BRISTOL — City officials and public leaders discussed, debated and talked with residents Tuesday about the option of renovating the current City Hall or moving the offices to the Memorial Boulevard School.
“I’ve heard both sides from taxpayers, people on the street, in the diner … we’ve got a lot of work to do,” said City Councilor Dave Preleski. “This project is a big deal and really interesting. The numbers were a lot closer than I thought. We have to be diligent and smart about it. I think all of us have to get our arms around the numbers and details.”
The proposals were presented by Public Works Director Walt Veselka at a special joint board meeting Monday night that included the Memorial Boulevard School Committee.
Veselka gave out binders of hundreds of pages of documents that distilled to two main figures. It would cost $24 million for City Hall to move to the school, built in 1921. If city offices were to stay in its current location at the building, built in 1963, it would cost $20 million for updates and renovations. This is based on construction beginning in 2018, with about a year for the school site and three years for the City Hall building.
“There’s always a day one when information is disseminated. The impression is I now have lots more questions,” said Board of Finance Chairwoman Cheryl Thibeault. “Once we ferret out different pieces of information, collectively as a joint board, with public works and the community, we’ll decide what the best allocation of our resources is.”
Thibeault added that it is not a process that should be rushed.
“I’m not a risk taker. I’m not sure you’d want a risk taker in my role,” she said. “This just scratches the surface. Each meeting will get deeper. People need to realize it’s a process.”
Councilor Jodi Zils Gagne, who is also on the school task force committee, said the idea of moving City Hall to the school has been bandied about for many years.
“To renovate the icon of city, I’m leaning toward that. I want to see something nice happening with Memorial school,” she said. “It’s a beautiful old building and we’ve torn down enough old buildings. It would be a beautiful City Hall.”
Gagne is also a proponent of renovating the theater at the school. That cost, at last estimate, is $10 to $12 million. It may be less if the renovation of the rest of the building is done concurrently.
If city offices do move to the school, what would become of the current building becomes a question.
The Police Department next door has expanded its operations, while the city has consolidated many of theirs, city officials said.
“We’re always growing, always looking to grow but there’s no talk of moving,” said Police Chief Brian Gould. “It would be way too early in the game to comment or make any sort of guess on that. We’re not even involved in any of the process.” CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Ledyard education board to vote on school renovation plan Wednesday
Ledyard — The building committee approved plans for the town's $65 million school renovation project Monday night, passing them to the Board of Education for their possible approval Wednesday.
The project will renovate-as-new Ledyard Middle School and the Gallup Hill School elementary school, and demolish Ledyard Center School.
Gallup Hill School will absorb additional elementary students in an expansion that will bring the 40,000-square-foot facility to around 86,500 square feet, while Ledyard Middle School will be expanded from 75,000 square feet to around 93,000 square feet to accomodate sixth-grade students.
The two boards will hold a joint meeting Wednesday night to discuss the latest set of construction documents produced by Silver + Petrucelli and Associates. The documents still need to go through the complete local review process, which includes compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act and inspection by the building official, fire marshal and health district.
Building committee members hope to send the project out to bid in January.
During the Monday meeting of the Permanent Municipal Building Committee, senior project managers of the project's construction manager O&G Industries, Dan Hetules and Mike Brennen, presented their final recommendations to the board.
Using numbers from recent bids on a school construction project in Colchester as a guide, Hetules and Brennen said that bids on several parts of the project were lower than expected, leading them to reduce their estimate on parts of Ledyard's project by about 5 percent.
The Permanent Municipal Building Committee has kept a careful eye on costs during the construction planning phase since estimates for Ledyard Middle School trended higher than its budget.
In constructing its budget and bid package, the building committee doubled its contingency funding from 2 percent to 4 percent, rather than cover the total estimated deficit for professional services, which O&G put at $1.3 million. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Food-To-Energy Plant In Southington Expected To Go Online As Soon As Next Spring
Imagine last month's meatloaf powering somebody's television.
That, or something close to it, will begin happening next year when a new $14 million facility opens on DePaolo Drive to turn food waste into gases that will be burned to power machines that create 1.2 megawatts of electricity a year.
Quantum Biopower's high-tech recycling plant will process 40,000 tons of food waste yearly from central Connecticut restaurants, stores, food wholesalers, catering halls and other businesses that discard waste food.
Quantum Vice President Brain Paganini said Tuesday the plant could be producing power in the spring.
The construction is done except for last-minute details," he said during a brief tour of the complex. "Once that's done, we'll start equipment, bring everything up to temperature, and seed the equipment with the bacteria."
The state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection says it's the first such facility in Connecticut. More are expected, a result of a state mandate that 60 percent of all food waste be recycled by 2024 instead of being buried in landfills. A Pennsylvania company, Turning Earth LLC, has proposed a food waste facility on Spring Street. That project has yet to be built. "The Quantum facility is a tremendous asset to the town," Southington's economic development director, Louis A. Perillo III, said Tuesday. "Green technology is a great thing to have. We're pleased Turning Earth wants to come here. It's good for the town."
Quantum Biopower, a subsidiary of Supreme Industries of Harwinton, is finishing the food waste processing plant on Supreme's Forest Products site here.
The system is a complicated network of food-grinding machines, heated water, and pipes to move the food slurry into sealed processing tanks to decompose. Anaerobic bacteria consume the slurry, producing flammable gas that will be burned to power electricity-generating machines. Heat from the bacterial breakdown of food will be used to warm the plant. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Brainard Airport Fights Back As Redevelopment Plan Returns
HARTFORD — The sun is barely above the dike that hides the Connecticut River when the first airplane takes off from Hartford-Brainard Airport, launching another day at the historic airfield.
Lindsey Rutka, head of the partnership that runs Brainard's main operations, arrives and opens the gate along Lindbergh Drive for a business owner who parks his Corvette just a few feet from his twin-engine Cessna Conquest.
It's a scene that has unfolded since 1921, when Brainard Field, named for a former mayor, became the first municipal airport in New England. These days, Rutka is fighting to rebuild Brainard as an economic hub — announcing a new charter service Tuesday with a newly acquired, seven-seat jet and other aircraft.
But at the same time, the airport is threatened by redevelopment in a revival of a long-shelved plan, championed by the latest Hartford mayor, Luke Bronin, and by state Sen. John Fonfara, D-Hartford. On Wednesday, a committee of the General Assembly will receive and consider a report with staff recommendations on how best to use Brainard's 200 acres. There's no specific plan on the table but a July update from the committee included a 2006 proposal calling for nearly 7 million square feet of commercial and manufacturing space, stores, apartments, a marina, a rebuilt trash-to-energy plant and a river park.
The reason for the latest push: Hartford, which is insolvent with no clear path to stability, badly needs new property tax revenues. Brainard kicks in barely more than $400,000 to city coffers, not enough to make a dent in an annual shortfall of about $50 million.
Why so small a figure? Aircraft owners don't pay local property taxes under state law. And the airport is run by the nontaxable Connecticut Airport Authority, which also runs Bradley International Airport and strongly opposes redevelopment at Brainard.
Bronin, Fonfara and other elected officials say the airport represents a rare chance to change the city's dismal financial picture.
"Long term, it's about our ability to grow our way out of this," said Fonfara, co-chairman of the committee studying the issue.
Rutka's local partnership, Hartford Jet Center, landed as the "fixed-base operator" — the master lease-holder for most airport activity — after a less ambitious national company let the action fade over 15 years.
Supporters say the 95-year-old facility brings more to the region's economy than can be measured in tax payments to the city. Rutka makes the argument that many airplane owners control companies that bring business to the city and the state. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Can the U.S. Become an Energy Superpower in 2017?
Refurbished pipelines and terminals will come online next year to help unleash the U.S. shale gas boom into the world. But risks still loom. It remains costly to ship U.S. gas to major consumers in Europe and Asia, and President-elect Donald Trump's trade priorities could make U.S. LNG more expensive than supplies from other producers around the world.
Caught off guard by the shale boom
Just a decade ago, gas supplies from conventional wells were drying up. Major energy companies such as Exxon Mobil Corp., BP Plc and Chevron Corp. were planning to spend billions on gas import terminals to offset the decline. The technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, changed everything for gas drillers, allowing them to pull the fuel out of layers of shale rock and touching off the U.S. shale revolution.
Creating a modern pipeline system
America's frackers are pulling 18 billion cubic feet of gas per day from the Marcellus shale formation in the eastern U.S., more than any other domestic shale deposit. But the U.S. pipeline system was designed only to move gas from the Gulf Coast to cities in the Northeast—not the reverse.
In order to get the gas to the Gulf Coast, where export terminals are being built to send the fuel overseas, pipelines are being re-engineered to flow south. Thousands of miles of bidirectional pipelines are slated to be online in 2017.
Opening the spigot
Among other sources, Cheniere Energy Inc. has contracts with several bidirectional pipelines to receive fracked gas from Marcellus. Cheniere won approval from U.S. regulators to export LNG in 2010, years ahead of competitors. Cheniere's Sabine Pass terminal is currently the only operational export terminal in the lower 48 states. That's about to change, though, as four more terminals are forecast to become operational by 2018 and at least a dozen more have been approved or are pending certification.
Boosting U.S. shale gas exports
About 40 shipments of LNG have been exported from Cheniere's Sabine Pass terminal in Louisiana, which began operations in February. Most of the cargoes have been delivered to South America and Mexico. Once all five terminals are fully operational, U.S. energy producers would have the capacity to export 10 billion cubic feet of LNG daily, up from about 1 billion in 2016.
U.S. exporters have ample supply, customers may be harder to find
It's less clear who will purchase all this U.S. gas. And energy companies are asking for permission to send even more abroad. The Department of Energy is reviewing more than two dozen applications from companies seeking to export up to 36 billion cubic feet a day, or nearly half of U.S. production, to countries that don't have trade agreements with the U.S. While markets in South America are poised to absorb some of this supply, increased competition abroad could make it tough for U.S. gas to compete farther from home. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
New at Nonnewaug
WOODBURY – The Nonnewaug High School Building Committee hopes a new website will keep the public informed on the renovation progress as members navigate the $63 million project that’s three years behind schedule and short $6 million from costs associated with the lawsuit that delayed it.
For months, committee members have been hearing presentations from architects, designers, construction firms and project managers, reviewing blue prints, evaluating cost estimates and contemplating design options. The schematic design phase is complete, and O&G Industries – the project’s construction manager – has started mapping out plans to renovate certain parts of the school while the building is still in use. The project is entering the construction phase where it will begin to come to life, and committee members and project managers hope a website would allow Woodbury and Bethlehem residents to watch along.
Committee members at a meeting Tuesday heard from Consulting Engineering Services about two options for air conditioning: one option with more expensive but more efficient cooling equipment, and another option with less expensive but less efficient coolers.
Committee members discussed pros and cons of each option, but also spoke of their priority to save money however and wherever possible.
Woodbury resident Jim Uberti spoke during the public comment session that the $160,000 in legal fees from the lawsuit compounded by about 4 percent escalation over the years is a roughly $6 million loss.
Building Committee Chairman John Chapman said the project is limited by the three-year delay not only because it’s short by $6 million, but what you can get for the money is less since materials and labor are now more expensive.
“A three-year delay has been a significant hurdle,” Chapman said. “We’re trying to squeeze as much as we possibly can to get the best on this project.”
Some residents during the public speaking portion of the meeting expressed unhappiness with scaled-down alternate plans for the school’s fields and sports facilities like turf, bleachers and field lighting, and questioned whether the committee needed to look into hiring a paid consultant to juggle all the technical and design elements of the project.
Chapman said the committee is working with the best in the state, referring to the expertise of representatives from Colliers, O&G and the project architect SLAM Collaborative. Chapman said between the three, they’ve built tens of millions of dollars worth of schools in the area.
Chapman said alternate athletic field plans are included and whether those or the original plans are viable depends on the budget after the bidding phase. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE