Please join us today for a Transportation Forum with the 2018 Republican Candidates for Governor of Connecticut at the Aqua Turf Club.
This will certainly be your best opportunity to meet and hear from candidates for Governor as they discuss their views on transportation and other related issues.
SAVE THE DATE: We will also be hosting an identical forum with the Democratic Gubernatorial Candidates on January 19, 2018.
To register quickly, send e-mail to John Wilhelm, with a listing of your attendees, at jwilhelm@ctconstruction.org. To register by fax or mail, please see the attached form.
For questions about the program, please contact Don Shubert at dshubert@ctconstruction.org or at 860-529-6855.
Office complex, warehouse approved for Wallingford industrial park
WALLINGFORD — John Orsini recently won town approval to build an 80,000 square foot office and warehouse at #8 Northrop Road Industrial Park West at 1070 North Farms Road.
The application is part of a revised site plan to develop the Industrial Park, which was approved in 2005. Because there were no changes in use or any special conditiions, the plan was approved administratively after review by members of the Planning and Zoning Commission.
“We can review after it’s been submitted,” said commission member Jim Fitzsimmons. “ It speeds up the process.”
Orsini, doing business as 1070 North Farms LLC, could not be reached for comment about the intended use for the parcel and building.
According to plans, 10,000 square feet of the building will be office space and the remainder will be warehouse space. There will also be a 7,800 square foot storage building and parking space for 117 cars.
Northrop Industrial Park is part of an 88-acre parcel that straddles the Meriden/Wallingford line. Orsini received town approval in 2005 to build two structures and two access roads and has since built out the park for various tenants.
Orsini tried unsuccessfully four times to build an auto auction on the land beginning in 1998. Neighbors in the Murdock Avenue, North Farms Road and Northrop Road areas vehemently opposed the plan. Orsini eventually abandoned the auto auction plan and in 2002 won permission to build seven warehouse-style buildings and two access roads on the nine lots.
The current plan calls for developing lot 8 of the western side of the industrial park and lot 6 for drainage improvements. The warehouse will have multiple truck docks and loading doors along the south side. Orsini will also enlarge an existing detention pond to detain water for the industrial park. The project will require 10,000 to 20,000 cubic yards of fill to complete.
CT's preliminary conclusion: Millstone profitable through 2035
State energy officials concluded in a preliminary report released Thursday that the Millstone nuclear power station in Waterford will be profitable through 2035, undercutting its owner's assertion that Connecticut must change how its electricity is sold or face the early retirement of New England's largest source of carbon-free power.
But the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection and the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority conceded in a dense, 32-page assessment of the state's deregulated energy market that the nuclear industry generally is under stress because of its high fixed costs and a market in which prices are set by relatively cheap natural gas.
It made no predictions about the plant's future, other than concluding its owner, Dominion Energy, was unlikely to close it before 2022, the end of its current contractural obligations to produce power. The soonest it could begin the complex retirement process is March 2018, a month after DEEP and PURA are to issue their final report.
Rob Klee, the commissioner of DEEP, said it had reached no conclusion about whether the profitability meets Dominion's requirements for a sufficient return on investment. As an unregulated "merchant plant," Millstone faces more risk and volatility than generation plants owned by regulated utilities, which get a predictable return based on cost of service.
"Owners of merchant generation bear all of the risks and rewards of operating in a competitive market, and they and their shareholders — not state regulators — make the determination of what is a sufficient return on their capital investment," the agencies said in the report. "Merchant generators' financial goals may exceed the regulated rate of return earned by cost-of-service generators, given merchant generators' exposure to the risks of low energy prices, unplanned outages, and other costs that a regulated generator can recover from electric ratepayers. Ultimately, these financial goals are unknown to state regulators in a deregulated market."
Katie Dykes, the chair of PURA, said the two agencies have reached no conclusions about Millstone's economic viability.
"This report is laying out the dots," she said. "It's not necesarily connecting the dots."
Kevin Hennessy, who oversees governmental affairs for Dominion in the region, said the company probably would have no detailed response until Friday to the report and other material released Thursday. But he disputed the conclusion Millstone was assured of long-term profitability.
"We are profitable now. It's at a margin that is very low compared to what people think and what assumptions are out there," Hennessy said.
The agencies will make no recommendation on whether DEEP and PURA should open a new competitive solicitation process that would benefit Millstone by allowing it to compete with more expensive sources of clean energy until the conclusion of a public-comment period Jan. 8.
Under a law passed earlier this year, DEEP and PURA could allow Millstone to sell up to three-quarters of its output in competition with other zero-carbon sources of electricity, a more favorable market because solar, wind and hydro power generally command higher prices.
The assessment was hampered by Dominion's refusal to share detailed financials, the agencies said.
"Despite DEEP and PURA's specific data requests, Dominion only very recently provided a limited, two-page, high-level document with forward-looking financial projections," they said. "The document lacked the standard documentation supporting the projections concerning its actual financial condition."
They also offered a caution: "As with any assessment based on market projections, determining viability cannot be conclusively determined. Even the most careful analysis is fraught with uncertainty, since revenues and/or costs in the future will not precisely follow modeled projections."
The report is a primer on the nature of Connecticut's bifurcated electric system.
The state's two major utilities, Eversource and United Illuminating, no longer generate power; they buy electricity in a fast-changing commodity market and then deliver it over a transmission system that is still regulated, its rates set based on PURA's finding of what the cost of service and reasonable rate of return are.
Electricity is bought and sold in three markets that offer a mix of short- and long-term prices: a "Day-Ahead Energy Market," a so-called balancing market in which prices can change in minutes, and longer-term transactions between buyers and sellers. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Hartford Travel Center set for spring debut
Construction continues on a refueling-rest stop along I-91 in Hartford's North Meadows, with opening now set for next spring, the owner says.
Robert "Bob" Bolduc, owner of Pride Convenience Inc., said Wednesday that the facility's size, amenities and staffing are unchanged for his Hartford Travel Center, located on 6 ½ acres at the northeast corner of Jennings Road, on the northbound side of I-91.
"It's a big job,'' Bolduc said of the travel-center's development.
Originally, it was set to open July 4, 2016, later pushed back to late 2016.
Bolduc previously said it will house 16 fuel pumps; a travel-center building equipped with showers and lockers for motorists; and a food court featuring Subway, a café-bakery and the "91 Grill,'' offering burgers and fries.
French industrial-gas supplier Air Liquide will erect and operate the hydrogen depot on the travel center's premises.
Firms Signal Interest In Hartford's Downtown North Project
The deadline to submit bids for the development of properties around Dunkin’ Donuts Park is still months away, but several companies signaled interest in the project Thursday, turning up in Hartford to ask questions and see the parcels up close.
City leaders issued a call last month for firms to build on 32 properties across four pieces of land near the newly opened minor league ballpark, an effort meant to link Hartford’s bustling downtown to its North End.
Representatives from more than a dozen organizations came to the baseball stadium Thursday, when city officials gave an overview of the project and fielded questions.
Development Director Sean Fitzpatrick has said Hartford is hoping for a blend of retail and housing in the area. Multiple developers could be chosen.
“There have been many starts and stops, and I think this time they’re getting it right,” Patrick Hulton, director of corporate and legal affairs for The Associated Construction Company, said at Thursday’s meeting.
Hulton, a Hartford resident who worked on the recently completed Delamar Hotel in West Hartford, said he’s aiming to put a team together and bid on some of the properties.
“We’d love to do this,” he said. “We like the mixed-use residential and retail. Hospitality wasn’t mentioned, but we’re talking with a couple of hotel developers. We’d love to see them go with a Hartford team.”
The parcels, labeled A, B, C and D, cover 16 acres and surround Dunkin’ Donuts Park. The area is now a sea of parking lots. One property includes a bunker-like former data-processing center.
Parcels B, C and D, along Main and Trumbull streets, overlook the ballpark. Parcel A sits between Main and High streets across from Hartford’s public safety complex.
Thursday’s gathering drew a mix of big-name companies and smaller firms. Officials from Whiting-Turner, which completed the ballpark after the original developers were fired, attended, along with representatives from Shelbourne Global Solutions, O’Connell Development Group, Freeman Cos., JCJ Architecture, Fuss & O’Neill Civil and Environmental Engineering, Crosskey Architects, BETA Group, Langan Engineering, Richter & Cegan, Red Technologies, GEI Consultants, AKF Group, Aegis Energy Services and HB Nitkin, the developer for Hartford’s Front Street district. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUEThomaston residents get a look at final plans for road reconstruction
THOMASTON – Residents who live on Hickory Hill Road were presented with the final road reconstruction plans during the last informational meeting for the project.
First Selectman Edmond V. Mone said Tuesday about 30 to 40 residents who live in the area attended the meeting on Nov. 30 in the Thomaston Center School auditorium, where representatives from Tighe & Bond – contractor of the project – presented their final plans and answered questions regarding how properties may be impacted.
The project, funded entirely with a $5.7 million Local Transportation Capital Improvements Projects state grant, will bring the roadway up to state Department of Transportation standards.
Mone said the estimated completion date for the project is the fall of 2019. It will go out to bid in February 2018, and construction will take place during the spring and summer seasons of 2018 and 2019.
During the first information meeting on Sept. 11, residents expressed a number of concerns to Tighe & Bond.
Mone said the biggest change made was the reconfiguration design for the intersection of Hickory Hill and Walnut roads. Instead of the current Y-shaped intersection with two stop signs, Hickory Hill will be reconfigured to curve into a T-shaped intersection with Walnut Road and only one stop sign.
Mone said the contractor also had been planning to narrow a section of Hickory Hill Road near Old Morris Road, but it scrapped that plan after residents said they’d prefer to have the extra space in the road during snowstorms.
The first selectman said most of the impact to property owners will be within the town’s right of way, which is within 25 feet from the center line in both directions.
“We will work with the property owners and are open to opinions on how we can satisfy residents in these situations as best as possible within reason,” Mone said. “This isn’t just simply repaving the roads. It’s rebuilding the roads.”