the $3.9 million purchase of the property off the development market in 2004.
The money has paid for relocation of most town offices to the campus, the construction of new ballfields and trails, and the demolition of seven buildings, including Danbury Hall in 2014.
The state, for its part, has awarded Newtown five grants totaling $1.7 million, some of which the town has used to study buildings that can be saved.
“To clean up the asbestos and the lead and the PCBs in these big buildings just doesn’t make economic sense,” said George Benson, Newtown’s planning director. “We can’t get anybody to come in here and give us a proposal that makes sense because of the cost of abatement and the way these buildings are configured.”
Town leaders hope to establish an archive or a museum display of hospital documents and memorabilia to ensure the history of mental health treatment is not erased with the destruction of the buildings. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
State collects $6.1M in unpaid wages
HARTFORD - Just in time for Labor Day Weekend, the state Department of Labor recovered more than $6.1 million in unpaid wages for Connecticut workers during the last fiscal year.
“The working women and men who are the backbone of our state should get paid for the jobs they do and receive the wages they rightfully earn,” Gov. Dannel P. Malloy said.
“The $6.1 million collected by the Labor Department’s investigation reflects the importance we place on protecting our state’s workforce, as well as law-abiding employers,” Malloy said.
Connecticut Labor Commissioner Sharon M. Palmer said $6,136,111.56 was returned to workers during the past fiscal year, which ended June 30.
The total includes nearly $1.55 million recovered by wage enforcement staff responding to 2,337 complaints regarding owed wages that had not been paid. An additional $788,000 was provided to employees that did not receive required minimum wage or overtime, and more than $1.6 million was owed to workers paid the incorrect amount while working at public contract construction sites.
“With Labor Day approaching, it is especially important to realize the importance of ensuring that all of our laws - be it those pertaining to minimum wage, overtime, or child labor - are understood and followed,” Palmer said.
“The mission of our Wage and Workplace Standards Division is to meet the needs of Connecticut’s workforce and strengthen knowledge of the state’s labor laws. As a result, education and outreach to workers and employers is just as vital as our enforcement efforts,” she said
The labor department’s wage and workplace standards division investigated 253 cases involving labor law violations, with inspectors citing employers in the following areas: personnel file violations, permitting night work of minors in manufacturing and mechanical businesses, the improper work hours of minors, hazardous employment of minors, and minors working in prohibited jobs, among other violations.
Meriden parking garage project progresses
MERIDEN — Work at 24 Colony St. has taken visible steps forward in recent weeks, and officials say they’re pleased with the progress.
A $24 million mixed-use residential building with 63 apartments and more than 11,000 square feet of commercial and retail space are part of the project. It also includes an $8.3 million 275-space parking garage.
The project is a joint development by Westmount Development Group and the Meriden Housing Authority. As of the beginning of September, a foundation had been poured, an elevator shaft and stairway column erected, and a geothermal heating and cooling system installed.
“We’re moving ahead as scheduled, trying to make up a little time from delays, and I think we’re doing a good job of that,” said MHA Executive Director Robert Cappelletti.
The site was formerly a parking lot, which closed in February so work could begin. The start was delayed because federal approval took longer than expected. The residential building is part of a plan to raze the Mills Memorial Apartment complex. Twenty-four of the Mills apartments will be relocated to 24 Colony St. As Section 8 housing, the plan needed federal approval.
Then in May, housing authority and Westmount officials were negotiating the working wages with the state Department of Transportation. The parking garage will be jointly owned by the DOT and MHA/Westmount, where the latter group will operate the ground floor as residential parking and the DOT will operate the floors above it as commuter parking.
Since July, significant work has occurred. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
SPRAGUE - The road back to productivity for what once was the Western Hemisphere’s largest cotton mill has been long and winding.Since its destruction in a 1999 fire sparked by three teens, Sprague’s Baltic Mills site has racked up more than $1.2 million in cleanup costs, sitting on the banks of the Shetucket River as a reminder of what the town’s booming economy once was.Its recovery takes another step this month with the issuance of a request for proposals that will be delivered to 30 developers and posted on the town’s website.“We’re looking for the future. There have been many townspeople who have looked at the area and said, ‘we would like to see something there.’ Right now, it's just dead space," First Selectman Cathy Osten said. Sprague acquired the property through a strict foreclosure in May 2007 and was forced to write off more than $277,000 in back taxes.The mill stopped operating in 1967 and fell into disrepair quickly – marking a hard end for the cotton mill, the largest following the Civil War.“It was underperforming even before the fire,” Osten said of the landmark that is included on the National Register of Historic Places.A community relations plan issued by the town in October 2010 to explain Sprague’s strategy in re-positioning the mill said the fire did more than burn old buildings to the ground. “The 1999 fire that destroyed the majority of the Baltic Mill buildings was one of the biggest economic blows to this close-knit community, and literally signified a destruction of their community identity that the town has yet to regain,” the document stated. Despite completing a $3 million renovation to its Shetucket Village senior housing complex last November, the years since that report was issued also saw Sprague lose its biggest taxpayer in Fusion Paperboard. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
One approach to I-84 Viaduct Project in Hartford, a long term shutdown
The multibillion-dollar construction job will take years using traditional methods, so a design team is studying whether the work could be drastically accelerated by closing I-84 for months or more as it passes through Hartford.
The state Department of Transportation emphasizes that it's merely considering the idea and will take into account the preference of commuters, truckers, nearby residents and businesses.
"Although this may sound crazy, it has been done successfully in other communities," according to the latest edition of the newsletter published by the DOT's I-84 design team and its consultants. More than 175,000 cars, buses and trucks use the elevated stretch of I-84 in the city every day, and that fact presents the biggest challenge to replacing the outdated structure, according to the DOT.
The 2-mile stretch of highway west of the I-91 interchange weaves through a narrow corridor bordered tightly by businesses and city streets, leaving little room for a large-scale construction zone. That means the typical way of maintaining traffic in such a large project — the use of temporary lanes alongside the work area — is problematic, the DOT said.
Demolishing the viaduct and building a new surface-level highway is estimated to take at least five years using conventional methods, and even longer if the replacement is a hybrid tunnel and surface highway.
One way to get the work done faster is to simply close the stretch of I-84 during demolition and construction. That requires detouring traffic to alternate routes, but frees crews to work quickly and safely with no nearby traffic and reduces construction costs at the same time, the DOT said. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Building boom meeting demand for apartments in New Haven
NEW HAVEN >> Three new apartment complexes downtown, only blocks from each other, are slowly leasing up these days — a growing wave that could crest at 2,000 units in a few years.
Appealing to graduate students, hospital workers and young professionals, the trio is hovering now, with the work in its final phases, at 20 to 25 percent leased, while a competitor across town, the Winchester Lofts, which opened last year, has tenants in over 80 percent of its apartments.
The rental market in the city is hot, as New Haven continues to have the lowest vacancy rate in the country, a position it has held for several years.
The trend continues to attract developers here with proposals for new construction, as well as the renovation of historic buildings, which is reflected in the newest apartment choices.
College & Crown: A Centerplace, which is Centerplan’s 160-apartment building, is completely new construction, as is Novella, the 136-unit building at the corner of Chapel and Howe streets. The Union is remodeling the 1927 former Union and New Haven Trust Company at Church and Elm streets and Winchester Lofts has converted a portion of the storied Winchester Repeating Arms Co. But where is the city’s biggest development project, Live Work Learn Play’s $400 million plan for the former Veteran’s Memorial Coliseum site, which includes 1,000 apartments over several phases in a new neighborhood of offices, small businesses and retail?
Economic Development Administrator Matthew Nemerson said the sheer complexity of the infrastructure changes it requires to extend Orange Street over a disappearing Route 34 expressway, as well as Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s stipulation that a hotel be part of phase one, has taken the last year to work out. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Sierra Club to join in protest against Oxford power plant
OXFORD — Opponents of a planned 785-megawatt power plant on Woodruff Hill Road plan to be out in force protesting when state environmental officials come to town next week.
The Connecticut Chapter of the Sierra Club, a nationwide nonprofit organization that advocates for a clean environment, has distributed a news release stating that it plans to protest the construction of the plant and the expansion of fracked natural gas pipelines in Connecticut at Oxford High School on Sept. 17. The state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection has scheduled a hearing in the school's auditorium for 6:30 p.m. The protest is scheduled for 5:30 p.m.
DEEP has tentatively approved air permits for Maryland-based Competitive Power Venture's Towantic Energy plant. The proposed permits would establish air emissions standards and operational restrictions for the power plant in accordance with state and federal air pollution control law. At the meeting, oral and written comment will be accepted concerning the draft air permits and pertinent state and federal air pollution control law. Anyone interested in attending the hearing should check the DEEP website and search under calendar of events for scheduling information and for any contingency, such as rescheduling due to inclement weather. The draft permits are available for review and inspection on the DEEP's website and at DEEP's main offices at 79 Elm St. in Hartford. Written comments on the draft permits can be submitted through Sept. 24 by email to James Grillo at james.grillo@ct.gov.
DEEP can expect strong opposition from the Sierra Club, according to the news release.
"There are no economic or environmental benefits to be gained from increased use of fracked gas," the release states. "Now is the time to show our opposition to the disastrous Connecticut energy plan, and demand and emergency transition to sustainable sources of power such as wind and solar."
The $1 billion project in Oxford is expected to put $52.8 million over 22 years into the town's grand list. The town would have received more money but voters rejected a proposal last week to accept $112 million in lieu of taxes over 22 years from CPV. Many of those who voted against the tax plan are opposed to the project in general.
The company has received preliminary approval from the Connecticut Siting Council contingent upon an air permit from DEEP and a favorable review from the Federal Aviation Administration, which has said two 150-foot smokestacks would have no adverse effect on the safety of aircraft landing at the nearby Waterbury-Oxford Airport.
An intervenor has challenged that ruling and has criticized FAA for not taking a stance on whether the effluent from the smokestacks would affect flight patterns. Intervenors, including the town of Middlebury, have appealed the Connecticut Siting Council's approval of the plant.
A pretrial conference is scheduled for Tuesday in New Britain Superior Court. The appeal does not preclude CPV from beginning construction, but the company would be doing so at its own risk.