New London — Reconstruction and reconfiguration of the municipal parking lot off Eugene O’Neill Drive is expected to start later this year thanks to approval of plans last week by the Planning and Zoning Commission.
The nearly $3 million plan for an area called the “gateway to the city” involves repaving, landscape improvements and also narrowing of parts of Eugene O’Neill Drive and Green Street with “bump outs,” to help slow traffic and create a more pedestrian-friendly environment.
Money for the project is already allocated as part of normal paving projects, along with a $500,000 grant obtained from the Office of Development and Planning through the Main Street Investment Fund.
The plans are expected to go out to bid next month with a recommendation on a contractor to go to the City Council for approval. Interim Public Works Director Brian Sear said construction is expected to be completed before the end of the year.
The work will be phased and coordinated, he said, to minimize disruption to parking and traffic flow.
Chad Frost, principal with Mystic-based Kent + Frost, said along with ornamental light poles there will be 42 trees planted roadside and in the parking lot. The lot now contains about 240 parking spaces but will be trimmed to 201 to accommodate new standards for space widths.
Entrances and exits will remain the same except for a change at the southern lot, off Tilley Street. Members of the Planning and Zoning Commission asked that what was to be an emergency entrance be converted back into a public entrance in part to benefit Octane Café. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
FedEx Expects To Start Construction Soon On Middletown Distribution Facility
MIDDLETOWN — FedEx Ground, after purchasing the former Aetna property in March for $18 million, has given the city an official commitment to build a 525,000 square-foot distribution hub.
The city announced in May 2015 that FedEx Ground had applied for permits to build the facility.
But even after several approvals and the land purchase, the company did not officially commit to opening a center in Middletown until this week.
FedEx Ground will spend an estimated $220 million on the distribution hub on Middle Street, which will receive large shipments of packages and then distribute them to smaller facilities for home delivery. The hub is scheduled to open in Aug. 2018 and will have about 400 employees when it opens, according to a joint statement from the city and the company released Thursday."FedEx Ground is pleased to expand its presence in Connecticut," said Kevin Koken, vice president of eastern region operations for FedEx Ground. "The new hub in Middletown will provide added capacity in the region that will enable us to keep pace with an ever suring e-commerce market as well as the expected spikes in package volume we experience around the holidays."
The facility will complement existing centers in Willington and South Windsor, the company said. Construction is expected to begin in May or June.
Middletown officials have welcomed the proposal because of its expected tax revenue and the jobs it will create. Aetna's 1.3 million-square-foot building closed in 2010 and was demolished in 2011. Aetna is retaining a 22-acre portion of its former 260-acre property for a data center that has continued operating since the main campus closed. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Hospital Tower Ushers In New Era At UConn Health
FARMINGTON — The $325.8 million new hospital tower at John Dempsey Hospital, a key component of UConn Health's expansion and the state's sizable investment in the bioscience industry, is on schedule to open this spring after three years of construction.
The building, on UConn Health's 206-acre Farmington campus, has 11 floors and 169 private patient rooms, bringing the hospital's total to 234 licensed beds. It will also house staff offices, the emergency department, the intensive care unit, orthopedic and general surgery, a bone marrow transplant unit, respiratory therapy and other departments.
At least 60 patients from the current hospital building will be moved to the tower in the coming weeks, hospital officials said.
Hospital CEO Anne Kovalski Diamond said she expects the tower to operate at full capacity soon after it opens and estimated that on any given day, about 1,400 staff, physicians, students and residents will spend 40 percent or more of their working time in the new tower. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUERecycling food waste in Connecticut: Slow as molasses
The folks at Quantum Biopower thought Connecticut’s pilot project for anaerobic digesters was a good idea when they first saw it four years ago. Designed to help the state get rid of the enormous amount of food waste that was winding up as municipal trash, the digester’s biological process would turn that waste into combustible gas that would then be harnessed for electricity. There’d be some compost left over to sell for gardens.
Quantum reasoned it would also be a good way for its parent company, a land clearing business with a lot of wood waste on its hands, to get rid of that too. So Quantum came up with a plan for a site in Southington, started securing financing and sources of food waste, applied for permits in late 2013 and waited.
It’s still waiting.
“Unbelievable,” said Brian Paganini, Quantum’s vice president and managing director. “We get that there is a learning curve. However, 26 months for us presents a challenge.”
Getting financing for the $11-million project for starters. “It’s difficult to respond to a lender when frankly, the process is out of your control,” Paganini said.
The anaerobic digester pilot along with a mandate that certain large food waste producers keep that waste out of the trash stem from legislation passed in 2011. But five years later not a single one of five proposed anaerobic digesters has started construction and food waste is increasing. A lot. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Rail branch is on track
WATERBURY — Projects to bring the Waterbury Branch of Metro-North up to current standards for passenger railroads are moving forward, and the branch is on track to meet the Federal Railroad Administration's deadline. "Let me be clear, the Waterbury Branch is not getting shut down and is under no threat of getting shut down," said Kevin Nursick, spokesman for the state Department of Transportation. The DOT hires Metro-North to operate the state's commuter rail service from New Haven to New York City, including three branch lines. The Waterbury Branch, which has about 500 daily riders, runs between Bridgeport and Waterbury and is used by residents and visitors alike in the Northwest Corner. In 1998, Congress passed a law ordering the FRA to require all passenger railroads to implement Positive Train Control by Dec. 31, 2015. When it became clear that virtually every passenger railroad in the country would miss that deadline, the FRA extended it by three years.
PTC construction is underway on the Waterbury branch and is scheduled to be completed by Dec. 20, 2018 — 11 days before the FRA's deadline, DOT officials said. The cost of building the PTC system, which involves installing passive transponders along the tracks that transmit instructions to a computers aboard trains, is about $163 million for the entire Metro-North system in Connecticut.
PTC improves safety by employing certain automatic functions, such as slowing the train when the speed limit drops, even if the engineer fails to act. "When a train goes by it gives a signal to the transponder, and the transponder will tell the train the maximum speed," said Deputy DOT Commissioner Anna Barry. "The transponder has the information, and the equipment on the train automatically reduces the speed to conform with whatever information it's getting from the transponder." Meanwhile, the Waterbury branch, which lacks signalization, will receive another upgrade. A signalization system to control the movement of train traffic on the single-track line is being designed for $6.7 million. Construction is estimated to cost about $60 million and will be finished by November 2020, according to the DOT. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE