Ken Dixon
In what might be Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s last meeting presiding over the State Bond Commission, the Democrat-dominated panel approved about $795 million in capital projects, from brownfield cleanups to school safety and open space acquisition, along with millions for local projects around Connecticut.
Included was $60 million to design and build a new 1,000-space parking garage near the Stamford train station, taking the place of a since-abandoned plan for a larger-scale, public/private development.
“We have a crisis in terms of timing for the removal of the old garage,” said James Redeker, commissioner of the state Department of Transportation, adding that the project is about one-tenth finished. “We have a lot of work to get it to final design. This is literally between the railroad and (Interstate) 95, in a very very tight spot. It’s a very very challenging place to construct.”
“We’ll continue to own the property that this current garage is on, which is just steps from the station,” Malloy told the commission. The project includes a pedestrian connection to the garage; and the demolition of the existing garage, and a new 500,000-square-foot building, under construction to become the new home of Charter Communications.
The panel also approved $200 million in school construction funding and $10 million for the state’s competitive-grant program to reimburse towns and cities for hardening security systems around and in public schools, including security cameras and the installation of metal detectors.“Since taking office I have always maintained that if we want to compete for jobs and economic opportunities we need to invest in building communities where people want to live and businesses want to grow,” Malloy said after the commission meeting. “It’s a holistic approach to job creation and economic development. It’s about housing. It’s about transportation, it’s about education, and many other strengths that makes Connecticut a great place.”
Malloy said the panel’s meeting will be its last until at least the Nov. 6 election and possibly his last before leaving office in January. “Investing in our communities is a core component of forward-thinking economic-development efforts,” he said.
The commission also approved:
$12 million for Metro-North stations to install new fiber-optic systems for better public address systems; and LED display signs, and security cameras.
$10 million for the reconstruction of the New Haven Public Works facility.
$10 million for brownfield remediation projects in the state.
$10 million for the creation of affordable housing units.
$8.8 million extend four more years of support for Aer Lingus to continue cross-Atlantic flights from Bradley International Airport.
$5.5 million for the purchase of a parcel in the Yale West section of Orange.
$5.5 million for the Crescent Crossing project in Bridgeport, replacing the former Marina Village.
$5 million, on top of $15 million previously allocated for Synchrony Bank in Stamford.
$5 million to the Stamford-based Gartner, Inc. market-research firm, to expand its headquarters in the South End, retaining 1,385 jobs and creating 400 new jobs.
$5 million for open space acquisition; plus $5 million for the statewide asbestos-removal program.
$5 million to upgrade the electric, heating and safety systems in the Lockwood Mathews Mansion Museum in Norwalk.
$4.3 million for Bridgeport projects, including $1.2 million to cap the Seaside Park landfill; $1.5 million for exterior renovations to historic McLevy Hall; and $1.6 million to demolish the long-broken Pleasure Beach Bridge.
$4 million for preliminary improvements to Interstate-95 between Exit 19 in Fairfield and Exit 27A in Bridgeport.
$3 million for the Greater Danbury Community Health Center.
$2.3 million for the repair and replacement of sidewalks in New Haven.
$1.5 million to dredge a channel adjacent to Cove Island Park in Stamford.
$1 million to rehabilitate the historic Curtiss Hanger off of Main Street in Stratford, at the Sikorsky Memorial Airport.
$1 million to replace the roof of the historic Warner Theater in Torrington, through the Northwestern Connecticut Association for the Arts.
$650,000 for the Stratfield Village Business District in Fairfield.
$650,000 to Operation Hope, Inc. for the acquisition and renovation of four affordable housing units on Durrell Drive in Fairfield.
$500,000 for the Common Ground Charter High School, so the New Haven-based school can repay debts.
$370,000 to repair to repair the historic reproduction of the Amistad slave ship.
New Haven lawmakers welcome $13.5 million in funds for local projects
By News Staff
NEW HAVEN — More than $13 million in state funding was approved Thursday by the State Bond Commission.
The money is “critical” for several local initiatives, area officials said in a news release. A $10 million grant for reconstruction of the New Haven Public Works facility was approved, as was a $2.3 million grant to finance repairs and replacement of various sidewalks throughout the city. A $575,000 grant for improvements to Little League baseball fields in Fairmont Park was awarded, along with a $500,000 grant to assist Common Ground School with repayment of debt. A $217,597 grant-in-aid will be used for construction of a playground and splash pad at DeGale Field.
“New Haven’s delegation in continuing to deliver significant funding for critical infrastructure improvements and community-oriented projects,” Senate President Pro Tempore Martin M. Looney said in the release. “The funding for sidewalk paving and the Public Works garage will save New Haven taxpayers more than $12 million. I want to thank Governor Malloy for his support of these projects and my fellow delegation members for their work in securing this funding.”
New Haven could also benefit from a state-wide $10 million grant to provide supplemental funding for the Brownfields Remediation and Revitalization Program. The funds will be used to provide grants and low-interest loans to eligible applicants for the remediation of contaminated brownfield sites to bring them back to productive use.
“These investments will directly translate to new activities for our children, less brownfields, and a more walkable New Haven, which are important pieces to moving our city forward,” state Sen. Gary Winfield, D-New Haven, said in the release. “I am proud to have worked with my colleagues in the legislature to bring state money back to our city so New Haven taxpayers don’t have to bear the total cost of these projects.”Parks improvements were a priority for several lawmakers.
“I have been working hard to enhance and maintain locations that focus on safe family activities and DeGale Field was one,” state Rep. Toni Walker, D-New Haven, said in the release. “This $217,597 grant will help refurbish a very popular community park.”
State Rep. Alphonse Paolillo, D-New Haven, said he is pleased to see the projects move forward. “The Public Works building, in desperate need of repair, will serve the community for years to come after renovations are complete,” he said. “Additional state funding for citywide sidewalk repairs will promote pedestrian safety along with much needed residential and business infrastructure improvements.”
State Rep. Robyn Porter, D-New Haven, joined in thanking legislative colleagues for helping secure the funds for New Haven.“All of these projects will help to improve the quality of life in New Haven for children and families,” she said. “Thanks also to the governor and Bond Commission members for acting on our bond applications.”
The money will help strengthen the city’s infrastructure, state Rep. Juan Candelaria, D-New Haven, said in the release.
“The repairs and replacement to various sidewalks along with reconstruction of the Public Works Facility will improve the quality of life of our residents,” Candelaria said. “I thank the State Bond Commission for investing in our community.”
EB presents $850 million expansion, improvement plans to the public
Julia Bergman
Groton — Electric Boat on Thursday night held a meeting to present its plans for an $850 million project to expand and improve its Groton shipyard, including a new construction bay where a new class of ballistic-missile submarines will be built.
More than 50 people turned out for the meeting at the City of Groton Municipal Building, where they got to ask questions of representatives from EB and Fuss & O'Neill, the environmental consulting company assisting with the project.
"We have an opportunity to help recapitalize our nation's submarine fleet at a time when our nation desperately needs that," Maura Dunn, EB's vice president of human resources, told attendees at the start of the meeting.
In a few years, EB will start construction on 12 new ballistic missile submarines, known as the Columbia-class program. It plans to construct a new assembly facility and floating dry dock to accommodate this work in its south yard. The intent is to bring many of the materials into the site by water to help reduce congestion on roadways and construction traffic, said Ted DeSantos with Fuss & O'Neill.
The ballistic missile submarines will involve more than twice the amount of work that goes into building an attack submarine. If stood on end, one of these new ballistic missile submarines would be as tall as the Washington Monument.
The new assembly facility for the ballistic missile submarines is expected to be comparable in size to the green construction bay on the waterfront where attack submarines are steadily being assembled. EB says it needs the new facilities so that it can build attack submarines and ballistic missile submarines at the same time. The company is about 15 percent into the detailed design process for project, and construction of the buildings is expected to occur from 2019 to 2023.
Some of the neighbors in the immediate vicinity of EB's south yard are unhappy with the plans, and had met with representatives from EB several times prior to Thursday's meeting to air their concerns. Frank Ricci, a resident of Eastern Point Road, who worked for EB for 34 years, retiring in 2003, said he's planning to ask the City of Groton for a tax abatement, given that the new assembly building will block his water views.
"We've heard loud and clear from those directly on Eastern Point (Road) that we stick to ourselves, so we're trying to turn the corner and bring a new day. We're reaching out a little bit more than we have," Dunn said. "I think some of that is the secret nature of our work, but we're going to try and do a better job."
Jeff Nichols, who lives on Chapman Street off Eastern Point Road, said he's concerned about his water view being gone and the impact that will have on his property value. He's also worried about the noise from the construction, pollution and traffic. Nichols said he respects the work that EB does in support of national security, "but this affects us."
"We're not anti-American because we don't want a big 140-foot building put in our backyard," he said.
Sherry Casagranda, who's lived on Chapman Street for 20 years, echoed his concerns.
"Property values are really going to tank," she said.
EB said it looked at alternatives for where to site the new assembly building but none of them worked for a variety of reasons. It submitted permits to the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection and the Army Corps of Engineers in late May. Both agencies are reviewing those permits. The company will need to dredge the area around where the new construction will occur. The Army Corps of Engineers will determine the site where the dredging material will be disposed.
EB has 16,800 employees companywide, 11,600 of whom live in Connecticut. As of August, the company had hired 2,594 people, 840 of whom were Connecticut residents at the time they were hired.
Report: Connecticut ranks 4th nationally in share of bridges over 50 years old
Kimberly Drelich
Hartford — Connecticut ranks fourth nationally in its share of bridges that are 50 years old or older, with more than half of its bridges having reached that age, according to a new report.
The report on the condition of Connecticut's bridges, released Thursday by TRIP, a nonprofit transportation organization, also finds that 308 of the state's 4,254 bridges are rated as "structurally deficient," which it defines as having "significant deterioration of the bridge deck, supports or other major components." The report says 4.3 million vehicles travel on those structurally deficient bridges on a daily basis.
Rocky Moretti, TRIP's director of policy and research, said the report is not suggesting that the bridges are putting drivers at risk, as the state's engineers would have closed the structures if they thought the spans were unsafe.
But it's still a problem for Connecticut.
"The state faces a significant challenge in addressing this aging system of bridges and finding the resources at both the state and local level to not only repair and, in some cases, replace structurally deficient bridges, but also to ensure that as these bridges get older that they get the type of repairs and care that are needed to extend their service life and to help support the state's economy," he said at a news conference at the Legislative Office Building on Thursday.
Moretti was joined at the news conference by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.; state Rep. Tony Guerrera, D-Rocky Hill, co-chair of the General Assembly's Transportation Committee; Don Shubert, president of the Connecticut Construction Industries Association; and Lyle Wray, executive director of the Capitol Region Council of Governments.
TRIP, based in Washington, "is sponsored by insurance companies, equipment manufacturers, distributors and suppliers, businesses involved in highway and transit engineering and construction, labor unions, and organizations concerned with an efficient and safe surface transportation network that promotes economic development and quality of life," according to the organization's website.
New London County
Thirty-two of the structurally deficient bridges are in New London County, which has 421 bridges overall, according to the report, which uses data from the state Department of Transportation.
The state DOT inspects bridges at least every two years, DOT spokesman Kevin Nursick said in a phone interview Thursday. Bridges are rated on a 0 to 9 scale. Those that are considered "structurally deficient" have received a rating of 4 or less — based on National Bridge Inspection Standards — on their deck, superstructure or substructure.
In the report, TRIP lists rankings by county of the "most heavily traveled structurally deficient bridges" and of the bridges with the "lowest individual score for either deck, substructure or superstructure." It includes both state- and municipality-maintained bridges.
In New London County, the most heavily traveled structurally deficient bridge is the one that carries I-95 over Route 161 in East Lyme, which was built in 1958. DOT plans to go out to bid in 2020 for a project to replace that span.
The northbound Gold Star Memorial Bridge, built in 1943, is the next most heavily traveled structurally deficient bridge in New London County. A construction project for that span is scheduled to go out to bid at the end of January 2019, according to DOT.
The list in New London County further includes such structures as the I-395 bridge over Route 97 and the Shetucket River in Norwich, and the Route 1 span over the Pawcatuck River in Stonington, among others.
Nursick confirmed that all of the New London County "structurally deficient" bridges that are maintained by the state and listed in the report are part of DOT's program to be rehabilitated or replaced, or are already under construction. When a bridge receives a rating of 4 or less, it triggers a DOT program to rehabilitate, reconstruct or replace that structure.
He said that over the course of a bridge's lifespan, DOT conducts routine maintenance and construction programs to keep up the structure's condition. But eventually, the bridge will need a more thorough response to address the natural deterioration and aging process. That's when DOT engages the rehabilitation, reconstruction or replacement of the bridge.
He said the designation of being "structurally deficient" is a normal benchmark in a bridge's lifespan, which is monitored, and is not necessarily a safety issue.
"The issue at hand is making sure we have the funding to maintain those necessary programs to address short-term and long-term rehabilitation and replacement of these structures," Nursick said.
He said 8.6 percent of DOT's 4,017 bridges were considered structurally deficient in 2012, with the percentage dropping to 5.2 percent in 2017.
During the news conference, Guerrera said it is important to pass the transportation "lockbox" amendment on the ballot for the November election, while Blumenthal called for a bipartisan response on both the federal and state levels.
"The time for talk has gone," Blumenthal said. "The time for action was yesterday, and we have a responsibility to do it now."
Shubert said the more than 300 structurally deficient bridges in Connecticut are part of "a growing problem."
"It's only indicative of a small part of a growing problem with the thousands of bridges in Connecticut that are over 50 years old, that are over their design life, that are operating over capacity and are subjected to all sorts of de-icing chemicals every winter, so there's a bigger problem brewing under today's report," he said.
Connecticut's transportation network has faced an under-investment in infrastructure over the past 50 years, and many structures in the state were built in the '50s, '60s, '70s and '80s and have a 50-year design life, Wray said.
Bond Commission OKs millions for Hartford, other projects
Joe Cooper
The state Bond Commission on Thursday approved tens of millions of dollars for numerous economic development projects during one of Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's last commission meetings before his term ends in January.
The 10-member commission overwhelmingly approved funding for three Hartford projects that will bring hundreds of new apartments and a grocery store near Dunkin' Donuts Park.
The Bond Commission approved $52.69 million in projects pitched by the the Capital Region Development Authority (CRDA), the quasi-public state agency spearheading investments in the Capital City and surrounding areas.
Connecticut Innovations (CI), the state's quasi-public venture capital arm, also received approval for $43.5 million to recapitalize its programs and provide additional funding for its subsidiary, CTNext, a entrepreneurship booster.
Other CRDA projects that received funding approval included:
- $16 million to support construction of a parking garage in Hartford where the Bushnell is planning a multi-million dollar mixed-use development.
- $12 million to support 150 to 200 apartments planned as part of the Downtown North redevelopment, adjacent to Dunkin' Donuts Park.
- $8.67 million to support building a grocery store at Albany Avenue and Main Street, which has been a long-awaited addition to downtown Hartford.
- $8.4 million for Spinnaker Real Estate Partners' planned 108-unit market-rate apartment project at the corner of Park and Main streets.
- $3 million to the Bushnell Center for mechanical and electrical upgrades, code and safety improvements, other improvements to its roof, restrooms and a flooring replacement.
- $13 million to the U.S. Navy to build an emergency management center at the submarine base in New London.
- $10 million for the Brownfield Remediation and Development program. The group is studying the remediation and development of brownfields across Connecticut.
- $8.8 million to Aer Lingus to maintain its Bradley-Dublin route.
- $5 million for a loan to support Gartner Inc. creating 400 new jobs.
- $5 million to support grants and loans for the Connecticut Manufacturing Innovation Fund.
Jenna Carlesso
The long vacant warehouse at 1400 Park St., less than a mile from the city’s western gateway, showed signs of life Thursday as the developer behind an ambitious effort to build a food hall plunged a golden shovel into the ground, marking the start of construction on the 20,000-square-foot facility.
Carlos Mouta envisions two floors of food vendors and other retail outlets in the building he purchased at the turn of the century. A produce section, a test kitchen and an entertainment space complete with a wet bar are in the carefully laid plans for the venture, dubbed the Parkville Market.Construction will run through the winter, and an opening is scheduled for April.
“Where I came from in Mozambique, there were markets everywhere. They come alive,” Mouta said. “And people gather there for many things, not just to buy stuff. They go there to get together. When I go away, I always end up at a market.”The project calls for 22 vendors on the ground level selling freshly cooked food that represents the city and its many flavors. Everything from Vietnamese fare to Mexican cuisine is to be served.Along with the permanent fixtures, there will be space for new entrepreneurs to try their hand at the food business. The plans include five booths whose tenants will rotate throughout the year.
The market’s second floor would feature a blend of other retail, such as a coffee shop, a bar or tavern, an ice cream parlor and kiosks selling jewelry, flowers, stationery and spices. Mouta said he is hoping for 35 vendors on the upper level.
So far, he said, he’s received inquiries from more than 40 business owners in charge of restaurants, food trucks and coffee bars across the Hartford region. Applicants include Hartford Baking Co., The Rocking Chicken, Taco Tequila, Nora’s Cupcakes, Karobean Kitchen and Hartford Prints. Story and Soil, a cafe that opened last summer on Capitol Avenue, is looking to expand with a new space in the market. The development is estimated at $3 million to $3.5 million and is backed in part by a $300,000 loan and $100,000 grant from the state Department of Economic and Community Development. Mouta said the rest will be covered by a bank loan.
The market would run seven days a week, year-round.
A throng of politicians and community leaders gathered at the site Thursday to acknowledge the latest enterprise in the up-and-coming neighborhood of Parkville. A brewery, recording studio and screen printing company have opened there in recent years.
“This is the combination of a great building, great development, great ideas, a new system of transportation and the ability to make some timely investments,” Gov. Dannel P. Malloy said, with a nod to his CTfastrak bus line. “It couldn’t happen at a better place or a better time.”
Mouta, who owns several properties in Parkville, called the area “vibrant” and “unique.”
“I believe if you build it, they will come,” he said. “I’ve seen it with the 170-plus new market-rate units in Parkville, over 1,000-plus units in downtown Hartford, the Convention Center, Front Street and the Yard Goats.”
Once the market is open, Mouta wants to expand it into the two neighboring buildings at 1390 and 1420 Park St. He is hoping for an “urban winery” and other unexpected tenants.
New Britain Mayor Sounds Alarm Over School Construction Monies
Don Stacom
Alarmed that millions of dollars in state funding might be at risk, Mayor Erin Stewart is pressing the school system to resolve delays in filing crucial paperwork.
Until there’s a solution, the city might have to absorb $1 million to $2 million in short-term borrowing costs, Stewart said.
In a memo to Stewart last week, city Finance Director Lori Granato warned of an even more serious consequence. She said state aid for the $53 million Smalley School renovation and expansion might be in jeopardy, leaving the city to either pay the bills itself or halt construction.
“This is extremely disturbing. How in God’s name will we pay for this?,” Stewart wrote in a Sept. 14 memo to Granato.Schools Superintendent Nancy Sarra, however, has told Stewart the situation is under control. The schools plan to submit all overdue documents to the state by Oct. 1, Sarra said in a memo to the mayor on Monday.
The dispute arose last week when Granato was in a conference call with officials from the state Department of Administrative Services.
The agency told Granato that New Britain schools were years behind in filing a final audit and other closing documentation for the $30 million Gaffney School renovation. Construction ended more than three years ago.
Without that project officially closed, the state won’t supply its share of roughly $50 million in renovations costs for Smalley Academy, she said.
“To be clear, the city will receive no state reimbursement for Smalley until Gaffney is closed and deemed ‘final’ per the state,” Granato told Stewart in a memo. More troubling, Granato wrote, is that the administrative services department said it had no record of Smalley work getting underway. Without proper authorization, the state won’t put up its $38 million share of the work, she wrote.
That leaves the city with the choice of temporarily borrowing up to $38 million to keep current on bills, or shut down the Smalley project until the matter is resolved, she wrote.
Educators, however, maintain that state aid is not at risk.
Sarra said she sent copies of three letters over the past year in which the administrative services department authorized the Smalley construction to proceed.
Stewart could not be reached Thursday afternoon for comment.
Malloy defends investment record at penultimate Bond Commission meeting
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, keenly aware of the unwelcome role his record is playing in the campaign to succeed him, spent one of his final State Bond Commission meetings Thursday defending state borrowing made during his tenure to promote economic development statewide and help Connecticut’s struggling capital city.
On a day when a new jobs report showed unemployment dropping to 4.3 percent after four consecutive months of jobs growth, Malloy sparred with Republicans over more than $220 million in borrowing approved by the commission in its last meeting before Election Day, at times sounding a valedictory note about an administration that exits on Jan. 9.
“It’s about housing. It’s about transportation. It’s about education, and many other strengths that make Connecticut a great place,” Malloy said. “And rebuilding our cities has been at the core of our efforts to achieve longterm improvement of the state’s economy and quality of life. We have made the critical investments in those areas since Day One, and we did it once again today.”
Hartford, which teetered on the brink of fiscal insolvency until a state bailout this spring assumed a massive portion of city debt, was a major beneficiary of the commission’s actions at its last meeting before Malloy, a Democrat who previously served as mayor of Stamford, officially becomes a lame duck.
Malloy, who says he expects at least one more commission meeting before he leaves office, was asked by reporters after the meeting if he is anxious to press forward on an agenda that may not be embraced by his successor.
“I suppose I wonder what somebody else is going to do, but I want to remind everybody there’s only one governor at a time,” Malloy said. “I’m governor until the end of my term, and I will work just as hard every day…to the end of the term, as I have previously.”
The panel approved nearly $53 million in financing for several projects overseen by the quasi-public Capital Region Development Authority, which has leveraged private investment in Hartford with low-cost financing and grants. The projects funded Thursday include:
- A development featuring 108 units of housing and commercial space at the corner of Park and Main streets on the southern edge of downtown.
- Loans to support the Downtown North redevelopment project near the Dunkin Donuts Park, the home of a minor-league baseball team, and refurbishment of historic retail buildings along nearby Albany Avenue.
- Development of a grocery store on Albany Avenue, the main thoroughfare though a minority community with limited access to fresh foods.
- Expansion of the Charter Oak Health Center.
- Construction of a state parking garage on Clinton Street near the State Office Building, which is now being refurbished. It will provide parking for state employees and the public, including nighttime patrons of the nearby Bushnell Performing Arts Center.
- Improvements to Great River Park in East Hartford on the Connecticut River.
But given the twin realities of that extensive debt assistance and the state’s ongoing fiscal woes, Rep. Chris Davis of Ellington, one of the Republicans on the commission, asked Malloy why Connecticut now should finance more local projects in the capital city — particularly around a baseball park development that Malloy and legislators agreed shouldn’t receive state aid.
“So, in addition to taking on all of their debt, we said we would pay for all of the other projects they normally do?” Davis asked.Malloy, who chairs the bond commission and sets its agenda, responded that “we participate in those things on a regular basis” in many communities, including some wealthy ones.
The commission unanimously approved $650,000 in financing to assist with affordable housing development in Fairfield, an affluent community on the southwestern shoreline. A playground in Farmington also was approved.
But Thursday’s bond commission agenda also was peppered with far more items for cities and smaller urban centers, all of which were approved.
These included improvements to a public handball court in Manchester, Little League fields and a “splashpad” playground in New Haven, dredging of the channel leading into Cove Island Park in Stamford, lighting for Wolcott Park in West Hartford, and a playscape for a West Haven elementary school.
“It is a proper role of government,” said Sen. John Fonfara, D-Hartford, who also serves on the commission. Fonfara defended the spending on Hartford, noting that Connecticut businesses complain frequently about the state’s struggling cities and the lack of available workers in urban centers. “I think some perspective is necessary.”
Thad Gray, the Republican candidate for treasurer, said Malloy was engaging in pork-barrel spending on his way out the door. “It would be comical if the consequences weren’t so serious for the economic health of our state,” he said.
Davis would be on the losing end of eight commission votes on packages of proposed financing. In two instances, he was joined in dissent by the only other Republican on the 10-member bond commission, Sen. L. Scott Frantz of Greenwich.
Davis sparred with Malloy on matters other than financing for Hartford. More than $50 million in financing for Connecticut Innovations Inc. and its affiliate, CTNext, and another $53 million for Department of Economic and Community Development-endorsed business investments also proved a sore point for the Ellington Republican.
These projects dredged up the memory of Malloy’s first big economic investment, $291 million — borrowed at an interest cost of $150 million — to help finance a 173,000-square-foot genomic medicine research center near the University of Connecticut Health Center campus in Farmington.
A huge chunk of that investment — $192 million — was a loan that would be forgiven provided it created at least 300 new jobs within a decade and retained them for two years. Jackson Laboratory met that requirement early, but Davis noted the company followed up its good fiscal fortune by expanding its Maine-based operation, which breeds mice for scientific research, and not its Connecticut site.
“We’ve bonded over $1.7 billion … for economic development under the Malloy administration with little to no economic growth whatsoever. At some point, eight years in we should be questioning whether this is the way to do economic development,” Davis said.
Malloy was ready with statistics about the state’s economic growth, helped by a favorable monthly jobs report released earlier by the Department of Labor. It showed Connecticut with a fourth consecutive month of jobs growth in August, dropping the unemployment rate by a tenth of a point to 4.3 percent. The U.S. rate is 3.9 percent.
Connecticut now has recovered 113 percent of the private-sector jobs lost in the Great Recession of 2008, but the government sector has lagged, leaving the state with 88.5 percent of the jobs it had prior to the recession. The government sector, which includes two tribal casinos facing increased competition, continued to shed jobs in August.
Malloy said he sees nothing wrong with a smaller state government.
“I wanted smaller government. I ran on smaller government,” Malloy said. “When I was mayor of Stamford, I shrunk city government by 10 percent. That’s what I did.”
Malloy said the private-sector numbers, which are much improved but still lagging much of the nation, are the better metric of the state’s economy.
“What’s most encouraging is that we now have created more than 23,000 private sector jobs over the last 12 months,” Malloy said. “That’s the biggest one-year gain since early 2011, when we were just beginning to recover from the Great Recession. This is not just a blip. It’s a long-term, positive trend, and it should be highly encouraging for Connecticut residents and businesses.”
He said the state’s investments in economic-development are part of that growth, as is his support of Hartford. He singled out two Hartford neighborhoods on the northern and southern edges of downtown, the recipients of state bonding approved Thursday that will leverage $100 million in private investments and produce jobs.
“Eight years ago, it would have been unimaginable to see private investments on this scale at these locations,” Malloy said. “It has been made possible by this administration’s steadfast and collaborative efforts to transform Hartford through development of thousands of housing units, bringing UConn to downtown, doubling down on the state’s presence in downtown with new office space, and many other projects.”
Plan calls for $5 million of improvements to Waterbury’s Municipal Stadium
MICHAEL PUFFER
WATERBURY – Mayor Neil M. O’Leary’s administration plans to spend $5 million adding a restroom-locker room building at Municipal Stadium, along with other improvements to the city’s premier sports complex.
The complex used to have bathrooms and locker rooms under its grandstands. These were to be replaced in a $4 million renovation begun in 2013. But disagreements with contractors and unexpectedly loose soil under the grandstands forced big changes to plans and increased costs.
The city ended up paying an extra $550,000 and got a lot less than anticipated when the complex reopened in 2016. There are new stands, scoreboard, lighting and the complex’s central baseball diamond was freshly landscaped.
But teams now use small rented trailers as locker rooms. There are no showers and no room for trainers. The 2,500-seat complex is served by a handful of porta-potties.
Post University Head Baseball Coach Ray Ricker said the beautiful sports field is one of the biggest selling points for athletes contemplating attending Post. But, invariably, visiting prospects always ask “where are the locker rooms?”
The porta-potties and trailer locker rooms are “kind of like putting hub caps on a Ferrari,” Ricker said Thursday.
“The turf is old and worn out,” Sacred Heart High School football coach Robert Guerin said Thursday as his players warmed up for practice. “It definitely needs to be redone.”
Guerin said the lack of proper locker rooms and facilities is a problem. Students have no consistent place to store their gear. It can be unsanitary.
“The kids are using a trailer with folding chairs, without lockers, like every other school in this city,” Guerin said.
O’Leary is asking aldermen to borrow $5 million for the upgrades. Local officials say they’re hopeful the state government will approve a grant to defray costs.
Even absent a grant, the $5 million shouldn’t cost taxpayers more than they’re paying currently, Finance Director Michael LeBlanc said. Old debt will be paid off as this new debt is taken on, he said.
Mayor Neil M. O’Leary noted that the “debacle” that saddled the recent renovation was launched under his predecessor. He’s using a new “design-build” contracting process in which the project designer and builder are hired under a single contract. If there’s a delay or any other problem, there will be a single entity clearly at fault, O’Leary said.
About $4 million of the project would be spent on the building, officials say, putting it well above earlier estimates.
“It’s clearly more money than we hoped, but it is obviously what you would call doing it right the first time,” O’Leary said. “It will meet the needs of the city for decades to come.”
O’Leary said the added amenities will allow the city to host a broader range of events, including NCAA Division I college baseball tournaments. These events will help draw people to the city and its businesses, he said.
Aldermen on Monday will be asked to set a date for a hearing on the borrowing request. Staff have suggested Oct. 9, the same day the board is to consider a contract with a company to build the bathroom-locker room building.
Mark Lombardo, supervisor of parks and golf courses, said he hopes to see the roughly 8,500-square-foot building finished by early next summer.
“Obviously, we want to attract top events, but it’s also for our own community, our own schools, our own residents to use,” Lombardo said. “We want them to come to a top-rated facility they will be proud to play in. Those memories will last forever.”