Everyone,
Strong
Industry support is needed at a press conference with Governor Malloy on the
transportation funding lock box at 11:00am this Friday at the Legislative
Office Building in Hartford. We need to demonstrate that Governor Malloy’s $100 billion transportation proposal is a priority and it has strong support. Plus, the stronger the showing we make on the lockbox, the less likely the legislators are to divert or cut transportation funding when dealing with the budget deficits.
I hope that you and others from your organization can join us to make a strong showing Friday morning.
DANBURY — A Texas energy company that wanted to lease city land as a construction staging area for part of its $970 million gas pipeline expansion has abruptly withdrawn the request.
Spectra Energy had proposed paying Danbury $5,000 to lease a small piece of land in a residential neighborhood south of the West Lake Reservoir, which would be used to store heavy equipment and trench soil.
The energy company withdrew its request last week after the city scheduled a public hearing to gather input about the proposal.
A Spectra official on Wednesday would not specify why the company withdrew the request.
“We no longer need the property,” said Marylee Hanley, director of stakeholder outreach for Spectra Energy.
Spectra received federal approval in March to expand its natural gas pipeline from New York to Boston. The project includes the replacement of a 4.5-mile section of pipeline in Danbury with a larger pipe.
The project has already begun in the western part of the city, where workers are drilling beneath Interstate 84 near exit 2. The plan is to begin trench work and pipe replacement in the spring.
“Our project will be placed in service on Nov. 1,” Hanley said. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Southington road to soon be repaved
SOUTHINGTON — Old Mountain Road has been shut down following the cracking of a temporary pavement. A detour will be put in place until it can be re-paved in April. “The extreme high and low temperatures this winter ate through the patch we’d put on it and it is no longer safe to travel,” said Town Manager Garry Brumback on Tuesday. “We had done several patches and the police were monitoring any changes. After this last snow, it just didn’t hold.”
Last August, the town awarded Martin Laviero, contractor of Bristol $694,450, to repair the Old Mountain Road bridge, which Brumback said had been weight-limited more than 20 years ago due to deterioration. Brumback said the road has now deteriorated to the point where it can’t be patched.
“It would require us to spend a considerable sum on a thick temporary overlay and we believe this is not advisable,” he said. “We have contacted the contractor and he has agreed to resume work on the project. The contractor will attempt to re-establish the detour today at which time we can stop around the clock police protection. He will mobilize as soon as he is able and should be actively working by late this week or early next week. The contractor will contact the police department to get officers for traffic control while he resets the detour.” CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Downtown Meriden building project going ‘very well overall’ thanks in part to warm winter
MERIDEN — With apartments and commercial space taking shape, it’s becoming clearer what the mixed-use building at 24 Colony St. will look like when it’s complete. Work on a state Department of Transportation parking garage in the southwest corner of the lot is also expected to start soon, bringing with it temporary traffic pattern changes.
Work on the $24 million project spearheaded jointly by the Meriden Housing Authority and Branford-based Westmount Development Group began in earnest in the middle of last year and has been ramping up in recent months. It includes roughly 8,000 square feet of commercial space on the ground floor, and three floors of apartment units above that — the skeleton of which is not hard to miss when traveling in the area.
James Nolin, project supervisor from the Newington-based Enterprise Builders, said that the generally warm weather this winter has helped work move along.
“It’s going very well overall,” he said of construction. “The warm winter certainly helped. As far as a schedule goes, we write it for perfect weather, so we never really got ahead but we’ve been able to toe the line.”
A lot of the early work was dedicated to getting the site ready to build upon.
“It’s a really tight site,” Nolin said. “There just needed to be a lot of coordination, but that’s to be expected in this sort of urban setting in an older city.”
Excavation also proved challenging. The parcel was formerly home to the Wilcox Building, then a parking lot.
“We always knew there were many, many, many layers of existing structure that had been here over the last 140 years. With that, when we were doing our excavations, we found a lot of old stuff in the ground — old foundations, old footings, old pilings in the ground... a lot of old structure,” Nolin said CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
"We've spent the last several months going through this process, trying to figure out the best way to preserve Connecticut jobs and revenue," Mohegan Tribal Council Chairman Kevin Brown said in a statement Wednesday. "East Windsor's clear desire to host this facility made this decision really difficult. However, the fact that one site was removed by the developer and others were not submitted by the property owner made pursuing a facility there extremely challenging."
Butler and Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Chairman Rodney Butler said staff from both tribes, who partnering to develop Connecticut's third casino, will meet with officials from each of the towns to discuss in greater detail exactly what a proposal could entail.
The chairs will launch public question-and-answer sessions with the residents and businesses in those communities.
The tribes did not give a timetable for rendering a decision on winning site.
Razing of The Hartford’s ex-Simsbury campus sought
The new owners of The Hartford's sprawling ex-Simsbury insurance campus plan to raze the office-building portion to make way for a new mixed-use development, the town's planner says.
New Jersey landlord The Silverman Group, which acquired the 173-acre campus in late December, has filed an application with the town's conservation commission to level the 625,000-square-foot office building at 200 Hopmeadow St., Jamie Rabbit, Simsbury's director of planning and community development, said Tuesday.
The commission will formally receive the application when it meets on March 1, Rabbit said.
Silverman Group officials did not immediately respond Tuesday to a call for comment.
Working with The Hartford once it decided to sell the property, the town embraced a relatively novel development concept, known as "form-based code,'' for reimagining the property's use and to make it more attractive to a buyer. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Amtrak Boss Pledges Hartford Line Will Be Done On Time
There will be no more cost overruns or construction delays on the Hartford Line commuter rail project, the president of Amtrak said at a Senate hearing.
Amtrak is keeping close watch on the $574-million construction job and is confident it will be ready for trains to start running in January of 2018, Joseph Boardman said at the hearing Tuesday.
Connecticut had initially hoped to start running commuter trains between New Haven, Hartford and Springfield by next winter, but Amtrak — which oversees construction — declared two months ago that it would take 13 months longer and $135 million more.
Under questioning by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., Boardman acknowledged that completing projects on time and budget "hasn't always been standard practice" at the railroad. But he said a switch in senior management has changed that. "I believe our new chief engineer is very different in his focus and his effort to get this delivered, so I am confident that we will get it delivered," Boardman said at a subcommittee hearing of the Senate's commerce, science and transportation committee. State Transportation Commissioner James Redeker told The Courant on Wednesday that construction is now running slightly ahead of the revised schedule, and that Amtrak's new project management team is keeping the DOT well informed about progress. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUEConnecticut DOT to host public info hearing March 2 at Derby-Milford Road intersection
DERBY >> An estimated $3.1 million state project calling for improvements on Route 34 at the Derby-Milford Road intersection will be the subject of a public informational meeting next week.
The state Department of Transportation’s Highway Design office will host the hearing at 7 p.m. March 2 at City Hall, 1 Elizabeth St. According to a press release from the DOT, the meeting will be followed by a question-and-answer period. The snow date for the meeting is March 9.
According to DOT officials, the proposed improvements include widening Derby-Milford Road to accommodate a three-lane approach to Route 34; a two-lane approach from Sentinel Hill Road and creation of an exclusive right-turn lane from Route 34 to Derby-Milford Road. The additional lanes aim to reduce traffic congestion and improve the overall operation and safety of the intersection.
“This project is for the Derby-Milford Road improvements at the bottom of Sentinel Hill,” said Mayor Anita Dugatto.”The hairpin turn will have major improvements for safety and visibility. We are excited the state will improve this road at no cost to the city.” CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
West Haven High School project resurrected, with management changes
WEST HAVEN >> City and school officials working with the state have resurrected the “renovate-as-new” West Haven High School project, after Mayor Ed O’Brien and Superintendent of Schools Neil Cavallaro previously told the state the current project “must be terminated.”
But there will be changes in the way the project is managed, the only one of which officials were willing to talk about will be replacing the current West Haven High School Building Committee with a new one, according to O’Brien. “There will be a new building committee,” O’Brien said late Tuesday afternoon after a meeting with state officials in Hartford. “Building committees, contrary to what we were being told, can be changed at any time.
“The professionals are going to run the project now,” O’Brien said. We’re just trying to put it on track,” he said, calling the result of recent meetings “good for the state, good for the city and ... good for the students of West Haven.” The high school project “is going to be moving forward and it is going to be state-of-the-art, but it’s going to be built a different way,” said Director of Finance Kevin McNabola.
Another big change will be that while the plans previously called for asbestos in remaining sections of the existing school to be encapsulated, it will be completely removed under the revised plans, O’Brien and Cavallaro said. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
CTDOT's $34.8M Bridgeport Route 8/25 Project Reaches Important Milestone
The Connecticut Department of Transportation's (CTDOT) $34.8 million project to replace the Route 8/25 bridges in Bridgeport has exceeded the half-way point as crews from Manafort Brothers Incorporated are working hard to meet the September delivery date.
The four bridges being rehabilitated carry an average of 88,000 cars over Capital Avenue, Lindley Street and a large parking lot. The Lindley Street Bridge consists of seven, 82 ft. (25 m) long spans with four 12-ft. (3.6 m) lanes and two shoulders in each direction. The project will reduce the bridge to two spans while keeping the same lane and shoulder capacity.
The Capital Avenue Bridge, consisting of a single span with four 12-ft. lanes and two shoulders in each direction will be replaced with a similar structure. The work also includes the construction of a large retaining wall to support 425 ft. (130 m) of new highway, the rehabilitation of the metal bin-wall retaining wall which is currently supporting Route 8 southbound, south of Capital Avenue and capacity improvements to two intersections on Lindley Street adjacent to Route 8 northbound.
The bridges will be demolished and rebuilt in a different configuration using accelerated bridge construction techniques. The new superstructures will consist of prefabricated bridge units (PBUs), which consists of two steel beams fabricated with an integral concrete deck to form a double tee section. The PBUs will be connected in the field with narrow longitudinal closure pours.
The Lindley Street Bridges will be reduced to two spans each by filling in five of the seven spans on each bridge. The pier to the north of the second span will be converted to an abutment by constructing a retaining wall behind the existing pier. The substructures to the north of the final two span structures will be left in place and buried. The area under the spans to be removed will be filled. The fill will be retained by concrete retaining walls built outboard of the existing bridge limits. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE