High School renovation on schedule to finish by fall
BERLIN — Berlin High School’s renovations are on track to be completed in the fall.
Much of the 290,000 square-foot facility, bustling with students and staff on a recent day, is newly-renovated. The sprawling school, with a population of more than 900 students, features approximately 80 new classrooms, along with a new media center, radio station, television studio, athletic training room, and more.
“This is where we’re supposed to be,” BHS Principal Francis Kennedy Jr. said during a recent tour of the school, as sunlight poured into the front office through large windows. “It does something for your spirit when you have bright light, clean air and modern facilities.”
The project has been completed in phases, with students and staff learning and working in two-thirds of the building while the other one-third of the school was a construction zone, said project manager Tom Smith of Gilbane, Inc.
“It’s like a Rubik’s Cube trying to do this project,” Smith said with a laugh.
While renovating a high school with hundreds of students and staff still inside hasn’t been without its challenges, Smith and Kennedy say the renovation is on schedule.
Classrooms continue to be renovated and turned over to students and teachers as they’re completed. In the most recent round, eight new classrooms are slated to open in the next few weeks, Smith said.
On Tuesday morning, the exercise room, located in the space formerly used for wrestling, was full of students using the exercise equipment and talking with friends. The room is always in use, Kennedy says, many evenings until 9 p.m. or later, until the school closes at 10 p.m. Nearby, the new athletic training room houses massage tables and a stainless steel hydrotherapy tub for BHS athletes.
“Athletics are a very important part of life here in Berlin,” Kennedy said.
The school’s radio station, WERB 94.5, has a new home with updated equipment, while the television studio has a control room, green screen, editing suite, and broadcast-quality television cameras, said Kennedy.
Next door, students sat in stadium-style seats, similar to those inside a college lecture hall, while they read, studied, or used their Chromebooks during a free period. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Construction cleared to begin on first phase of Ponemah Mill renovation
Norwich — The historic 1870 Ponemah Mill in Taftville stood in silence on Thursday, with broken and missing windows, peeling roof shingles and rotted wooden framework giving stark signs that the giant, sprawling landmark needs immediate attention.
In about two weeks, the mill that once employed thousands of French Canadian textile workers and roared with five floors of machinery will hum anew with construction that will convert the largest building in the Shetucket Riverfront complex, totaling 313,000 square feet, into 116 apartments.
On Wednesday, New Jersey-based developer Onekey LLC, which has been planning the project for the past dozen years, closed on a complex financing arrangement that provided the initial $18 million needed for the first phase of construction.
Seven documents measuring more than an inch thick were filed in the Norwich land records Wednesday, with a recording fee to the city clerk's office of $1,000.
The state Bond Commission in January approved a $5 million loan from the state Department of Housing, made possible after the Norwich City Council agreed a year ago to phase in new property taxes over a 15-year period.
Onekey also obtained $10 million in federal and state historic tax credits to restore exterior features.
Building permits also have been approved, city Director of Inspections James Troeger said.
The city hired two independent engineering firms — paid for by Onekey — to review and approve the plans, calculated at a total value of $18.3 million. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Constitution natural gas pipeline pushes back completion date
Albany
Stymied from cutting trees along the path of the proposed Constitution natural gas pipeline, its owners Thursday pushed back the start of the line's expected operation at least six months, from the end of 2016 to the second half of 2017.
The company blamed the delay on a "rapidly closing environmental window" to cut trees along the line's planned route in New York, where gas from the hydrofracking fields of northern Pennsyvania would move through the Southern Tier to the Schoharie County town of Wright.
Limits imposed by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service allow Constitution to cut trees only between Nov. 1 and March 31 in order to protect migratory songbirds and the northern long-eared bat, whose numbers have been decimated by a fungal disease. The bat is listed as threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act.
On its route in New York, the pipeline would cross 270 bodies of water and clear 1,000 acres of forest containing 700,000 trees. More than 700 parcels of land are affected by the proposed pipeline, and 120 landowners face losing property to the gas company under eminent domain.
Constitution already has cut trees along about 25 miles of the pipeline's route in Pennsylvania, but has been unable to to start work in New York. The state Department of Environmental Conservation is still considering necessary water quality permits, and without those permits, Constitution cannot legally cut trees.
DEC is expected to decide on the permits by March 31. Last month, Constitution sought permission from FERC to start cutting trees in New York before DEC action on the permits, but that effort was blocked by state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, as well as environmental groups including Catskill Mountainkeeper, Clean Air Council, Delaware Otsego Audubon Society, Riverkeeper, Sierra Club and Stop The Pipeline. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE