By Barry Lytton
STAMFORD — The newest Building and Land Technology development is a departure for the company reshaping the South End.
It is the company’s first across the West Branch of Stamford Harbor, putting BLT in direct competition with other large-scale complexes after dotting the South End with new luxury apartments over the last decade.
Harbor Landing, a waterside apartment complex overlooking the new Hinckley boatyard and all of the South End, is nearing completion with residents moving into one of the 100-unit buildings this week.
Although it is not physically part of the grand-scale redevelopment of the South End called Harbor Point, it’s meant to accent the new high rises by connecting the waterside across the harbor with a boardwalk. The new 218-apartment rental complex is also similar in that it replaces what was an industrial site, this time a fuel depot. Harbor Point was built on vacant land that once housed manufacturing giants Pitney Bowes and Yale Lock.
“The idea is to create this thing to make it all interconnected,” said Ted Ferrarone, BLT’s chief operating officer. “The fuel depot was not a great neighborhood use.”
The connection is not merely symbolic. A free water taxi connects the two neighborhoods, which are separated by 400 feet of water. The complex, with a pool, is less than a football field away from the harbor “It’s casual coastal luxury,” said Ferrarone, adding that residents can also rent a boat slip at the nearby marina from the company. The development also links other boardwalks, creating an unobstructed waterfront path from Hinckley to Boccuzzi Park.
Rents, comparable to Harbor Point, range from $1,900 for a small studio to roughly $4,600 for a top-floor two-bedroom. But the prices, which include parking and access to gym facilities, aren’t keeping prospective tenants away, Ferrarone said.
“We’re getting a lot of traffic,” he said.
Sandwiched between a remaining industrial site, an asphalt plant, and the seafood favorite Crab Shell restaurant, the luxe units are hardwood floored with water-views in higher stories.
Each building is five stories tall, competing with other Waterside complexes, including the sprawling 15-acre TGM Anchor Point, with more than 320 units.
Developers break ground on West End charter school in Bridgeport
By Jordan Grice
In one year’s time, students and faculty of Great Oaks Charter School of Bridgeport will have a new home on the west end.
School officials and developers broke ground on the 70,000-square-foot building at 375 Howard Avenue that will house the new middle and high school that is slated to be completed and open for the fall 2019 semester. “It’s overwhelming,” said Michael Duffy, President of the Great Oaks Foundation. “For so long it was a dream, and there were many times when it seemed like it would never happen.”
It’s been four years since the charter school set up at 510 Barnum Avenue in the former Singer Sewing Machine Factory, which Duffy said was always meant to be a temporary space for the school. With its history of housing the original Housatonic Community College and eventually Park City Prep Charter School, the east side facility served as a prime incubator for the charter school.
Great Oaks teaches grades six through nine, providing two hours of daily tutoring in math and English Language Arts to every student with the help of a 60-member, AmeriCorps-funded Tutor Corps.
The school plans to add 10th grade next fall prior to transitioning to the new Howard Avenue address where they plan to expand, yet again to teach sixth through 12th grade. The middle school will be on the south side of the property, while the high school will be on the east side.
The new three-story building will house classroom space and a common cafeteria for 725 students along with other amenities. There will also be another 23,000 square feet of residential space that will accommodate 17 apartments for tutors.
Development of the charter school has had setbacks in recent years due to issues with the state budget, said Gary Flocco, managing partner of Corvus Capital, which oversees construction the new facility.
The New York developer has been working to transform a batch of decrepit factory buildings on the west end bordering Cherry Street and Howard Avenue into hundreds of loft apartments along with the new Great Oaks building.
“We expect smooth sailing now for the school. All the headaches have been dealt with and most of that were things that we found on the site from 50 years ago,” he said.
Issues with the state budget created hurdles to gaining the financing needed to bring the new school to fruition. As a result, the development was pushed back roughly a year, Flocco said.
Boston community loan fund was the primary investor for the school, along with organizations such as Capital for Change investing for construction of the tutor house. The school was $17 million and the tutor housing $8 million.
Development of the school is expected to happen simultaneously while Corvus Capital begins construction of its next batch 159 apartments adjacent to the school. Flocco said in earlier interviews with Hearst Connecticut Media that there will be no cause for concern to incoming residents and students with future construction.
Downtown Danbury to get facelift
By Zach Murdock
DANBURY — A plan to rebuild downtown Danbury’s aging sidewalks will start this year with a $2 million boost from the state.
The project will include new crosswalks, street lamps, murals, trees and reconstructed sidewalks throughout the downtown core from the HARTransit transfer hub to the Metro-North train station and down Main Street.
It is the first phase of the large-scale makeover outlined in the city’s new transit-oriented development plan, released this spring, that envisions a new $30 million Danbury Transit Center that could improve all types of transportation downtown and help stimulate redevelopment.
The state’s $2 million contribution is one of just five grants it is distributing this summer for transit plans designed to improve pedestrian safety and help spur economic activity in the surrounding area, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy announced last week. The other $6.5 million in grants will go toward projects in Hartford, West Hartford, Torrington and Stamford.
The state funding doubles the $2 million the city already set aside to begin the improvements in its next capital projects budget, Planning Director Sharon Calitro said.“We’re really excited, it was great news for us,” she said. “Our goal is to go bid early next year and it’s all part of the urban revitalization, focusing on transit-oriented development, to help reinvigorate downtown.” The project will include more than two miles of new sidewalks in total, including on Main Street from White to about Boughton Street, on Liberty Street from Main to Patriot Drive, and for the paths from Kennedy Park to the Danbury Green to Patriot Drive at the entrance to the train station, according to the preliminary plans.
Some parts of that sidewalk network are in relatively good shape, but others were last rebuilt in the early 1990s, Calitro said.
The plan also will include dozens of new trees, bike lanes and artwork — like crosswalks painted with murals — that would make downtown more comfortable to walk around in, she said.
“It’s all the things that go along with that to create a walkable, refreshed look and infrastructure in downtown to make it more enticing and to incentivize development,” she said.
The city’s funding for the project will be available when the new fiscal year starts July 1, so officials plan to hire surveyors and civil engineers to prepare the formal plans for the project this summer and fall. If put out to bid in early 2019, construction could start in less than a year.
CityCenter Danbury previewed what some of the changes could look like earlier this month when they hosted Connecticut Main Street Center’s annual awards ceremony in town and held an event in the alley next to the Post Office on Main Street. The former eyesore shortcut has been transformed by city crews and artists with new lamps, a thorough cleaning and custom murals to the delight of downtown leaders.
The sidewalks are only the first step in a long-term plan to reconfigure downtown transportation of all kinds — by foot, bicycle or car. The chief recommendation of the plan is to combine the HART PulsePoint transfer area near Kennedy Park with the existing train station to create a single hub called the Danbury Transit Center.
Negotiations are still underway among the city, Metro-North, HART and Eversource, which owns part of the property needed to enlarge the station, Calitro said.
Mayor Mark Boughton has said he’s “pumped” for the overall project, which he views as an “aspiraprunttional” plan for the city to pursue as it can within its means. He lauded the state for helping jumpstart the plan with the sidewalk funding.
“That’ll keep (construction superintendent) Tom Hughes and (Public Works Director) Antonio Iadarola going for a long time over the next 18 months,” Boughton joked.
DOT To Narrow Lanes, Widen Shoulders Along Route 17 In South Glastonbury
Peter Marteka
he state Department of Transportation plans to narrow the travel lanes along Route 17 creating a wider shoulder, but has no plans to widen the roadway.
Crews will begin a milling and repaving project over the next few weeks. When it is complete, crews will line the new roadway creating the wider shoulders. Last month, the town council sent a letter to the DOT requesting shoulder improvements for the route, which is popular for bicyclists traveling along Main Street, or Route 17, into South Glastonbury.
Thomas J. Maziarz, bureau chief of policy and planning at the DOT, said lane widths in the area range from 12 to 14 feet with “inconsistent” shoulder widths of 1 to 4 feet. Maziarz said when the project is complete the lanes will be 11 feet wide “to provide a wider shoulder area for pedestrians and bicyclists.”
“These improvements will be implemented to the maximum extent feasible where the existing roadway width and number of travel lanes allow,” he said.
Maziarz said the project must be done within the existing roadway. He noted the project does not incorporate the construction of sidewalk or roadway widening for increased pavement width. He also noted that widening in “key locations” could make the road safer by preventing rear-end crashes.
Town Manager Richard J. Johnson said there isn’t much room to widen the highway.“One of the challenges is there’s shoulders. There are [future] sidewalks that are planned, drainage and other structures,” he said.
Johnson said the town is hoping to fund a sidewalk project for the stretch of road from Mallard Drive south to Stockade Road over the next couple of years.
The town has applied for a “community connectivity” grant from the DOT for 1,250 feet of sidewalk along the western side of Main Street from Stockade Road south to Red Hill Drive. Funding is on hold pending bond commission approval.
“While we do not know the timing or amount of any future bond commission approval for this program, the town had a strong application and we are hopeful that funding will be made available,” Maziarz said.New Haven begins demolition of Church Street South
Mary E. O'Leary
NEW HAVEN — As city officials watched, the excavator moved in and took a large bite out of the two-story concrete-block structure on Malcolm Court that once housed a group of families.
The second-story floor and the outer wall fell into a pile of crumpled wallboard amid masonry as a nearby machine continually sprayed water to keep the dust down.
It was the beginning of the end for the 301 deteriorated apartments at Church Street South that had housed thousands of low-income residents over the past 50 years.
Interior demolition has been completed, according to Dan Masto, director of operations at Abcon Abatement and Demolition, which he said has a $5 million contract to clear the 13-acre site of the 22 residential buildings, plus several storage buildings.
He estimated it will take up to two years to clear Church Street South as it takes two to three weeks per building and the work slows down in the winter. The cleanup is being paid for by the owner, Northland Investment Corp It is a valuable development site across from Union Station and there are preliminary plans to build between 700 and 1,000 units of housing, 30 percent of which would be affordable in a public-private partnership between the city and Northland.
Deputy Economic Development Administrator Michael Piscitelli called the demolition “an important milestone,” for the Hill to Downtown plan, which not only covers Church Street South, but other parcels stretching to downtown.
He said 40 percent of those parcels have been vacant since the end of the redevelopment era in the 1970s.
Piscitelli said, separate from CSS, RMS Cos. is working on four plans for 300 units of housing at these sites, each with affordability components.
Both Mayor Toni Harp and Piscitelli said the transition put the families first as Elm City Communities, the city’s housing authority, which was hired by Northland, worked with the residents individually to find new apartments.
The last tenant did not move out until May, a process that began in 2015.
Once the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development did a thorough inspection in 2015, after the New Haven Legal Aid Association continued to highlight the mold and structural problems the tenants were facing, dozens were moved to hotels and soon into apartments after securing Section 8 vouchers.
Church Street South originally was a cooperative with tenant ownership, according to staff at the Livable City Initiative, but was later sold to The Community Builders. It again changed hands when it was sold to the Northland Investment Corp., a Massachusetts company, for $5 million in 2008.
Piscitelli said the city also had an issue with TCB not investing in the property.
Northland has denied charges, brought in a class action suit, that it engaged in “demolition by neglect.”HUD, in September 2015, said Northland had failed to provide “decent, safe and sanitary” conditions for the tenants. It also gave it a score of 20 out of 100 when it assessed conditions at the complex.The company has said it paid millions on transitioning tenants to new housing, paying for hotels and storage of residents’ household goods.
Harp, who was at the site Monday, said the property had been allowed to fall into disrepair over many years, leaving the residents “caught in the middle of a bad situation.”
She thanked city Building Official Jim Turcio, LCI Executive Director Serena Neal-Sanjuro and Elm City Communities for aggressively dealing with the situation and HUD for quickly shifting the rental subsidies to new landlords from Northland.
Larry Gottesdiener, chairman and chief executive officer of Northland, issued a statement on the demolition and the future of the property.
He said it was a complex challenge to find quality housing for the tenants and he thanked them for their patience. Gottesdiener said his company and the city has now established a “true partnership and never lost sight of the common goal: relocating the families in a respectful and sensitive manner.”
Gottesdiener said he looks forward to working with city officials “to create Union Square, a mixed-use, transit oriented, green, 21st century village that will weave Union Station, the Hill, and the Medical District into Downtown, provide an architecturally stunning ‘front door’ to New Haven and increase the affordable housing supply in the city by 300 units.”
The mayor said the story of Church Street South over the past two years “underscores the extent to which we in New Haven, under my administration, will continue working to address the needs of those who are vulnerable, whose voices are muted by disadvantage, whose at-risk circumstances might prompt others to take advantage of them.”
Harp said in this state and the country “there are those who seem utterly content living with an approach as if to say: ‘I’ve got mine — the rest of you fend for yourself.’“In New Haven, we share a city we love, we watch out for one another, we take care of one another and we’re working to provide suitable housing for one another,” Harp said.
Piscitelli, at the press conference held at the Church Street South site, praised LCI for answering more than 10,000 complaints last year and conducting more than 5,200 residential inspections.
Rafael Ramos, deputy director of housing code enforcement at LCI, who along with Turcio, condemned the housing units, said he was happy that the tenants are now in better homes.
Ansonia, Bridgeport, New Milford receive state brownfield grant money
Michael P. Mayko
ANSONIA — Another $200,000 in state grant money is on its way for help the re-develop the 40-acre vacant Ansonia Copper and Brass property which abuts the downtown.
“This is great news for the city,” Mayor David Cassetti said Monday. “It’s a giant step in helping us develop strategies to assess, clean-up and reuse this vacant property which is so crucial to the revitalization not only of the downtown but of the city.”
Meanwhile the city is working on a Request for Proposal seeking a redevelopment corporation, a brownfield bank or a developer to partner in re-purposing the site. Corporation Counsel John Marini said wording of the RFP may be ready for a vote during the Board of Aldermen’s July meeting.
The Ansonia Copper and Brass site, also known as the Anaconda American Brass property, is in a designated opportunity zone which allows a developer to invest capital gains into a project for federal tax benefits.
Ansonia was one of six municipalities and community organizations awarded Brownsfield Area-wide Revitalization grants from the state.
The program, created in 2015, encourages municipalities with multiple blighted properties to develop strategies to assess, clean up and reuse the parcels for business, housing and public amenities that will generate jobs and revenues.“We worked hard in presenting our case to state officials,” Cassetti said. “With so many brownfields across the state, it’s a testament to the work my staff put in, particularly John (Marini) and Sheila (O’Malley, the city’s economic development director).
“This property stands out because of its sheer size in relationship to the size of the city,” said Marini, a former aldermen. “We had to show the state we are ready to move onto the next stage.”
The next stage is demolition of the remaining six buildings. O’Malley estimated tearing down the buildings will cost between $8 million and $10 million.
“I want a clean canvas that a developer could paint the future of the city on,” Cassetti said.
Once the buildings are down, the land could be capped to contain any contaminants, which could pave the way for a mixed use development of retail and residential along the Naugatuck River site.“In its day, it (American Brass) was a city unto itself,” O’Malley said. “It had its own power plant, its waste treatment facility, its own laboratory, its own medical clinic and had a freight line passing through.”
The latest $200,000 comes on top of $600,000 in previous state grants as well as nearly $2 million in remediation work by the federal Environmental Protection Agency. EPA workers have been on the site since last summer.
“They believe everything is contained except a test pit on the site,” said O’Malley.
Marini and O’Malley developed a budget breaking down the use of the $200,000 BAR grant into five areas: environmental, re-use, site access, infrastructure and community outreach.
They’ve designated $50,000 for environmental work, which includes $15,000 for subsurface testing and $30,000 for a demolition study.
The site access budget includes $30,000 for a feasibility study of a new road. Cassetti would like to see the road extended to the Route 8 entrance ramp to Seymour near the vacant Molto Bene restaurant.
They’ve also budgeted $45,000 for a marketability and revenue potential study and another $45,000 for a utility needs assessment.