Local
478 supports Infrastructure Week 2017 and why it is #TimeToBuild better
infrastructure for Connecticut and our country
HAMDEN,
CT – Today, the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 478 announced
its participation in National Infrastructure Week 2017, which will
take place from May 15-19, 2017. Across the country, businesses,
labor organizations, elected officials and more will come together to spread
the message about why it is #TimeToBuild
and invest in our nation’s critical infrastructure assets. “From natural gas supply and distribution pipelines, to new gas fired power plants, Local 478 and its members are proud to be at the forefront of building Connecticut’s critical energy infrastructure,” said Nate Brown, Business Representative and Political Director of Local 478. “Local 478 strongly supports Infrastructure Week 2017 as an important reminder about the need to invest in our state and nation’s infrastructure, which creates good jobs and keeps America competitive, prosperous, and safe.”
“To keep Connecticut competitive we must continue to invest in maintaining and expanding our state’s transportation and energy infrastructure,” said Local 478 Business Manager Craig Metz. “Not only do these projects mean safer roads and more reliable energy for Connecticut home owners and businesses, they also mean creating solid middle-class jobs for our building trades. This is a win-win, and during Infrastructure Week we call on our state and federal officials to prioritize much needed funding to address our nation’s aging infrastructure system.”
Local 478 of the International Union of Operating Engineers is the premier supplier of heavy equipment operators, mechanics and support personnel in the State of Connecticut. Local 478 members are currently working on the Algonquin Incremental Market Project pipeline expansion in Danbury, the Oxford Powerhouse’s natural gas turbine in Oxford, the natural gas energy PSEG Powerhouse at Harbor Station in Bridgeport, as well as several road and bridge projects across Connecticut including the rebuilding and widening of I84 in Waterbury.
Farmers, factory workers, commuters, school-children – all Americans – need efficient, affordable, and reliable infrastructure. Roads, bridges, rails, ports, airports, water and sewer pipes, the energy grid, broadband… infrastructure is vital. It is the foundation of our jobs, quality of life, economic competitiveness, and even national security and public safety. Yet the nation’s transportation, water, energy, and communications infrastructure is under-funded, poorly maintained, and inadequately designed to meet 21st century needs. Freight and passenger networks are congested, water systems and energy grids were designed generations ago, and roads and bridges are falling apart. There is a massive gap between the need to invest in our infrastructure and current funding. Now is the time to build something better.
“We are thrilled that the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 478 is joining Infrastructure Week. The dire state of America’s infrastructure is one of the most pressing issues facing us as a nation, and the benefits of a stronger, better infrastructure system will be far-reaching and long-lasting,” said Zach Schafer, director of Infrastructure Week. “During Infrastructure Week, we bring together the public and private sector to encourage lawmakers to think long-term and invest in infrastructure at the federal, state and local level.”
More information about the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 478 can be found here: https://local478.org/
http://ctconstructiondigest.blogspot.com/
More information about Infrastructure Week can be found here: http://infrastructureweek.org/
One Week. One call to action. Many voices, united.
It’s #TimeToBuild
Infrastructure Week is a national week of education and advocacy that brings together American businesses, workers, elected leaders, and everyday citizens around one message: It’s #TimeToBuild. From May 15-19, leaders and citizens around America will highlight state of our nation’s infrastructure – roads, bridges, rail, ports, airports, water and sewer systems, the energy grid, and more – and encourage policymakers to invest in the projects, technologies, and policies necessary to make America competitive, prosperous, and safe.
Our bipartisan Steering Committee and over 150 affiliates host events, drive media attention, and educate stakeholders and policymakers on the critical importance of infrastructure to America’s economic competitiveness, security, job creation, and in the daily lives of every American. As a business, union, non-profit, government, or an individual who depends on infrastructure, you have an important story to tell. Find a way to participate and tell America that it is Time to Build.
Why Join Us?
America’s infrastructure is crumbling, inefficient, and inadequately designed to meet 21st century needs. Yet it is also one of the rare issues on which both political parties, the business and labor communities, and leaders from the White House to State Houses to City Halls, find common ground. In the private sector, and at the state and local levels, innovators from the public and private sectors are investing in new projects, policies, and technologies to put America back in the fast lane.
Norwich planning officials view Mohegans’ plans for hospital property
Norwich — The plans to develop a major sports, entertainment, retail and housing resort at the former Norwich Hospital property in Preston will serve as a catalyst to create a vision for the “Thames River Valley” region from New London to Norwich, Preston officials told Norwich planners Tuesday.
The Norwich Commission on the City Plan invited Preston town officials to discuss the overall plan and potential timing of the proposed $200 million to $600 million development at the 388-acre former Norwich Hospital property in Preston.
Preston Redevelopment Agency Chairman Sean Nugent and Mohegan Tribal Gaming Authority Project Manager Curtis Strom told the Norwich agency and about 15 others in attendance, including several city officials and representatives from city agencies, that development is expected to get underway by 2019, following about a year of final environmental cleanup.
Strom said he couldn't make any specific development announcements Tuesday, but tribal officials have met with many potential developers in what he described as “very successful conversations.” Tribal officials are in discussions with one major “pink elephant” that tribal officials hope to land first so that other development can fill in the gaps on the property.
Announcements on specific developments could be made within a year to 18 months, Strom said.
The conceptual master plans shows a large theme park, indoor water park, a large sports complex, three hotels, a senior living center, marina at the river, areas for large and small retail stores, RV camping and synthetic downhill skiing — “it won't be real snow,” Strom said.
In describing the sports complex, Strom said it could host baseball and/or soccer tournaments that would attract families to weekend tournaments, staying at hotels in the region and visiting other attractions. Strom said the Mohegans' goal is to entice them to stay for a week or longer for a full vacation.
Both Strom and Nugent said they fully expect the project to anchor the entire region's stronghold as a destination resort area, attracting vacationers and families to explore attractions up and down the Thames River.
Nugent said a team of national real estate experts from the Counselors of Real Estate, who studied the Norwich Hospital property potential, recommended taking advantage of the Thames River Valley theme in promoting the property in connection with the entire region.
Strom said Mohegan Tribal Chairman Kevin Brown and his predecessor and brother Mark Brown are committed to ensuring the Norwich Hospital development complements not only the tribe's Mohegan Sun Casino directly across the river, but surrounding towns, as well. Strom said Kevin Brown has made it clear to his planning staff that he looks at the property every day as he drives to his office on the Montville side.
“He says to us: 'Don't screw it up,'” Strom said. “Chairman Brown is very interested in this working for the region, not just for Preston and the Mohegan tribe.”
Strom said once the Preston development gets under way, the nearly 50 acres of former Norwich Hospital property in Norwich will become more attractive to developers. That property, owned by Colchester developer Mark Fields under the name Thames River Landing LLC, has yet to undergo environmental cleanup and still is dominated by decaying institutional buildings and long-abandoned former staff housing.
Norwich planning commission members and others asked several questions following the presentation on the timing of development, traffic expectations and whether the project would have housing to accommodate some of the workers. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
UConn solicits pitches for new hotel in Mansfield
UConn is seeking proposals from private developers to build a new hotel on university-owned property near the Storrs Center development in Mansfield.
UConn is asking for developers to pitch plans for a new hotel with about 100 rooms on the UConn-owned parcel at the corner of Route 195 and South Eagleville Road. The selected developer would own and operate the private hotel, UConn said.
Scott Jordan, UConn's executive vice president for administration and chief financial officer, said the university and its downtown are lacking a hotel that could efficiently serve the university and surrounding community. The Nathan Hale Inn, a struggling hotel on the Storrs campus since 2001, would eventually be converted to student housing, he said.
The prospective hotel site is currently occupied by the Mansfield Apartments, UConn student housing built in the 1950s. While the UConn Master Plan envisions demolishing the apartments, students will not be displaced and can live there through the spring of 2018. By fall of 2018, the apartments would no longer be offered for student housing.
UConn is seeking a hotel that would fit in well with the community and be environmentally friendly, Jordan said.
"We are committed to ensuring that this project will not result in the permanent loss of any existing student beds," added Michael Gilbert, UConn's vice president for student affairs.
Jordan noted that many of the challenges faced by the Nathan Hale Inn were specific to that hotel, and were not the result of larger market forces or a lack of demand.
CT’s delayed energy plan could mean trouble for Millstone bill
Connecticut’s master plan for energy use and policy is months behind its three-year update, and now the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection says it will not be ready in time for legislators to consider this session.
The lack a Comprehensive Energy Strategy (CES) leaves lawmakers, in their final few weeks of the legislative session, without policy guidance on a number of energy issues — most critically and controversially, whether to give competitive help to the Millstone Nuclear Power Station.
With TV ads and ferocious lobbying on both sides of the issue after tight committee votes — especially in the Appropriations Committee, where a plan to help Millstone barely survived 23-21 — it’s unclear whether any Millstone legislation will survive; and, if it does, whether it will do more than authorize a study. Lack of an energy strategy putting Millstone in the context of broader long-term energy policies isn’t helping matters.
“We are at a tipping point, and Millstone is the least important part of this story,” said Rep. Lonnie Reed, D-Branford, co-chair of the Energy and Technology Committee. “The most important part is that we are in the throes of adopting energy policies that will direct and control our next 30 years of energy investments.”
Reed, along with DEEP Commissioner Rob Klee, confirmed that there are active negotiations involving DEEP, Energy Committee principals, environmental advocates and others on the Millstone legislation and on a bill that scoops up pieces of other energy bills. It has the goal of keeping some existing energy programs running and getting some broader policies in place even without a CES in place.
Klee said DEEP has been struggling with how to accommodate Millstone in the CES. “We’re learning a lot about the complexity of the issue,” he said. “There’s the recognition that it is a large carbon-free resource, a large employer — all of those factors are things we’re trying to wrap our head around … if we choose to do a bill.”
“We probably would welcome time to be deliberate and thoughtful,” he said.
Second time around
The Millstone issue first came up at the end of the 2016 legislative session when Millstone’s owner, Dominion Energy, like other nuclear plant owners around the country, told lawmakers that cheap natural gas power had made it hard to compete financially under its current structure of selling long-term contracts to middleman buyers such as hedge funds. Dominion argues that it would be cheaper for consumers if it could sell directly to utilities or have some other way to guarantee a market for its power, and that it should be able to compete with other carbon-free sources of power. Otherwise, Dominion says, it could be forced to shut down the Millstone station’s two units. Together they are the largest power plant in New England — 2,100 megawatts – and also account for half of Connecticut’s electricity. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Scott Jordan, UConn's executive vice president for administration and chief financial officer, said the university and its downtown are lacking a hotel that could efficiently serve the university and surrounding community. The Nathan Hale Inn, a struggling hotel on the Storrs campus since 2001, would eventually be converted to student housing, he said.
The prospective hotel site is currently occupied by the Mansfield Apartments, UConn student housing built in the 1950s. While the UConn Master Plan envisions demolishing the apartments, students will not be displaced and can live there through the spring of 2018. By fall of 2018, the apartments would no longer be offered for student housing.
UConn is seeking a hotel that would fit in well with the community and be environmentally friendly, Jordan said.
"We are committed to ensuring that this project will not result in the permanent loss of any existing student beds," added Michael Gilbert, UConn's vice president for student affairs.
Jordan noted that many of the challenges faced by the Nathan Hale Inn were specific to that hotel, and were not the result of larger market forces or a lack of demand.
CT’s delayed energy plan could mean trouble for Millstone bill
Connecticut’s master plan for energy use and policy is months behind its three-year update, and now the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection says it will not be ready in time for legislators to consider this session.
The lack a Comprehensive Energy Strategy (CES) leaves lawmakers, in their final few weeks of the legislative session, without policy guidance on a number of energy issues — most critically and controversially, whether to give competitive help to the Millstone Nuclear Power Station.
With TV ads and ferocious lobbying on both sides of the issue after tight committee votes — especially in the Appropriations Committee, where a plan to help Millstone barely survived 23-21 — it’s unclear whether any Millstone legislation will survive; and, if it does, whether it will do more than authorize a study. Lack of an energy strategy putting Millstone in the context of broader long-term energy policies isn’t helping matters.
“We are at a tipping point, and Millstone is the least important part of this story,” said Rep. Lonnie Reed, D-Branford, co-chair of the Energy and Technology Committee. “The most important part is that we are in the throes of adopting energy policies that will direct and control our next 30 years of energy investments.”
Reed, along with DEEP Commissioner Rob Klee, confirmed that there are active negotiations involving DEEP, Energy Committee principals, environmental advocates and others on the Millstone legislation and on a bill that scoops up pieces of other energy bills. It has the goal of keeping some existing energy programs running and getting some broader policies in place even without a CES in place.
Klee said DEEP has been struggling with how to accommodate Millstone in the CES. “We’re learning a lot about the complexity of the issue,” he said. “There’s the recognition that it is a large carbon-free resource, a large employer — all of those factors are things we’re trying to wrap our head around … if we choose to do a bill.”
“We probably would welcome time to be deliberate and thoughtful,” he said.
Second time around
The Millstone issue first came up at the end of the 2016 legislative session when Millstone’s owner, Dominion Energy, like other nuclear plant owners around the country, told lawmakers that cheap natural gas power had made it hard to compete financially under its current structure of selling long-term contracts to middleman buyers such as hedge funds. Dominion argues that it would be cheaper for consumers if it could sell directly to utilities or have some other way to guarantee a market for its power, and that it should be able to compete with other carbon-free sources of power. Otherwise, Dominion says, it could be forced to shut down the Millstone station’s two units. Together they are the largest power plant in New England — 2,100 megawatts – and also account for half of Connecticut’s electricity. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE