Luther Turmelle
The Italian corporate parent of Cheshire-based Lane Construction Co. has sold its U.S.-based paving division for $555 million, company officials said Monday.
The sale of Lane’s Plants and Paving division to Eurovia SAS, a French engineering and construction company, is subject to a number of regulatory approvals. Officials with Salini Impregilo Group, Lane’s corporate parent, said the deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of this year.
Pietro Salini, chief executive officer of the Salini Impregilo Group, said the sale of the Plants and Paving division allows the Italian company to focus more on Lane Construction and its core business.
“We are divesting an asset that is not strategic for us as we consolidate the growth of Lane, a company that is destined to become a development pole for the Group in North America in all segments of large, complex infrastructure — from transport to tunneling to water,” Salini said in a statement. “From an industrial perspective, the sale of the Plants and Paving division will allow Lane to reorganize itself and focus on big public projects. It (Lane Construction) already has a backlog of about $3 billion, revenue of about $1.4 billion in the United States excluding the division ... and stable cash generation.”
The United States is Salini Impregilo’s single biggest market by revenue, according to company officials, and its goal is to increase the amount generated in North America within the next three years.
Salini said the price at which the Plants and Paving division was sold at is $100 milion more than the Italian company paid to acquire all of Lane’s lines of business three years ago.
Lane’s Plants and Paving division specializes in hot mix asphalt construction and has about 45 plants around the United where it produces the substance. In addition, those manufacturing facilities sell hot mix asphalt to suit the needs of private and commercial customers.
The division has 12 hot mix asphalt plants in Maine, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, but none in Connecticut.
Lane Construction is a top federal contractor for roads and highways.
New London council approves another step in $150 million school project
Greg Smith
New London — The school district is poised to begin planning work for its next major school construction project.
The City Council on Monday unanimously approved the start of negotiations on a contract with Colliers to become the project manager, otherwise known as the owner’s representative, for the $48 million rehab of the Bennie Dover Jackson Middle School campus. The project is the second phase of a $150 million project.
Colliers, whose base bid was $1.23 million, was recommended by a subcommittee of the School Building and Maintenance Committee. The firm was one of three bidders for the job.
Bryan Doughty, a member of the school building and maintenance committee, called Monday night’s approval a “big deal.”
“Now we have an owner’s representative and can start the process of designing our facility - which is exciting,” Doughty said.
Construction work is supposed to start in 2019 though the city could request an extension from the state as it has with the north campus project at New London High School.
Delays have plagued the $98 million project at the north campus. The bulk of that work is not expected to start until 2020 though the city began a track rehabilitation project that fulfilled its obligation to begin the work.
The delays in the north campus project have come from the changes in programming for the future all-magnet school district. The north and south campuses will collectively house students from grades 6-12 in three different magnet themes: science, technology, engineering and mathamatics (STEM), visual and performing arts and International Education/International Baccalaureate.
The state Department of Education conditionally approved the themes last month as part of a revised operations and governance plan for the district.
The plan calls for unified administration, operations and instructions at the two schools. The plans calls for STEM and International Education/International Baccalaureate, with about 750 students, to be located at the south campus. All three themes will be represented at the north campus, future home to about 1,631 students.
The plan “implements a single unified Grades 6-12 interdistrict magnet school that will operate at both South Campus … and North Campus,” said Glen J. Peterson, division director of the state Department of Education’s Bureau of Choice Programs, in a July 5 letter to Superintendent Cynthia Ritchie.
“Students enrolled in the school will concentrate in a designated theme upon admission but will have the opportunity to take classes in the other themes,” Peterson wrote.
Traffic-Clogged Stretch of I-84 In Waterbury Will Open Third Lane This Weekend As $330 Million Highway Expansion Nears Finish
A vexing stretch of I-84 in Waterbury, dreaded among commuters for producing some of the worst and most dependable traffic jams in the state, will get some relief this weekend when a new eastbound travel lane opens as part of a three-year, $330 million construction project.
A westbound lane is expected to open after Labor Day.
For nearly three years, construction crews have worked to add a third travel lane heading both east and west on I-84 between Washington Street and Pierpont Road in Waterbury. The expansion has also involved adding shoulders along the same stretch of highway, installing culverts, laying new roads, demolishing bridges and building a new one on Harpers Ferry Road.
But the work has slowed traffic along the interstate in Waterbury, a chronic and often unavoidable clot for commuters and truckers cutting east or west across Connecticut. It’s been such a pain with all the tie-ups,” said Nancy Calabrese, who was shopping Monday at a grocery store behind the stretch of newly widened highway. Visitors from out of town, flummoxed by the density of the traffic in Waterbury, have asked what time of day the highway is generally free of traffic. She didn’t have an answer for them. “In the end,” she said of the construction, “we hope it'll all be worth it.”On Monday, standing atop a new bridge spanning I-84, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy cut a ceremonial ribbon and announced the highway-widening project was “now closing in on completion.”
The new travel lane heads east on I-84 between Washington Street and Pierpont Road. On the westbound side, a third lane is expected to open along the same stretch of highway after Labor Day.
“There’s more work to do,” Malloy said, referencing the milling, shimming and paving of the highway that will go on after all travel lanes have been opened. “But this is an important milestone and an indication to the people of Connecticut of what we can do when we work together.” When the expansion began in 2015, officials expected it would not be finished until late 2019.
Even as the I-84 expansion draws to a close, Malloy, who will step down in January after deciding against seeking re-election, pointed to several other infrastructure projects he called crucial to the state’s economy that will fall to his successor. The I-84 viaduct must be replaced, he said, the Waterbury “Mixmaster” must be propped up and eventually rebuilt, and the next governor must find a way to supplement the state’s dwindling transportation account to fund such costly, yet critical, overhauls.
He called the rebuilding of the Mixmaster, as the interchange of Route 8 and I-84 in Waterbury is called, “vitally important, on a long-term basis, to the welfare of this portion of the state.” In March, the state Department of Transportation awarded a Chicago company $153 million to rehabilitate the Mixmaster’s bridges while acknowledging that the interchange would still need to be replaced entirely in the near future.
Asked by a reporter Monday whether he agreed with the Democratic nominee for governor, Ned Lamont, that only trucks should pay tolls, Malloy said the question was why championed a new $10 million study on highway tolls.
Malloy keeps up the pressure for transportation rebuild — and tolls
Undaunted by a lack of interest from state legislators and most gubernatorial candidates, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy continues to try to keep Connecticut focused on rebuilding its aging, overcrowded transportation system.
The governor, who is not seeking re-election, used Monday’s announcement regarding one highway project in Waterbury to urge residents to demand more investment in transportation once he’s left office.
“There’s a lot of work to be done in Connecticut,” the governor said from a site overlooking the $330 million widening of a 2.7-mile section of Interstate 84 between Washington Street and Pierpont Road in the Brass City.
That work, Malloy announced, is on pace to wrap one year ahead of schedule. A third lane opened to eastbound traffic this week and a third westbound lane will open in September.
But that’s just the start of a long list of major projects that the Department of Transportation — under the Malloy administration — has been gearing up to begin in the next few years.
Some of the key projects on that list include:
Replacing the elevated section of I-84 in Hartford, commonly known as the viaduct.
Renovating the “Mixmaster” junction of I-84 and Route 8 in Waterbury.
And widening Interstate 95 in southwestern Connecticut.
Malloy warned Wall Street credit rating agencies, Connecticut businesses, state legislators — and anyone else who would listen — last winter that absent more funding, these projects would fall into limbo and the state’s transportation program was headed for dramatic contraction over the next five years.
Legislators approved a fiscal patch this past spring, transferring an extra $29 million in sales tax receipts into the transportation fund this fiscal year and another $120 million in 2019-20.
But that is not expected to stabilize transportation funding beyond 2022 or 2023.
Malloy, who wanted legislators to finance a 30-year rebuild of transportation infrastructure, got State Bond Commission approval earlier this summer for a $10 million analysis of how to implement electronic tolling on Connecticut highways.
But it remains uncertain whether that analysis will be performed.
The DOT likely won’t be ready to award a consulting contract for that analysis until March — two months after Malloy leaves office.
The Republican gubernatorial nominee Bob Stefanowski has said repeatedly he won’t support tolls. Democratic gubernatorial nominee Ned Lamont has left the door open for tolls — but only for trucks.
Only independent candidate Oz Griebel, who led the former State Transportation Strategy Board, has said he would consider tolls, and would likely begin with a pilot tolling program in the next term.
In addition, legislators have balked each of the last two years at proposed bills that would have studied or established electronic tolling.
“The key to unlocking the value … of Connecticut is a transportation system that is competitive with the states that we compete with,” Malloy said Monday, adding that Connecticut won’t win back jobs from rival neighbor states without a major transportation investment. “Right now we have not gotten our share of job growth … in part because people didn’t believe Connecticut would do what it would take to turn its transportation program around.”
Stefanowski “hasn’t proposed how he is going to pay for transportation and he hasn’t told people in Fairfield County they’re going to have to suffer the transportation system they currently have.”
Malloy went a little easier on Lamont, a fellow Democrat, but wasn’t ready to endorse a tolling plan limited only to trucks.
“That’s why you need a study,” the governor added. “That’s why you need a full examination of what the potential is” for electronic tolling for all vehicles.
Don Shubert, president of the Connecticut Construction Industry Association and one of the founders of Move CT Forward — a coalition of construction businesses, trades and other transportation advocates — predicted the issue of tolls won’t go away no matter who wins in November.
“I think its very obvious that Connecticut needs a long-term, user-based funding stream for transportation,” he said. “How the candidates figure that out remains to be seen.”