BRISTOL — If everything goes according to plan, the developer will break ground on the new medical facility planned for Centre Square by the end of 2017, and be finished a year later.
The City Council this week unanimously approved a plan by Bristol Hospital to buy a portion of Centre Square to develop into physicians’ offices and an ambulatory care center. The hospital will pay $186,000 for 3.72 acres at Main Street and Riverside Avenue, part of the 15-acre former mall site downtown.
The hospital is working on a development agreement with Rendina Healthcare Real Estate to build the three-story, 55,000 to 60,000 square foot facility.
Brian Cich, Rendina COO, said the rough timeline now is to have a design finished and submitted for the city’s approval by the beginning of June.
“We’re hoping to be in construction by the fourth quarter of this year,” he said. “Construction of this facility should take 12 months, give or take, depending on how the weather treats us.”
Cich explained that the family-owned company based in Jupiter, Fla., has been in the business of developing medical real estate nationwide for almost 30 years, specializing in ambulatory care facilities.
Rendina has completed more than 110 projects, totaling over 7 million square feet, in 17 states, he said. One current project he said is an 80,000-square-foot facility in Bayonne, N.J., being built for RWJBarnabas Health, the largest health system in New Jersey.
Cich said it’s “very similar to what we’re looking to do here in Bristol,” in a downtown setting with retail frontage along the street, using the same health care architecture firm Rendina plans to use for the Bristol Project, Davis Stokes Collaborative, based in Brentwood, Tenn.
The design for Bristol will be based on the research the city has already done on what people want to see downtown, he said. “We did some research. We saw the polls that were taken, people voted on designs for buildings for the downtown redevelopment, we took that all into consideration.”
“This has to bring some blend of state-of-the-art medical facility with traditional downtown urban design that’s in keeping with downtown of Bristol,” he continued. “We’re planning to use traditional materials — brick, glass, plaster, stone — in the exterior elevations. We’ll probably use awnings or columns to articulate the first floor and try to keep some retail feel along Riverside and Main.” CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Train stations in Meriden, Wallingford expected to be complete by July
New train stations in Meriden, Wallingford and Berlin are nearing completion after about two years of construction.
State Department of Transportation officials say the Meriden and Wallingford stations will likely be used for Amtrak service when completed and eventually for commuter rail service between New Haven and Springfield, which is scheduled to begin in January 2018.
The Meriden station is 70 percent complete, while the Wallingford station is 75 percent finished, according to John Bernick, assistant rail administrator for the state Department of Transportation. Both are expected to be finished in July, he said. The Berlin station is about 80 percent finished, though its completion has been delayed by a December fire that destroyed the former train station building next door.
Remaining work to be completed at all stations includes sign installation and communications systems, as well as parking lot All three stations will feature high-level platforms, pedestrian overpasses and other amenities, though bathrooms aren’t included.
Construction on the stations began in early 2015. In addition to new stations and double tracking, improvements have also been made at grade crossings.
Brooks Street in Meriden closed permanently last March due to construction of the train station, and will be the site of the station’s future parking lot, according to Public Works Director Bob Bass. The former Meriden train station also closed last spring, though it is not clear when the building will be demolished.
Wallingford Mayor William W. Dickinson Jr. previously told the Record-Journal the town owns the former train station, at 37 Hall Ave., and the adult education program will remain in the building for the foreseeable future.
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Groton considers tax agreement to support upgrade of low-income housing complex
Groton — Town and city leaders are considering a tax stabilization agreement with an affordable-housing developer that wants to buy and upgrade Branford Manor, a 442-unit, federally subsidized housing development in Groton City.
Related Affordable, a subsidiary of Related Companies in New York City, is under contract to buy the development from Branford Manor Associates, its current owner. The new company plans to invest $18.5 million to improve the housing complex, but can't close on the sale until it first has the tax agreement.
The agreement would set the town tax rate for the property at 22.36 mills, an average of the last several years, then increase the total amount of taxes owed each year by 3 percent annually for 20 years.
“It is not a tax break,” Groton Tax Assessor Mary Gardner said. “They needed to go to their investors and the folks that (are) financing their project, which is Connecticut Housing Finance Authority, and say we have this tax stabilization agreement in the works.”
A public hearing on the agreement will be held jointly before the Groton City Council and Groton Town Council at 7:30 p.m. on March 21 in the Town Hall Annex. Votes on the agreement would be scheduled later.
The development company needs financial certainty to know what it can invest in upgrades, said Jonathan Reiner, Groton's director of planning and development services.
Branford Manor on Shennecossett Road was built in the early 1970s. It includes 47 townhouse buildings spread over 37 acres, which have had only minor repairs during that time. The property's Section 8 status expires at the end of this year, so Related Affordable is applying to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to renew that status for the next 20 years.
Committee approves, yet doesn’t endorse, casino expansion bills
Proposals to expand casino gambling in Connecticut cleared the Public Safety and Security Committee on Wednesday in votes signifying a consensus that the bills were too big to die in committee, not a measure of the support for opening the state to commercial casinos off tribal tribal lands.
"It signifies how important this issue is, but it also highlights how divided the legislators are on this very important issue," said Rep. Joseph Verrengia, D-West Hartford, co-chair of the committee. "That's why the conversation needs to continue."
Verrengia said he saw no consensus for competing Senate and House bills or the third option of doing nothing. The Senate bill would grant exclusive expansion rights to the state's two federally recognized tribes, the Mashantucket Pequots and Mohegan tribal nations. The House bill would create a competition in 2018.
The tribes, the owners Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun, two of the world's largest gambling resorts, want authorization to jointly develop a satellite casino in East Windsor to compete with the MGM Resorts International casino scheduled to open in Springfield in 2018.
A House bill favored by Verrengia would create an open competitive process to seek requests for proposals to open casinos elsewhere in the state, a measure widely interpreted as testing the interest in establishing a major gambling resort in lower Fairfield County to tap into the New York City market.
MGM has fought the East Windsor bill, saying a no-bid process was illegal and left the state unable to strike the best deal for revenue sharing.
The tribes currently have an exclusivity deal in which they pay 25 percent of gross slots revenue so long as the state is not opened to slots or table games off their tribal lands.
An open questionWednesday was where would the conversation about expanding casino gambling continue in the General Assembly?Verrengia and Sen. Tim Larson, D-East Hartford, a co-chair, said Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and the legislative leadership now must decide if they want to tackle the issue, or let one or both bills die from inaction. Larson said they need to "figure out, for lack of a better word, what their appetite is and which direction they should be going in."
The tribes' revenue sharing with the state reached a high of $430 million in 2007, the year before the great recession, fell to $262 million last year and is projected to shrink further in the face of growing competition in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New York.
They say their proposal to jointly develop a casino at the site of a vacant Showcase Cinema off I-91 in East Windsor, not far from the state line and Springfield, is intended blunt the loss of market share.CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE