BETHEL - Crews completed the initial paving on Plumtrees Road last week as part of the project to build a wider bridge at an intersection near the Bethel schools.
Town officials hope this project will alleviate some traffic issues at the Plumtrees Road and Walnut Hill Road intersection.
Workers will continue to widen the road up until the winter shutdown in early December. In the spring, crews will reposition Whittlesey Drive, which all five schools are located on, and install a new signal system.
During construction, the road has been open. The town opened a bypass on Plumtrees Road in July so that traffic could continue to flow.
This $2.4 million project is paid for with state and federal funds.
Long-delayed Bridgeport factory conversion could be on horizon
BRIDGEPORT — It was late summer 2015 that city and state officials gathered at the site of a former factory complex next to Interstate 95 and crowed about the conversion that was about to begin. With plans set and financing in place, construction of the buildings into a mix of housing and other uses was said to be around the corner.
Today, the site remains as rundown as ever. But officials insist that everything is at last in place to finally bring new life to the hulking eyesore, and that progress will be clear within weeks.
“This is a very complicated deal with many partners at the table,” said Norbert Deslauriers, interim managing director of multifamily programs at the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority. CHFA in September approved $40 million in financing for the project.
At the same time, work will begin in another building on a new home for Great Oaks Charter School, whose opening has been pushed back to the fall of 2018. Seventeen housing units would be set aside for tutors at the school.
The second phase would rehabilitate the oldest buildings on the block, facing Hancock Avenue and most clearly visible from I-95, into a mix of housing and retail. A grocery store is part of the plan, and those buildings are to soon be sheathed in a vinyl mesh printed with images of what the structures will eventually look like.
In all, the $120 million project will bring more than 300 units of housing and be known as Cherry Street Lofts.
State officials have called the project among the most complicated they have seen, with financing from a wide variety of sources including historic tax credits, a brownfields rehabilitation loan, low-income tax credits and more. Delays have hampered the progress. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
MERIDEN — A public information meeting will be held next week to update residents on several downtown projects, including the restoration of two-way traffic in downtown and a boulevard on Pratt Street.
The meeting will be held from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 29, in the Griffin Room at the Meriden Public Library, 105 Miller St. The first hour will focus on sidewalk improvements on West Main Street and Colony Street, two-way traffic conversion and downtown flood control. The second hour will focus on the Pratt Street Gateway project.
Earlier this year, the city was awarded a $3.2 million state grant for a project that would establish Pratt Street as the new gateway into downtown. Design work has been completed to turn Pratt Street into a boulevard and construction is scheduled to begin next year. A wide, landscaped median will be installed on Pratt between Myrtle and Benjamin streets. There will be openings in the median at intersections and parking areas.
“The proposal would really send people that are coming into downtown off of Interstate 691 from Exit 7 to Exit 8,” Economic Development Director Juliet Burdelski said, adding that the goal is a “more attractive way into downtown.”
The project includes realigning the Camp Street and Pratt Street intersection, as well as the intersection of Center Street and Pratt.
“Right now it’s a racing strip,” Burdelski said of Pratt Street. “It’s not aesthetically appealing.”
City officials also hope to convert one-way traffic in the downtown area to two-way traffic. While funding isn’t in place for the project, the city has developed a concept that state Department of Transportation is comfortable with, said Associate City Engineer Howard Weissberg. The conversion would impact West Main, Hanover, East Main and Church streets, as well as Cook Avenue and Perkins Square.
In recent years, the city has unsuccessfully applied for federal grant money for the traffic conversion. Burdelski said the city may have to explore bonding city money for the project or waiting to see if federal infrastructure funds become available.
Funding is in place to update traffic signals in the downtown area, a necessity for two-way traffic, Weissberg said.
The city decided to hold a public meeting on the Pratt Street Gateway since funding is in place, Weissberg said, adding that it made sense to cover other downtown projects during the same meeting.
“It kind of grew, so we decided to give everyone an update on all of the traffic and flood control updates,” he said.
SOUTHINGTON — A company that hopes to turn food and yard waste into electricity and compost could begin construction early next year on Spring Street.
Turning Earth is waiting on a key approval from the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection but expects to receive that “any day now,” according to company co-founder Amy Kessler.
Delays in receiving regulatory approval for unique energy-producing processes has pushed back construction. Company officials had hoped to begin construction this year.
Quantum Biopower, a food-waste to energy facility on DePaolo Drive, ran into similar delays. That company held a ribbon cutting ceremony earlier this week, though it may be a month or two before the plant begins operations.
Turning Earth utilizes a different method then Quantum Biopower, according to Kessler, drawing on proprietary technology from Denmark.
Food waste from grocery stores, large cafeterias and conference centers will be mixed with yard waste such as leaves, wood and grass clippings. That mixture will be stored in sealed containers and sprayed with a solution, drawing out nutrients consumed by the microbes that will produce burnable bio-gas. Oxygen is then introduced to that anaerobic process to heat the mixture and begin turning it into compost which will be sold by the facility.
Once Turning Earth is operational, it’ll still take a few months for those processes to begin before the plant will begin to sell compost or produce electricity with the bio-gas it creates.
Kessler said the plant will be able to produce 1.4 megawatts of power annually.
Dennis Schain, spokesman for DEEP, said he expected the department to act on the company’s permit “in the near future.”
Schain said the department has a goal of removing 60 percent of organic and food waste from the garbage by 2024. Forty percent of trash by weight is food waste.
“This is really vital,” he said. “Organic waste makes up a significant percentage of the waste stream.”
A 2013 law mandated major food waste producers within 20 miles of an organics recycling facility to recycle their waste. Those producers will be charged a fee per truckload of material but Kessler declined to say what the fee would be.
Construction of the plant will take between nine and 12 months. Kessler hopes the plant, which is expected to cost nearly $20 million, will be operational by the end of 2017 or early 2018.
A 37-acre parcel on Spring Street slated for the plant is owned by developer John Senese. Kessler said Turning Earth will buy the land.
Rising next to Mohegan Sun, the angular, glass-clad structure will enable the casino to meet some of the demand for overnight stays that exceeds its original tower’s 1,200-room capacity. Casino executives estimate they’ve had to turn away 1 million room nights over the last two years alone.
The Earth Tower stands 13 stories high. The original Mohegan Sun hotel, now dubbed the Sky Tower, is 34 stories.
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal and U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney joined tribal officials at Friday's event.
“On time and on budget,” Mohegan Tribal Council Chairman Kevin Brown said of the $130 million project, which the tribe itself financed.
He said it comes “after a period of delay,” a reference to the years that followed the scrapping of Project Horizon, a 2007 Mohegan Sun expansion plan. That proposed undertaking, whose price tag had grown to $925 million, called for a 39-story hotel tower that would have been the tallest building in Connecticut.
On the cusp of the economic downtown that would become the Great Recession, the Mohegans pulled the plug on that project.
This, Brown said, was the right time to resurrect the second hotel plan, “not just for us, but for the state.”
The Earth Tower project provided 2,000 construction jobs and 200 permanent jobs, he said.
Malloy, who had attended the groundbreaking for the Earth Tower project in March 2015, pronounced the new hotel “first class all the way.”
“The tribe should be very proud of this accomplishment,” he said. “For everyone who bet against them — you lost.”
Courtney, too, lauded the Mohegans' tenaciousness.
“This tribe is always in it for the long haul," he said. "Their commitment to this area is eternal.”
He cited the tribe’s agreement earlier this year with the Town of Preston to develop the former Norwich Hospital property. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Stanley eyes $500M N. Britain tech park
Stanley Black & Decker hopes to redevelop its legacy manufacturing properties in New Britain into a state-of-the-art technology park that could include $500 million in capital investment, the Hartford Business Journal has learned.
The plans, developed quietly over the past eight years and revealed in detailed bidding documents submitted to state officials in May, show a state-of-the-art data facility to be powered by nearly 20 megawatts of Doosan fuel cells and low-cost hydropower from a Stanley-owned utility company in Farmington.
Developers hope the data center will be a draw for big data users like ESPN, UConn, Yale and others, and that it would spur some companies to relocate operations to as many as four retrofitted New Britain buildings proposed in the plan.
The Hardware City's state legislative delegation said the potential $500 million investment could help revitalize an economically depressed area of the city.
The project could create average incremental employment of nearly 1,000 jobs over a four-year period, according to an analysis by UConn economist Fred Carstensen, which was done on behalf of Stanley's development partner Thunderbird CHP. The Farmington-based developer has secured rights to a long-term lease of roughly half of Stanley's New Britain campus. The project would also mean more tax revenue for New Britain and help secure Stanley's presence in the city.
Thunderbird likens the proposed data center to one in Holyoke, Mass., that opened in 2012. MIT, Harvard and other major institutions that helped fund the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center (MGHPCC) send data there to perform complex calculations used in bioscience and other modern research. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Bloomfield's development spurt tinged with housing
Bloomfield is in the midst of its biggest commercial-residential development surge in nearly a generation.
This year alone, Hartford's abutting neighbor has seen developers declare their intent to erect more than 500 luxury and age-restricted apartments over the next few years.
In October, the 132-luxury unit Arbors At Brighton Park opened off Woodland Avenue; a second phase launches soon that will add 60 adjacent luxury townhomes in this town of some 20,500 residents.
Also off Woodland Avenue, Niagara Bottling's controversial bottled-water plant is near opening, employing dozens. And, specialty-alloy and precision-parts maker Deringer-Ney Inc. is about to occupy a newly built manufacturing-headquarters facility off Woodland, replacing its long-time, crosstown leased home sandwiched between Cottage Grove Road and Blue Hills Avenue.
The local McDonald's in Copaco Shopping Center recently reopened after an extensive facelift, while just up Cottage Grove Road, the Wendy's restaurant is shut for renovations.
Seabury Home retirement community is undergoing a major expansion for which earlier this year it bonded up to $80 million to add new independent- and assisted-living units, skilled-nursing beds and an expanded memory-care unit.
Two years ago, another in-town retirement community, Duncaster, launched its $10 million expansion.
That's not all. New Jersey developer Calamar has submitted plans for a 138-unit apartment community for tenants age 55 and older at 1136 Blue Hills Ave., in the shadow of First Cathedral. Building cost is pegged between $14 million and $18 million. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
North Haven hopes to make announcement about former Pratt & Whitney site soon
NORTH HAVEN >> With the prospect of thousands of jobs and millions in tax revenue on the line, the town is taking steps to make the redevelopment of the former Pratt and Whitney Aircraft site on Washington Avenue a reality.
The Board of Selectmen recently approved an ordinance that gives large-scale projects a break in the amount they pay in building permit fees, which for developments like this can mean $1 million. Developer 415 Washington Ave. LLC is proposing a 1.5 million-square-foot facility on the 168-acre site. The plans include 3,000 parking spaces for cars, about 245 tractor-trailer spaces and 48 tractor-trailer bays, according to First Selectman Michael Freda. “It will be a giant warehouse distribution facility concept, and the anticipation would be anywhere from 1,000 to 3,000 jobs for North Haven and the region for a project that will be a long-term project for North Haven in terms of sustainability, viability and incremental tax revenue and job growth.” The project already has approvals from the Inland Wetlands and Planning and Zoning commissions. While the plans for the warehouse and distribution center have been approved, the end user hasn’t yet been identified pending the finalization of the contract between the user and the developer.
“We have simplified the regulatory processes here in town, we have given them, through our regulatory bodies — Planning and Zoning and Inland Wetlands — all the approvals, and they have asked me for something that we didn’t have as part of our economic development strategy in the past; they have asked me for consideration for a reduction of building permit fees,” Freda said. The project’s estimated personal property value is about $180 million, with the construction value being $220 million, Freda said, both of which are taxable. “They asked for a 50 percent reduction of what the building permit fees would normally be and they asked for this based upon the magnitude of the project itself,” Freda said. The $220 million project would normally yield about $2.2 million in building permit fees, Freda said. “So we created an ordinance that passed unanimously with tremendous public support at a public meeting with a two-tier incentive,” he said. “For anything over $100 million in construction value, we will now offer a 25 percent reduction in building permit fees, and for anything over $200 million, that’s a 50 percent reduction. That’s where this Pratt and Whitney project would fall.”Residents shopping in stores along Washington Avenue Friday were hopeful the project will come to fruition.“To have something move in here that would bring that many jobs, that would be amazing,” said Mark Tienken, who was at Stop & Shop with his son Brady, 4. “We need those kinds of jobs, good jobs that pay well. I have several friends looking for work, and this is just what we need.” CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE