MERIDEN — Work is underway to decontaminate and clear a portion of the former Meriden-Wallingford Hospital on Cook Avenue, nearly two years after the city acquired the 300,000-square-foot brick building. Once the building is partially decontaminated, a more comprehensive assessment can take place to determine what comes next, city officials say.
The city acquired the former hospital through tax foreclosure in January 2014. Since the acquisition, there has been little activity on the 7.1-arce property, which includes a vacant seven-story building and parking garage. As a safety measure, lights were installed around the building last year, and doors and windows were secured. The former hospital was passed over by developers during a request-for-proposal process last December. To better market the property, the city is utilizing a cleanup loan and environmental assessment grant from the state. Once the building is partially clear of debris and contaminates like asbestos, an assessment team will conduct extensive testing of other materials in the building, such as lead paint, according to Economic Development Director Juliet Burdelski.
“We’re going to conduct a pretty extensive assessment, but we have to get the building safe for that,” she said. “We want to make sure it’s safe passage, there’s a lot of debris in there.”
Work is being funded by a $221,000 cleanup loan and $180,000 assessment grant, both from the state Department of Economic and Community Development.
On Oct. 13, crews from AAIS Corp., a West Haven-based environmental remediation company, began clearing the first-floor of the former hospital. Photos provided by Burdelski when work first started show the former hospital’s loading dock filled with old carpeting, mattresses, chairs, televisions and trash. An update photo from Oct. 27 shows the same area completely clear of debris. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
DURHAM — The Environmental Protection Agency has announced the allocation of $9 million to begin the construction of a water system meant to provide clean drinking water to the properties within Durham’s Superfund site.
“For 30 years residents have had fear of their water,” said Durham First Selectman Laura Francis at a Town Hall ceremony late last month. “Today we announce the beginning of the permanent solution.”
The project will connect the Superfund site on Durham’s Main Street with Middletown public water through a new water main. The water main will hook up more than 100 properties within the site, including three schools, and has the capability to supply water to over 600 wells, if necessary.
The $9 million allocation, issued in the fiscal year 2015, is the first of two planned by the EPA. Combined with $3 million from Connecticut’s Bond Commission, the funds will pay for the project, which officials refer to as costing “20-plus million.”
The project has doubled in cost from earlier estimates of $10 million.
Within the site, initial hookup to the public water will be done at no charge to the property owner, but the owner will be responsible for water bills.
Depending on project delays, water usage could start in 2018. According to Anni Loughlin, EPA Project Manager, the system will likely be turned on all at once.
An EPA press release describes the origin of the site’s contaminated groundwater, stating “In the past, the Durham Manufacturing Company (operating) and the former Merriam Manufacturing Company polluted soil and groundwater with TCE and other chlorinated solvents in the area of Main Street in Durham. As a result, water in many private potable wells in Durham is unsafe to drink.”
The contaminated water was first discovered in 1982, just two years after the creation of the Superfund program itself. Brian Olson, Chief of Remediation and Restoration with the EPA, said, “The number of homes impacted has steadily increased since then.”
Filters and bottled water have been in use within the site, but the water main is intended as a permanent solution, a fix that many said was the result of years of hard work.
Middletown Mayor Dan Drew said, “To describe the amount of behind-the-scenes work ... would take a couple of days.” CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Two FBI agents popped into Whalley Avenue’s START Bank—not to make a deposit, but to learn about how New Haven’s fair-hiring agency works.
The agents recently met with bank Vice-President John DeStefano as part of an investigation into alleged corruption—shakedowns, destruction of property, missing financial records—at the agency, the Commission on Equal Opportunities (CEO).DeStefano served as New Haven’s mayor from 1994 through 2013. During that time Nichole Jefferson served as executive director of the CEO. An investigation into Jefferson’s tenure and her firing by DeStefano’s successor, Mayor Toni Harp, sparked the FBI probe.
DeStefano Friday confirmed the FBI visit. The FBI also visited City Hall this week to interview CEO interns, and invited Jefferson’s successor as CEO chief, Lil Snyder, to its own offices for a chat.
“They called me. We met at the bank,” DeStefano said. “We talked. They asked me about a number of matters.”
“Out of respect to the investigation,” DeStefano declined to detail the agents’ questions. “I will say generally most of their questions were about how did the CEO work — how did it work under ordinance, how it works under charter.” The FBI paid its visit Wednesday to the sixth-floor City Hall office of the CEO, which monitors hiring of blacks and Latinos and women on government-funded construction projects. It invited the current CEO chief Snyder to its offices a day earlier. Snyder became the agency’s director earlier this year after the Harp administration placed on leave, then fired, previous director Jefferson.
Jefferson’s removal has sparked heated controversy (including a July showdown at a CEO board meeting, shown in the above video). The Harp administration hired its own investigator who produced a report accusing Jefferson of “corruption” in office, including shaking down contractors whose work she oversaw to contribute money to, or hire apprentices from, a separate not-for-profit agency she ran, the Construction Workforce Initiative 2 (CWI2), a now-shuttered training-school on Dixwell Avenue; and refusing to provide documents pertinent to the agency’s finances and decision-making under her watch. Based on that report, Mayor Toni Harp fired Jefferson on Aug. 6. (Read all about that in this story.) CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Developer says New Haven mixed-use project benefitted from delay
NEW HAVEN >> It took developer Robert Landino eight years — and riding out an economic recession — to arrive at Thursday’s ribbon cutting for his company’s latest project, the College & Crown mixed-use project.
But with 20 percent of the 160 units already leased and the venerable men’s clothier J. Press already in place as the retail anchor of the complex, Landino said he thinks the amount of time the project took actually worked to the benefit of his company, Middletown-based Centerplan Development.
“We had originally proposed a 20-story building,” Landino said of the original plan for the project. “But when the recession came, we scaled it back and, as it turns out, it was just what we needed.”
The remaining retail space that isn’t being used by J. Press has been leased, although Landino wasn’t prepared to identify them yet.
“They will all bring value to our tenants,” he said. The tenants are a mix of young professionals and empty nesters looking to enjoy a more urban lifestyle, according to Landino. He expects all of the residential space to be leased by the end of next summer as Yale University graduate students, especially those enrolled in the medical school, which is just a short distance from the complex, come to New Haven. The 160 units at College & Crown include studios and luxury lofts with one or two bedrooms. The apartments at the complex have ceilings in excess of nine feet, hardwood floors and such extras as an on-site fitness center, two rooftop courtyards, a clubhouse, recreation room and concierge services. Apartments at College & Crown are being leased at $1,620 a month for studios to $5,000 a month for penthouse units.
The building isn’t fully completed, Landino said, with another 6 to 8 weeks of minor detail construction work remaining.
In remarks delivered at the ribbon-cutting ceremony, Mayor Toni Harp called complex location at the intersection of College and Crown streets “so emblematic of the city.” CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE