STAMFORD — State officials abruptly pulled the plug Wednesday on a controversial half-billion-dollar Stamford train station and residential/business development because the designated real estate and construction team failed to pass a vetting process.
The unraveled deal was a blow to John McClutchy of Darien, a millionaire real estate developer who won an initial 2013 bidding process for the massive redevelopment of the train station, including 600,000 square feet of commercial office space, 60,000 square feet of retail floors, 150 hotel rooms and 150 residential units.
Instead, the state Department of Transportation will go forward with a new $53 million garage nearby, with 1,000 parking spaces, connected to the station for pedestrians.
Stamford Mayor David Martin said the announcement was not a surprise.
“It’s about time a decision was made,” said Joe McGee, vice president of public policy for The Business Council of Fairfield County. But it raises larger issues, McGee said.
“Whatever happened with the developer, if now we are just building a garage, it begs bigger questions,” he said. “One is to determine what size garage is appropriate for that site. It’s critical to figure out the size of the waiting list to get monthly passes for the garage. Is it two or three years, or is it 160 people? I’ve heard both.”
Another issue was raised by a recent study done for the DOT, McGee said.
“It found that 60 companies have shuttles going in and out of the Stamford train station every day, for a total of 400 shuttle trips a day,” he said. “That’s more than any other station in the United States. How do we manage all this?”
A request for comment from McClutchy’s company, the JHM Group, was not returned Wednesday. Other partners with McClutchy were Ciminelli Real Estate Corp. of Buffalo, and ECCO III Enterprises of Yonkers.
John Hartwell, vice chairman of the Connecticut Commuter Rail Council who was reached on his way to a council meeting in New Haven Wednesday evening, said he had not been made aware of the decision to terminate the deal. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Stonington PZC approves Deans Mill School project
Stonington — The Planning and Zoning Commission approved plans Tuesday for the expansion and renovation of Deans Mill School.
The work at Deans Mill is part of the $67 million renovation and expansion of both Deans Mill and West Vine Street schools approved by voters last year.
The commission postponed its public hearing Tuesday on similar plans for West Vine Street School until Nov. 15 so the Inland Wetlands Commission can rule on a wetlands permit for the project.
Plans for Deans Mill School call for demolishing a large section of the school and building an addition for a total of 62,000 square feet.
The school, which now houses 426 students in kindergarten through fourth grade, would have 523 students in pre-kindergarten through fifth grade when the work is completed.
During the work at Deans Mill, students will be transitioned between the section of the school under renovation and the new addition, which will be constructed first.
Last week, the town learned it had been successful in its effort to obtain waivers that will increase state reimbursement for the project from 25 to 32 percent, or about $20 million.
The project overwhelmingly was approved by voters in 2015. The 15-month construction period is projected to commence in April 2017 and be completed in July 2018. Money has been included in the project to bring in portable classrooms to house students if needed.
The project is designed to get another 50 years of life out of the two 48-year-old buildings. Neither school has received an update since they were built in 1967. The town spent $800,000 in 2014 to make emergency repairs to the Deans Mill School roof.
Sewer district president: Shared service will benefit many in Torrington area
Torrington is my hometown. Before moving to Woodridge Lake in Goshen in 2001, I ran a successful business, raised a family, served on the Planning & Zoning Commission and dedicated time and dollars to community projects here.
Today, as the Woodridge Lake Sewer District moves forward with plans to connect to sewer service here, I want to assure Torrington residents that this project meets and exceeds all health and safety requirements and it will not endanger the pristine regional water supply we all value. I am sure, because I have been part of the planning, and because this is the water that feeds my family, friends and valued former employees, too. This project has a long history that has been openly shared with state and local officials throughout the planning process. The Woodridge Lake Sewer District, located entirely within the Waterbury watershed, has operated for 44 years without incident or leak. However, with regional development, we were ordered by state more than a decade ago to improve our sewer system to better protect the area’s water supply. Since then, the district’s board has researched options and determined that connecting to the Torrington system is the safest and best way to do so. The project, engineered by the highly respected design firm Woodward & Curran with long experience in transporting wastewater and protecting drinking water and the environment, calls for the 6.22-mile pipeline to be installed along Route 4 and Riverside Avenue. The proposed route, approved by the state and inland-wetland commissions in both Goshen and Torrington, includes about three-quarters of a mile at the edge of the Torrington Water Company’s watershed lands. This isn’t unusual in Connecticut. Across the state, there are 41 areas where sewer lines safely overlap watershed lands.
It’s worth noting that homes with septic systems and farm animals, and Action Wildlife, an exotic animal farm and petting zoo, are also located within in the watershed lands our pipeline will traverse. The pipeline follows a state highway and roadways where thousands of cars and trucks travel each day. The proposed pipeline, which would be constructed of the highest quality materials and maintained by the city of Torrington, will not endanger the watershed or any of the property along the route. In addition to being safe and effective, this project will benefit the taxpayers of Torrington, of which I am one. The district will pay a connection fee of more than $2 million that will support a planned $52 million upgrade of the city’s water pollution facility. In addition the District will pay annual sewer fees. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
At ballot box, think transportation
I don’t trust politicians. They tend to over-promise and sometimes just plain lie, telling you what you want to hear and then doing the opposite.
I’m not talking about presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. I mean right here in Connecticut where our state representatives and state senators are all up for election next month. They’re all talking about “fixing transportation,” but I don’t trust them.
Case in point: the upcoming fare hike which, amazingly, will take effect after the election. Metro-North Railroad fares will jump 6% and CTtransit bus fares by 17%. Nice timing, eh? If they needed the money so bad, why not raise the fares before we go to the polls?
As I’ve been explaining for months, that fare hike was not created by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, the state Department of Transportation or Metro-North, but necessitated by the majority Democrats’ budget passed last spring in the Legislature. They didn’t fully fund mass transit and left the governor to raise the fares.
But what really galls me is to hear those same budget-writers come out in their campaigns and say they opposed the fare hike. They created it, and now oppose it? I think that’s called hypocrisy.
Or do you remember when Malloy was running for governor in 2010 and he promised he would never, ever raid the Special Transportation Fund to balance the budget? I do, and I admired him for that pledge. So imagine how I felt when he did what every predecessor, Republican or Democrat, had done — turn the Special Transportation Fund into a petty cash box, raidable at will to fix his budget. Was that a lie, a broken promise or a necessity?
Malloy redeemed himself in his second term when he embraced transportation as his keynote agenda. He didn’t just embrace it, he mated with it and produced an amorphous, amoeba-like offspring: a 30-year, $100 billion “plan” to rebuild transportation statewide.
Well, it really wasn’t a “plan” as much as a laundry list, maybe a wish list, with something for everyone — trains, planes, roads, rails, you name it. It wasn’t just ambitious, it was unaffordable. So he did what any good politician would do who had an unfunded dream: he appointed a task force to figure out how to pay for it. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE