New Haven condo development going before planners
Mary O'Leary
NEW HAVEN — There is a lot of residential development in the city, but one style that has been lacking is condominium.That will change in the relatively near future, when a plan for 30 condos in the East Rock neighborhood is discussed at the City Plan Comission meeting Wednesday.
The staff has recommended that it be approved. Ocean Management is the developer, while the project was designed by architect Wayne Garrick.
It first came to the city’s attention about a year ago at a community management team meeting. It got approal from the Board of Zoning Appeals last month.
The redevelopment, in addition to providing more housing for the city, will clean up a large, blighted block that once was home to the Lehman Bros. engraving company, a well-known business that went bankrupt in 2008.
Lehman Bros. turned out expensive engravings and wedding invitations for a century before being forced to close.
The housing project is being organized as a planned unit development at 191 Foster St. The one-acre site is bound by Canner, Nicoll and Willow streets.
Garrick said the owners determined that there definitely is a market for condominiums.
A portion of the main factory will be revamped and two floors added to house 24 condominium units. Across from this, the developer plans to construct 6 townhouses with attached garages.The apartments will be two bedrooms, while the townhouses will have three bedrooms.
A warehouse and quonset hut will be removed from the site. The developers decided to offer some three-bedroom units at the urging of the neighbors who would like to have families move there.
They originally had hoped to start construction a year ago.
Garrick said because condos are individually owned, they tend to be properly maintained and should be an asset to the East Rock neighborhood.
Bethel police station to be completed by end of month
BETHEL — Workers are putting the finishing touches on the new, two-story police station on Judd Avenue. First Selectman Matt Knickerbocker said he visited the station last week. Each time he stops by, a new office or other section is complete, he said.
“You really see the progress accelerate at this point,” Knickerbocker said.
About 99 percent of the exterior of the $14.4 million building is complete, while electricians, painters and cleaning crews are tackling the inside, Jon Menti, chair of the building committee, said at a recent selectmen meeting.
But the station is not expected to be fully complete until Aug. 31 — later than officials had originally planned. Menti has said that the elevators were part of the hold-up. The 10-day installation was scheduled to begin last week, followed by a state inspection.
Police Chief Jeff Finch said he is happy with how the building is shaping up. His own office already has furniture. “It looks good,” he said. “It’s going to be a big change from here to there. The environment, the building, the room, the way things are placed.”
The new station is more than double the size of the existing building on Plumtrees Road, so the officers will have to change how they communicate, Finch said. He said he is accustomed to running into the officers often on their one floor, but they will have to go out of the way to see each other in the new building.
Officers have already started to clean out the existing building and are preparing to move crime scene evidence to the new station, he said. Although the department has hired a moving company, officers need to transport the evidence themselves. If someone else handles these items, courts would rule it out.
“The critical stuff we need to get up there and keep track of,” Finch said.
He said the 911 communication system will be installed in advance and that any interruption during the move would be slight. Still, the department has contacted Danbury about standing by during the switchover.
“But that is just a precaution in case we need it,” Finch said.
The town has stayed within its new budget since May, when voters approved an additional $889,000 to complete the building. The project had gone over its $13.5 million budget, in part because HVAC and plumbing work was more expensive than estimated.
About $150,000 remains in the contingency budget, but Menti said the construction manager told the committee that the town should not need to use it. If that money is left over, Knickerbocker said the town should put it toward the firing range. The range will be enclosed as part of this project, but will be unusable because the approved budget did not cover equipment for the facility.
This equipment, which has been estimated to cost about $600,000, includes the target system and the air handling system. The latter is “highly specialized” and filters out the lead dust from the muzzles, Knickerbocker said. “It’s a lot more robust than a standard air system that you would have for comfort and climate control,” he said. Voters will need to approve any money for equipment.
Democrats’ obsession with tolls ignores viable alternatives
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, on his way out of office, has ordered that $10 million be placed on the state’s credit card to study tolls. With the approval of Democratic lawmakers, he’s borrowing millions of dollars and is adding to our debt in order to study something that has been studied before. It would produce a study that may not even be used by the next administration.
As co-chair of the state’s Transportation Committee, I have many serious concerns about this misuse of taxpayer dollars. What has struck me about the conversation surrounding Malloy’s expensive and wasteful study is that some people still buy in to the misconception that tolls are the only solution to rebuild our infrastructure to make Connecticut more economically competitive. This is simply untrue.
The reality is that another viable solution to the state’s transportation shortfalls exists. It involves no tax increases and no tolls and it would generate over $70 billion for transportation over 30 years. This solution is called “Prioritize Progress.” It is a transportation funding plan Connecticut Republicans developed as a way to reprioritize how we utilize current state resources to dedicate more funding to transportation needs. It’s already proving effective to address the state’s short-term transportation needs. If fully implemented, it would provide a long-term solution for our state’s transportation problem.
Here’s how the plan works. First, it operates within the state’s new bond cap, so it borrows no more than allowed under the cap. Second, it protects bonding for core needs such as school construction and clean water, at the same time it reduces bonding for excessive wants. And third, instead of using bonding for pet projects and political handouts, it redirects those investments toward transportation needs.
The result? Annually, Prioritize Progress would allow Connecticut to boost state funding for transportation by hundreds of millions of dollars. This is far more funding than Rhode Island’s new trucks-only tolls are estimated to generate and significantly more than the state has ever directed toward transportation. Pair the new state investment with current state funding for transportation and with estimated federal funding, and the result is over $2 billion annually in funding for transportation throughout Connecticut.
Prioritize Progress is a real solution. In fact, a portion of this plan was included in the most recent bipartisan budget and as a result the state was able to increase transportation funding to $1 billion annually over the next two years – more than ever before. We did this all without a single toll or tax increase.
Unfortunately, instead of having a conversation about rolling out this plan into future years as it was designed, the governor and legislative Democrats continue to set their sights on tolls, and their blinders are up.
Connecticut Democrats need to step out of the shadow cast by the tolls debate, and open their eyes to the solutions that are right before us. We can make transportation a priority, and we don’t have to pickpocket taxpayers to make it happen.
Senator Toni Boucher is the Republican co-chair of the Transportation Committee. She represents Connecticut’s 26th Senatorial District that includes Bethel, New Canaan, Redding, Ridgefield, Weston, Westport, and Wilton.
Following setback, $200M Windsor Locks project begins local approval process
Matt Pilon
A Long Island developer whose ambitious $200 million proposed sports complex in Windsor Locks was sidelined last month amid concerns about his past legal history is scheduled to appear before the town's planning and zoning commission Monday night in the hopes of winning approval of his conceptual plan.
Andrew Borgia of JABS Sports Management in July proposed to build a sports complex across a 76-acre lot on Route 20 between I-91 and Old County Road.
The facility, known as All Sports Village, would include an indoor arena and outdoor stadium (between 5,000 to 7,000 seats each), and 16 indoor basketball courts that can be converted into 32 volleyball courts. The sports venue would also house eight synthetic turf fields for soccer, lacrosse, flag football, softball and field hockey.
However, Windsor Locks First Selectman Christopher Kervick abruptly announced July 16 that he was suspending talks with the developer after he learned of a civil lawsuit Borgia was facing in New York from investors in a prior sports development.
Kervick said several days later that he planned to hear Borgia's explanation of the suit, which alleges the developer defrauded several investors in an Islip, N.Y. project out of $467,000.
In a recent interview, Kervick said he's still doing his due diligence, but was potentially open to moving forward with the project.
"I'm not quite ready to say we're diving right back in," Kervick said. "I think we're moving in that direction."
Kervick traveled to Long Island during the last weekend of July, visiting Baseball Heaven, a Yaphank, N.Y. sports facility Borgia developed in 2004, and seeking additional information about the Islip project that's the subject of the legal dispute.
"I've done plenty of sniffing around," he said.
He described Baseball Heaven, in which Borgia sold his interest as a result of a 2006 legal settlement with former partners, as "a very impressive facility."
Borgia, who is looking for a property tax deal from the town of Windsor Locks, and his New York attorney have both downplayed the Islip lawsuit, characterizing it as a disagreement between partners that's common in real estate development.
In an interview last week with the Hartford Business Journal, however, Borgia, accompanied by his local real estate attorney, Paul Smith, did express regret about not disclosing it up front.
"I didn't think it was significant to even bring this issue up initially, but knowing what I know now, I should have brought it forward," Borgia said. "I didn't want it to get blown out of proportion, and unfortunately it did."
Smith, of Smith & Bishop in Windsor Locks, said Kervick's position is understandable.
"Obviously, the town is being cautious as they should be, but at the same time it's moving forward in a very positive way," Smith said.
Borgia said he's also discussed his New York suit in recent weeks with the state Department of Economic and Community Development, from which he hopes to get incentive funding tied to the 400 jobs he says his project could create.
Youth sports competitions have become a $15.5 billion industry, and Borgia says Windsor Locks could see plenty of benefit from his facility.
Meanwhile, the local approval process kicks off on Monday.
At the public hearing, Windsor Locks officials will weigh approval of the project's general development plan. It's an early step that could give Borgia a better sense of whether his development meets local zoning and use rules, before investing his money in developing full site plans. Approval could help pave the way for further local and state approvals, as well as financing agreements.
Borgia has yet to present a financing proposal to Windsor Locks, which will be a key step. He said last week he remains confident he can wrangle the investments for what would be his largest project, and shared that some of his potential investors are in the Boston area, though he declined to identify them.
Smith, his attorney, estimated that a financing plan would be forthcoming within "several months."