CT Construction Digest Friday September 28, 2018

Soccer Team Owner, Hartford Foundation To Cover Cost Overruns At Dillon Stadium

Jenna Carlesso
The owner of Hartford Athletic, the new soccer team scheduled to play at a renovated Dillon Stadium this spring, and the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving will contribute as much as $2.7 million to cover cost overruns at the historic stadium in Colt Park.
The Capital Region Development Authority, the agency overseeing a $10 million rehabilitation of the facility, has said it is struggling to stay within its state-funded budget. Workers at the site discovered that the concrete bases anchoring the massive bleachers were outdated and wouldn’t fit many modern seating systems. They also found that the stadium was a foot higher on one side than the other.
CRDA has considered cutting back seating and forgoing a new scoreboard, along with other embellishments, to manage the problems. The project is now expected to exceed $13 million.
Bruce Mandell, who owns the professional team that is set to play at Dillon, said he will pay up to $1.5 million to help cover cost overruns. The money won’t buy anything flashy – it is meant to keep the basic plans intact, he said.He has also applied for a forgivable, $800,000 loan from the state Department of Economic and Community Development to fund construction expenses. The money is contingent on Mandell creating dozens of jobs.
The Hartford Foundation is also putting in $1.2 million to pay for the turf field, along with $500,000 for improvements to Colt Park.
CRDA had weighed trimming the seating capacity to 5,000, down from 6,000 as originally planned. Mandell said that with the extra money, the capacity will now likely be 5,500.
“It was really important that we get a stadium that the city, the state and our league would be proud of,” he said. “If the experience isn’t delivered in a really great way then the project has a drag on it, and we do not want to have a drag on this project.”
The city owns the stadium, and CRDA would manage it for at least five years under an agreement hammered out last spring. Mandell’s company, Hartford Sports Group, is the primary tenant, though a minimum of 131 days per year have been set aside for community use. Hartford Sports Group would pay $300,000 annually to cover overhead expenses, and another $25,000 that would go into a fund supporting neighborhood events.
The renovations at Dillon, which include new bleachers, turf field, press box, lighting and fencing, were supposed to be complete in April, but officials now say the issues at the site could delay the opening until May. Hartford Athletic’s season will begin on the road in March, and Mandell said he hopes the team will play its first home game at Dillon in early May.
Hartford Sports Group has made arrangements for the team, which is backed by the United Soccer League, to play at Rentschler Field in East Hartford should Dillon Stadium not be ready in time.Jay Williams, president of the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, said his organization wants to devote funds to projects that have a community impact. The new field at Dillon may be used by youth athletic leagues and for cultural events.
The Hartford Foundation announced this week that it has created a subsidiary to help fund key development opportunities in the region. The contribution to Dillon is the first in that effort. Williams said other projects may include affordable housing or businesses that spur entrepreneurship for underserved residents. The Hartford Foundation has so far set aside $4 million for the endeavor.
The $500,000 for Colt Park will cover drainage, new lighting and improvements to baseball fields.
Plans for an updated Dillon Stadium started in earnest last year when CRDA launched the latest request for development proposals. Two earlier attempts to upgrade the facility collapsed.
In November, CRDA chose Hartford Sports Group to be its main tenant. The city council signed off on a deal with the sports group, and the state committed to borrow $10 million to rebuild the stadium.

Millions Of Connecticut Trees Have Been Killed Or Damaged In Recent Years. Taking Them Down Is Expensive.

Gregory B. Hladky
Cutting down or trimming trees that present potential threats to power lines is expected to cost the state’s largest utility $80.4 million this year — an increase of 26 percent over just four years ago.
“I don’t see a light at the end of the tunnel at this time,” Alan Carey, head of Eversource’s tree and vegetation management for Connecticut, said. “We’re noticing that this year a lot of trees you wouldn’t expect to fail are failing.”

Infestations of gypsy moths, emerald ash borers and other pests like the Hemlock woolly adelgid have killed or damaged millions of trees across Connecticut in recent years. State forestry experts say big storms and the two-year-long drought that finally ended in 2017 put additional stress on many trees that were already nearing the end of their life spans. Carey said repeated rains this summer and fall have also contributed to a greater risk of trees falling on power lines. All that water allowed trees to produce more and more leaves, dramatically increasing the weight of their foliage. At the same time, the soggy ground is making it easier for root systems to loosen and be pulled out by the weight of the canopy, according to Carey.

Eversource and United Illuminating began stepping up their tree cutting efforts in response to the multitude of outages caused by major storms in 2011 and 2012. Invasive pests and ongoing weather issues have added to the problems for the utilities, as well as state and local efforts to deal with dead or dying trees. Jim Schepker, a resident of Old Mill Lane in West Hartford who has seen his neighborhood’s power go out “two or three times every winter,” is all in favor of this massive tree and branch cut-back campaign.
“It’s a great idea,” Schepker said this week, as he watched an Eversource contractor chopping down trees just down the street from his house. “It’s a great relief to us to see that this street isn’t going to be so risky anymore.”
There are other Connecticut residents who are appalled to see so many trees being sacrificed to save utility lines. Eversource officials say they do get occasional refusals from homeowners who won’t allow utility contractors to cut down damaged or weakened trees on their property.
If the tree in question isn’t close to power lines or within a town’s right of way, Carey said there is little officials can do other than attempt to convince the homeowner that the tree is at risk of collapse.
“No one is trying to bully anyone,” Carey said. Homeowners who have trees targeted for trimming or removal by a utility crew are notified and given the chance to say yes or no.
But Carey said the “vast majority” of the 20,000 requests from electricity customers a year are pleas for tree removals.
“There are many more dead or dying trees than we can address in any one year within our budget,” Carey said. “We have to prioritize.”
UI spokesman Michael West said his company is spending about $14 million this year on tree trimming and removals to protect power lines serving their 335,000 customers in 17 cities and towns in southern and southwestern Connecticut.
Eversource’s problems and costs are far larger because that company serves more than 1.25 million electric customers in Connecticut in 149 communities, many of those in areas that saw severe gypsy moth infestations.
Contractors hired by the utilities are working in cities and towns all over Connecticut, but Carey said some areas have more problem trees than others. The worst sections of the state are in “eastern Connecticut and some sections of the Connecticut River Valley south of Hartford,” Carey said.
Gypsy moths stripped thousands of oaks and other tree species of their leaves over two successive years. Experts say tens of thousands of trees in those areas were also weakened by the more than two years of drought.
“The sheer degree and extent of oak tree mortality in southeastern Connecticut … has overwhelmed many homeowners, tree wardens, foresters and others,” said Thomas E. Worthley, a University of Connecticut Cooperative Extension System associate professor, in a recent report on the situation.
“Very large dead trees with wide spreading crowns are very numerous along some roadways in eastern Connecticut,” Worthley wrote. He added that while some areas have no dead or dying trees, there are stretches of roads that can have “30-40 dead trees per mile.”
Worthley also warned that there are large sections of dead or dying trees away from roads that will also have a financial impact on the state. “From a timber value standpoint, the potential for severe economic loss for woodland owners is potentially staggering,” according to Worthley.
But the tree issues go beyond those hardest-hit regions in eastern Connecticut.
Along one part of West Hartford’s Old Mill Lane, for example, Asphundh Tree Expert crews hired by Eversource chopped down at least a dozen big trees that were at risk of toppling onto power lines.
“They were mostly hemlocks … completely dead or rotted,” said Martin Goldschmidt, the lead foreman for his tree trimming crew. Goldschmidt, a Burlington resident, and Geoff Blacker and Garrett Eck, both of Simsbury, spent the better part of a week taking down trees on that one small section of road, they said.