BRISTOL — A section of sanitary sewer will be replaced on Frederick Street between Andrews Street and Coppermine Brook beginning Thursday. The job is expected to take 45 days.
The project will increase the capacity of the sanitary sewer. Work will consist of saw-cutting the pavement, excavation, replacement of the sewer and repair of the disturbed road.
The road will remain open to one-way traffic during most of the construction period and to two-way traffic during non-working hours on weekdays and all day on weekends. The road will be closed briefly toward the end of the project while work is done at the Frederick Street-Andrews Street intersection.
The road will be patched as part of the project and will be reconstructed and resurfaced next spring, similar to the West Washington end of Frederick Street.
Questions can be directed to Raymond Rogozinski in the City Engineering Division at 860-584-6113.
— Bristol Public Works Department
Revised Norwich zoning regulation expected to help defunct hotel development
Norwich – The City Council Monday approved a zoning regulation change that would allow the developer hoping to revive a defunct hotel project on Route 82 to obtain an extension of the existing permit without needing to apply for entirely new planning approvals.
The revised regulation, approved 6-0, with Mayor Deberey Hinchey absent, retains existing language that calls for all work in connection with a site plan approval to be completed within five years after the date of approval of the plan. New language, however, allows a developer to seek an extension after the five-year period to avoid permit expiration. The Commission on the City Plan now would have the option to approve an extension for up to 14 years to complete the project work.
City Planner Deanna Rhodes said that while the regulation change would apply to all plans with current or future approvals, the change specifically affects the defunct former Hampton Inn hotel project on Route 82 at exit 11.
Developer Patrick Levantino, who hopes to complete the hotel project, and Jay Davies, managing director for current building owner CT Norwich LLC, a subsidiary of Winston Hospitality, Inc., attended Monday's hearing but did not address the City Council. Following the vote, they both declined to comment on the new project.
The original hotel plan proposed by a Philadelphia hotel developer was approved Sept. 19, 2006. That plan expired in September 2011 under the five-year city limit. Winston purchased the incomplete hotel in 2013, but failed to secure extensive city tax breaks requested. Levantino now hopes to complete a purchase of the property and secure a much less extensive tax abatement plan. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Amtrak Will Keep Buses Rolling On Springfield Route
HARTFORD — Passengers planning to take an Amtrak train on the Springfield to New Haven line stand a good chance of riding a bus instead, at least for the next month and a half.
Amtrak recently announced that extensive track construction along the route will continue through the end of September. To keep track workers on the job uninterrupted, Amtrak is canceling half of its daily schedule of trains on the line, and will transport passengers in chartered buses instead.
Crews are installing a second set of tracks and rebuilding parts of the roadbed on some stretches of the 62-mile route. The work will accommodate Connecticut's new commuter rail operation, which is scheduled to debut in January 2018.
When Amtrak began the bus substitutions in July 2015, it predicted the work would be finished in time to bring back a full train schedule by July 2016. But the railroad recently updated its online schedules to show that buses will continue running in place of trains on three northbound and three southbound trips every day. Amtrak last week used email and automated phone calls to alert passengers who'd already purchased tickets for September travel. Amtrak still runs three trains daily in each direction on the route, which has stops in Windsor, Windsor Locks, Hartford, Berlin, Meriden and Wallingford. But the other three runs are made with buses.
The northbound trip is advertised as roughly the same whether it's by bus or trains. But the buses occasionally take longer because they have to contend with street traffic and must drive to I-91 to travel between stations. That can be especially time-consuming in the morning rush hour; so to avoid delays, Amtrak's southbound buses leave each station during the week a half hour earlier than the trains would have.
Last year, 169,403 riders used Hartford's Union Station, according to Amtrak statistics. The most popular destination or starting point for them was New Haven, followed by New York City, Philadelphia, Springfield and Washington, D.C., according to Amtrak.
The railroad runs four short shuttle trains between Springfield and New Haven each day. In addition, one Northeast Regional and the Vermonter run on those rails as part of substantially longer trips. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
WATERBURY — The state Department of Transportation has hired a national infrastructure consulting and engineering firm to study options for replacing the Route 8 and I-84 interchange known as the Mixmaster. Previous cost estimates range from $3 billion for a partial replacement and $7 billion for a full replacement. HNTB Corp., headquartered in Kansas City, Mo., will lead a team of consultants who will spend years evaluating the interchanges and giving recommendations on whether to continue with repairs to extend its life expectancy for another roughly 25 years, and/or to completely rebuild some parts of the structure. Mayor Neil M. O'Leary welcomed Monday's announcement that the DOT is once again looking seriously into replacing the city's network of ramps, bridges and stacked highways.
This is probably one of the single most important and biggest economic development drivers that the city of Waterbury will be involved in for foreseeable decades," he said. "This will impact how the city looks for the next century."
DOT calls the Mixmaster unique and complex, describing it as an elevated, double-decked high-speed interchange with left-and-right-hand entrance and exit ramps over city streets and the Naugatuck River. An estimated 150,000 vehicles travel over it on an average day — triple the amount it carried when it was constructed in 1955.
If the interchange is reconstructed, it would be the largest project the DOT will undertake, said Tom Harley, chief engineer at DOT.
"The scope of (HNTB's) assignment is to look at: Are we doing the right thing, and how might we do it differently in light of a bigger and broader transportation initiative," he said. DOT is currently putting $190 million into rehabilitating the project. However, in light of Gov. Dannel Malloy's new initiative — the 30-year, $100 billion "Let's Go CT" transportation initiative — DOT is looking at the broader picture. Carrie Rocha, HNTB's project manager, said the company has done similar projects across the country. Currently, HNTB is working on a $798 billion project in Dallas, Texas, known as the Dallas Horseshoe Project. Essentially, they are replacing a Mixmaster — the title is not unique to Waterbury as there are others across the country — with a U-shaped roadway.
That massive undertaking includes expanding and repaving bridges, while adding several new bridges and roadways. That project started in April 2013 and is expected to wrap up in 2017. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
This is probably one of the single most important and biggest economic development drivers that the city of Waterbury will be involved in for foreseeable decades," he said. "This will impact how the city looks for the next century."
DOT calls the Mixmaster unique and complex, describing it as an elevated, double-decked high-speed interchange with left-and-right-hand entrance and exit ramps over city streets and the Naugatuck River. An estimated 150,000 vehicles travel over it on an average day — triple the amount it carried when it was constructed in 1955.
If the interchange is reconstructed, it would be the largest project the DOT will undertake, said Tom Harley, chief engineer at DOT.
"The scope of (HNTB's) assignment is to look at: Are we doing the right thing, and how might we do it differently in light of a bigger and broader transportation initiative," he said. DOT is currently putting $190 million into rehabilitating the project. However, in light of Gov. Dannel Malloy's new initiative — the 30-year, $100 billion "Let's Go CT" transportation initiative — DOT is looking at the broader picture. Carrie Rocha, HNTB's project manager, said the company has done similar projects across the country. Currently, HNTB is working on a $798 billion project in Dallas, Texas, known as the Dallas Horseshoe Project. Essentially, they are replacing a Mixmaster — the title is not unique to Waterbury as there are others across the country — with a U-shaped roadway.
That massive undertaking includes expanding and repaving bridges, while adding several new bridges and roadways. That project started in April 2013 and is expected to wrap up in 2017. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE