NEW HAVEN — By 2023, the city hopes to have two more phases of the Dowtown Crossing complete with Orange Street extended over Route 34 and Temple Street meeting up with Congress Avenue, creating more traditional urban intersections and adding development space.
Deputy Economic Development Administrator Michael Piscitelli, who also is interim city planner, and Ronan Shortt of the engineering firm WSP explained the complicated $85 million engineering feat for all three phases to interested residents Thursday.
Phase one saw the College Street bridge installed and the Alexion headquarters placed on the reclaimed Route 34 expressway. Several exits were closed to traffic coming off Interstates 91 and 95 and the expressway was converted to two urban boulevards.
Construction of Phase 2, with design 90 percent finished, will start next year with a 2020 completion date. At the same time, the design work for Phase 3 will continue with a finish timeframe of 2023 as the city simultaneously looks for development partners.
“A key aspect of this is creating jobs, connecting the neighborhoods and doing it responsibly,” Piscitelli said.City Engineer Giovanni Zinn said completing the visionary Downtown Crossing “is a great project for the future of the city.”
Zinn said one of the things the city and WSP are most proud of is the creation in Phase 2 of an infrastructure that serves all users — drivers, pedestrians and cyclists.
He said safe passage of pedestrians and bikers is as important for drivers “as it creates predictable paths. The better and more predictable those movements are at the new intersections, the better it is for everyone.”
Piscitelli, project manager of Downtown Crossing for the city, said the state’s two U.S. senators, Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, and U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro did the heavy lifting to get the federal Tiger 2 and Tiger 8 grants that laid the foundation for the state to also make a contribution.
Piscitelli was among a group of city planners, engineers and residents who took part in the 200 meetings held to get to this point.The goal continues to be maintaining “regional mobility” as the city neighborhoods are stitched back together for the residents who live there.
Phase 2 will feature the next major intersections of the project, which will be at Orange Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Orange Street at South Frontage Road, which would allow for better mobility, particularly north and south between downtown and the Hill. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Class action lawsuit filed against Connecticut-based electric utilities
A class action in lawsuit has been filed in U.S. District Court in Boston claiming Eversource Energy and Avangrid manipulated capacity in New England’s natural gas transmission network and cost 7.1 million electric customers across New England $3.6 billion in overcharges between 2013 and 2016.
The law firm Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro filed the class action case Tuesday and announced it Thursday evening. Eversource Energy has headquarters locations in Hartford and Boston while Avangrid is based in Orange.
Avangrid oversees the United States companies owned by Spanish Energy giant Iberdrola, including The United Illuminating Co. in Connecticut and Central Maine Power Co. Eversource serves electric customers in western Massachusetts, a large part of the Boston area and is the predominant provider of electricity in New Hampshire.
Officials with the law firm weren’t immediately available for comment on the case, which appears to be based on a report released last month by the New York City-based Environmental Defense Fund. The report claimed the two companies’ natural gas subsidiaries manipulated capacity by scheduling more deliveries of the fuel than they actually needed on any given day. The report’s authors allege that the natural gas utilities would then cancel some of the capacity requests later in the same day so that the space could no longer be resold.
More than half of the electricity produced on any given day usually comes from power plants that run on natural gas. Because of the way power plant operators buy the natural gas they need, a shortage of capacity drives up electric costs.
The complaint alleges the scheme violates multiple federal and state competition laws and state consumer protection statutes.
Both companies have repeatedly denied any wrongdoing in the matter and have claimed the report is misleading.Caroline Pretyman, a Boston-based Eversource spokeswoman, said company officials are aware of the lawsuit and are reviewing it.
“The allegations underlying this lawsuit are untrue and baseless,” Pretyman said. “The expenditure of resources to further these false claims is regrettable for all parties involved.”
Avangrid officials did not respond to requests seeking comment regarding the litigation.
Rocky Hill School Inches Towards Reality
Rocky Hill’s new intermediate school cleared another hurdle Wednesday night when the planning and zoning commission unanimously approved a site plan for the 79,150-square-foot school, whose construction was necessitated by overcrowding at elementary schools.
A presentation by the architecture firm Kaestle Boos ranged from details as minute as fencing material — vinyl — to a grand vision for the school: a “village concept,” said Luke McCoy, landscape architect for Kaestle Boos.
“The big concept, the big idea, is a village concept,” McCoy told the commission Wednesday night. “It’s a big building, but we want to break it into smaller-scale pieces.”
Rocky Hill was prompted to build a new school by an enrollment surge that crested in 2016, when West Hill Elementary’s population increased to 731 from 609 in two years. That year, a commission appointed by the town council reported that “overcrowding will continue to remain a significant problem in the foreseeable future” for the district, because the vast majority of the 187-student increase in overall enrollment from 2014 to 2016 came from pre-kindergarten through fifth grade. Enrollment for that span alone was expected to grow by 253 students through 2019, the commission said.Last November, voters approved a $48 million project to build an intermediate school for fourth- and fifth-graders on the site of the former Moser Elementary School, which was closed in 2011. The town’s two elementary schools — West Hill and Stevens — would be converted to K-3 schools when the intermediate school opens in the fall of 2019, according to the building commission’s estimates.
The school will have space for 582 students, according to preliminary designs, and include laboratory science classrooms, a gymnasium, cafeteria and baseball and soccer fields.
The commission hopes to break ground on the project in March; on Wednesday, architects told planning and zoning officials that the demolition of the old Moser school had started that morning.
Kaestle Boos’ presentation Wednesday night delved into the nuts and bolts of the school’s anatomy: drainage systems, backup generators, building materials. Project manager Enrico Chiarillo Jr. passed around hunks of brick and cast stone for commissioners to heft.
“We’re getting close. That’s why we’re here,” McCoy, the architect, said. “We’re just about done, and now it’s about the final details.”
Though the commission looked favorably on the firm’s plans, they raised questions: What sort of noise pollution would be caused by the backup generator? Not much, McCoy said, and only during weather conditions severe enough to disable power. What effect would the school have on traffic? Minimal. Drainage? A galley system, McCoy explained, that would trap water in an underground tank and slowly discharge it into the groundwater.
“Basically, I like it,” commission member Alan Mordhorst said. “I think it’s going to be a nice school.”
The commission approved the site plan unanimously, with provisions that the architects discuss with town staff an easement issue with Eversource, submit a traffic study for review and talk over the generator noise. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE