CT Construction Digest Monday December 30, 2019

Faster rail service a priority for new CT transportation chief: Getting There
Jim Cameron
Joseph Giulietti is finishing his first year as commissioner of the state Department of Transportation. He’s been busy and less visible in recent months, so imagine my surprise when he offered me a one-on-one, no-holds-barred interview.
“You’ve always been fair, Jim. You’ve hit me hard, but you’ve always been fair,” the commissioner said.
That’s music to my ears, and I hope he feels the same way after reading this column.
Our conversation covered every aspect of the state DOT’s operations from Metro-North to CT2030 to tolls, which we’ll discuss in next week’s column. Here are some highlights.
I reminded the commissioner that before he joined the state DOT, he authored the infamous “30-30-30” report as a consultant to the Business Council of Fairfield County, arguing it was possible to speed up trains to be able to go between Grand Central Terminal, Stamford, New Haven and Hartford in 30 minutes per leg. Any regrets at such a promise?

Giulietti said such speeds are still possible — in a few years. He wants to increase train speeds, redo some bridges to avoid slowing down and save “five minutes here and 10 minutes there.” He also held out hope for faster service on Metro-North trains to Penn Station (after the Long Island Railroad’s East Side Access project is finished going into GCT).

“We’ve got cellphone data from the feds showing that 40 percent of riders to Grand Central continue south to Wall Street, but 20 percent go west toward Penn Station,” he added. He also held out hope for limited, rush-hour nonstop express service from New Haven and Stamford to GCT.
As for new rail cars, the additional 66 M8 cars that were to be delivered this year “are running a bit late,” but he called the M8s a tremendous success. Those M8 cars were supposed to also run on Shore Line East, but even with 405 M8s, the state DOT doesn’t have enough of them even for the mainline given increased ridership.
The commissioner said he’s still looking at diesel, push-pull double-decker cars where a 10-car train could carry almost 2,000 passengers.
But he says electrification of the Danbury and Waterbury branch lines just isn’t in the cards due to the cost.

As for fares: He couldn’t say if they’d go up because he doesn’t know how much money will be in the Special Transportation Fund. But he did pledge cost savings in his department, calling possible rail service cuts “the worst of all worlds.”

While the Walk Bridge project in Norwalk is running late and over-budget, he blamed litigation and said he has firm funding commitments from Amtrak on that bridge and the one over the Connecticut River.
But will the state DOT have enough talented engineers after 2022 when 40 percent of the department’s most experienced staffers will be up for retirement? The commissioner said succession planning is a huge priority for him. He’s even grooming replacements for his own job.
But among the rank-and-file, it’s hard to keep talent.
“I can’t hold onto someone with a CDL (Commercial Drivers License),” he said, “Some of the towns are paying more (than the state DOT).”
With a special session of the legislature coming up in January to consider tolls, there’s a lot hanging in the balance. What does Giulietti think of his boss — Gov. Ned Lamont — and Patrick Sasser’s “No Tolls CT” movement?
Those frank comments next week in the second part of our conversation.

Hartford’s State Office Building: Where history meets modern workspace in $205M makeover
Kenneth R. Gosselin
As hundreds of state workers move into the renovated State Office Building in Hartford, they are relocating into an edifice with a stately, even monumental, 1930s exterior but with workspaces now outfitted for the 2020s and beyond.Inside, the six-story structure at 165 Capitol Ave. has open floor plans, a mechanized “sit-and-stand” desk for each employee and sleek break rooms with stainless steel appliances and pendant lighting.“For me, having worked in this building, it’s a much smarter use of space,” Carol O’Shea, facilities planning manager for the state, said during a recent tour. “It was a rabbit warren. It was offices within offices within offices.”Notably, the 750 air conditioners that once jutted out from almost every possible window are now gone, replaced by a centralized cooling system.State employees started relocating just after Thanksgiving, and by the end of January, the building will become the workplace for about 700. The renovated space will primarily be the domain of the state’s constitutional officers, including the attorney general, comptroller, treasurer and secretary of the state. The structure also will house the state auditors and later this year, the teachers’ retirement board. The majority are moving from leased space at nearby 55 Elm St., built in the same era as the State Office Building. The structure, on Pulaski Circle, is now under contract to be sold for possible conversion to apartments or other uses.
The state faces a deadline of March 31 to move all personnel and equipment out of 55 Elm St. or be hit with a higher month-to-month lease.

The State Office Building renovation is part of a larger plan to consolidate state workers into buildings the state owns to save on leasing costs. At 55 Elm St., the lease cost $6 million a year. The makeover of the State Office Building was controversial for its $205 million price tag, including a $34 million, 1,007-space parking garage on nearby Buckingham Street.Anthony J. Amenta, principal of Amenta Emma Architects, the architectural firm hired for the project, said demolishing the building would have been difficult because it stands in the Elm Street Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places. “Even with replacing everything, it’s still much less expensive than building a building of the same size, regardless of what we have done here,” Amenta said, on the tour.  So far, the project has come under budget by about $3 million, officials said. The project also is seen as a catalyst to the redevelopment of the expanse of parking lots that stretch east of the State Office Building. Amenta said the renovation balances historical restoration of the building’s neoclassical Indiana limestone exterior and historic elements on the first floor with modernized workspaces designed with exposed duct work, brick and beams. In office areas, gone are the heavy oak moldings, cast-iron radiators and a layout — offices opening off narrow corridors — popular when the building was constructed 90 years ago.They have been replaced by open banks of workstations, which initially caused some concern.  O’Shea said the floors are equipped with noise-masking systems that can be turned up, sounding like a low hum of an HVAC system or traffic. “It’s funny, though, the people that we moved in yesterday, their manager said, ‘This is a noisy group of people. I don’t know how this is going to work,’” O’Shea said. “All of a sudden, they are whispering. There’s something called the ‘library effect.’ If you see people working, you tend to lower your voice.” Matt Larock, an assistant attorney general and department head for employment, said workspaces at 55 Elm St. were outdated, and the attorney general’s staff was scattered over several floors and in an annex. At 165 Capitol Ave., the staff is on just two floors. “The biggest thing is that the new building is very vibrant and modern,” Larock said. “It just opens the door for a more collegial setting, more openness, communication. All the folks are accessible to each other, there’s more camaraderie.”Each of the constitutional officers is getting an office in the northwest corner of building with a view of the state Capitol. Their offices include a bathroom, a closet and conference table and monitor. Attorney General William Tong snags the top floor; Comptroller Kevin Lembo, the third; Treasurer Shawn Wooden, the second; and Secretary of the State Denise Merrill, the first floor. Merrill was placed on the first floor because her office is most often accessed by the public, O’Shea said. The main entrance to the building has been shifted from the north to the east, and is marked by a two-story glass foyer with a footbridge traversing the space. “When you add to a building that’s on the historic register, they don’t want the addition to mimic in any way the historic structure,” Amenta said. “So the more contemporary you can make it, the better.” The entrance will border a park nearly the size of a football field, running between Capitol Avenue and Buckingham Street. Sycamore hybrid trees already have been planted, and landscaping is expected to be completed in the spring. The two interior courtyards have been raised 6 feet, allowing a new cafeteria and the front lobby to open directly on them. The courtyard walls — once heavily stained with rust — have been covered with alternating panels of black and white terra cotta.The building’s historic designation demanded the renovation preserve critical architectural elements. Many of the steel casement windows with cast iron mullions were beyond repair, but a compromise was struck to replace them with exact — but more energy efficient — replicas rendered by the original manufacturer. The historic first floor hall with marble colonnade has been restored. Paint was removed from sandstone walls. A decorative ceiling was replaced in the same style after asbestos was discovered. And worn treads on limestone staircases leading up into the building were either resurfaced or replaced. The tour wraps up on the secretary of the state’s floor. Painters are spraying the ceiling and walls.“Don’t lean on anything,” O’Shea cautions. “The paint might still be wet.”

Regional Waterbury, Naugatuck development agency to launch next month
MICHAEL PUFFER
WATERBURY — A new regional development agency pairing Waterbury, Naugatuck and, potentially other communities will launch around the end of January, according to Waterbury Mayor Neil M. O’Leary.
The long-stalled plan would build a new agency on the backbone of the Naugatuck Valley Development Corp., Waterbury’s former development agency.
Waterbury aldermen signed off on the plan in May. Naugatuck officials agreed in August.
Michael O’Connor, volunteer CEO of the NVDC, begged off on making the transition. First, he wanted to conclude a slow-moving negotiation with a tenant for the vacant Timexpo Building.
That tentative lease – first announced in November 2018 – has taken far longer than expected to conclude. On Saturday, O’Connor said he’s done waiting and will call for a meeting of the NVDC board in late January to adopt new bylaws, a new mission and a new board.
O’Connor had hoped to conclude a decade-long lease agreement for Timexpo with the current NVDC board, which is familiar with the building and the proposal. But it no longer makes sense to wait, he said.
O’Leary also said his patience is starting to wear thin and he wants to put the new agency to work shortly after the end of January, if not sooner.
O’Connor, on Saturday, declined to name the prospective tenant, outline the reasons for the long negotiation or predict when negotiations might conclude. It is common practice for municipalities to keep real estate negotiations privileged.
The new agency will handle projects of regional importance, such as an ongoing joint effort between Waterbury and Naugatuck to develop a roughly 160-acre property located in both communities.
In 2005, the city dropped the NVDC as its development arm and launched the Waterbury Development Corp.
Rather than handing over its assets and dissolving, the NVDC carried on as a very quiet nonprofit. It invested its cash reserves and collected rent on the Timexpo building, a three-story building at the Brass Mill Commons that had once served as offices for Scovill Manufacturing.
In recent years, the NVDC spent just over $1 million to support city development and planning initiatives, as well as various area nonprofits.
The plan is to use the agency’s remaining cash accounts and whatever proceeds come from a Timexpo rental to support the new regional development mission.

Waterbury to seek developers for 160-acre parcel
MICHAEL PUFFER
WATERBURY — Sometime within the next two months, the city will officially begin seeking developers for a roughly 160-acre parcel straddling its border with Naugatuck.
Mackenzie Demac, chief of staff to Mayor Neil M. O’Leary, said the city will release a request-for-proposal within 60 days.
In their responses, developers will be asked to outline not just how much they’re willing to pay for the property, but also how they’ll develop it.
City officials are looking for job creation and future taxes. Ideally, they’re looking for a single structure of up to near 1 million square feet. They’ve also drafted up a concept in which the property could be split among several industrial or commercial buildings.
Even without an advertisement, three would-be developers have walked the property in company of Waterbury Economic Director Joseph McGrath.
Two were simply looking for large building sites, and were informed of the potential by McGrath. A third asked to see the site specifically, McGrath said.
“The general reaction is it is developable and it’s fairly level at points,” McGrath said.
The visitors asked about the soil compression, and so the city paid a contractor to perform borings and draft up a geotechnical report, now viewable on the site of the Waterbury Development Corp.
A series of mayoral administrations had floated one idea after another for the site: a dog track, a casino, a mall.
These all fell flat, partially due to the extreme difficulty getting into the property due to steep slopes on the Waterbury side by South Main Street.
O’Leary and Naugatuck Mayor N. Warren “Pete” Hess struck a deal to jointly develop the property, accessing it through a Naugatuck industrial park.
Waterbury owns the land on either side of the border. It will get any sales revenue. The municipalities agreed to evenly split future tax revenues.
The Connecticut State Bond Commission, in June 2018, agreed to grant $2.8 million in economic development funds to push a road and utilities into the property. That work will happen after a developer is picked, so as to tailor infrastructure to a specific user.
McGrath said the responses to the RFP will show if there is significant interest in the property.

CT Construction Digest Friday December 27, 2019

Town prepares for bridge work that will close portion of Marion Avenue in Southington

Jesse Buchanan
SOUTHINGTON – Town leaders are planning for a bridge replacement that’s more than a year away but will require the closure of Marion Avenue over Humiston Brook.Keith Hayden, Public Works director, said the bridge will be shut down for two weeks in the spring of 2021. That approach speeds construction and avoids alternating one-way traffic on the bridge for several months.“There are several good detour routes,” Hayden said. “I think it’s a lot less intrusive both for the neighbors and for the traveling public.”He said the best detour routes are being discussed with Police Department.Town leaders had an information session on the work for neighborhood residents earlier this month. While the project is a long way off, Michael DelSanto, a Town Council member and public works subcommittee chairman, said it will affect people in the area.“It’s going be an inconvenience for a lot of folks,” DelSanto said.Hayden said the bridge’s substructure was rated poor in 1990 and it has been expanded at least once. Concrete is spalling, there’s exposed rebar and the river has undermined it. The bridge is “long overdue” for replacement, according to Hayden.A grant through the state Department of Transportation will provide the town with $1.2 million to construct the bridge. The town is paying $188,125 to design the new bridge and that work is about 30 percent complete.Closing the road also allows construction crews to more easily bring in the crane that will put the new bridge in place.The driveways of adjacent properties will have changes as a result of the construction and the new bridge ramp layout. The four neighbors of the bridge couldn’t be reached for comment Thursday.During the meeting with area residents, Hayden said the options of closing the bridge for a short period or leaving it open and alternating traffic for the summer were presented. He said neighbors understood the reasoning for a bridge closure to speed construction.“Once we explained it to them, they received it very well,” Hayden said.There will be work leading up to and following the two-week closure. Paul Chaplinsky, a Town Council member and public works subcommittee vice chairman, said the entire project will last from spring of 2021 until the fall.“There’ll be prep work beforehand and finishing up work, grading, afterwards,” he said.Construction won’t start until the town receives permits from a host of agencies, including the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Hayden said the town also needs construction easements to do the work. All the approvals are a prerequisite for state funding.“We have to have all the rights of way in place and all the permitting in place before we get approval for the construction funds,” he said.

Lamont’s first year takes a political toll

Matt Pilon
Gov. Ned Lamont had a bumpy first year in office scoring a few political victories but getting rebuffed on arguably his most significant policy push. The political novice delivered on a variety of campaign promises, including increasing the state’s minimum wage and creating a paid family medical leave program for private-sector workers — both controversial policies opposed by the state’s top business lobby.To soothe their angst, Lamont delivered on his pledge to eliminate or reduce several “nuisance taxes” on businesses, and hold income and corporate tax rates steady, despite needing to tackle a multibillion-dollar deficit.The former entrepreneur, who is married to venture capitalist Ann Lamont, has many successful and wealthy business people in his orbit, but he held firm on the worker-focused policies. Lamont said he views the paid-leave program, which will start in early 2022, as the only realistic way small employers will be able to offer the benefit to new parents and workers who need to care for sick loved ones.“I said I was going to do it, I did it and I did it on purpose,” Lamont said in a recent interview with HBJ in his state Capitol office. He noted that the paid-leave program is entirely employee funded through a new payroll tax and if the benefits cost more than the tax brings in, tweaks can be made. “If the numbers are off, we reduce the benefit, we don’t raise the fee,” he said. Legislative traffic jam While he backed a number of major legislative proposals in his first year, Lamont also rode a political roller coaster after waffling on his position on tolls. In his second month in office, after he campaigned on trucks-only tolling, the governor rolled out a much broader plan to toll cars and trucks, raising $800 million annually. He faced fierce opposition and the proposal failed, as did other tolls plans throughout the year. Ultimately, Lamont was forced to revert back to supporting trucks-only tolls and he’s hoping for a January legislative session to vote on that scaled-down proposal, which would generate $187 million in annual revenue, helping to finance $19.4 billion in transportation improvements over a decade. Lamont said attempts to create a reliable funding stream to improve Connecticut’s roads and bridges has been a slog. It’s also made him an unpopular governor, with an approval rating of 24 percent as of October, according to a Sacred Heart University/Hartford Courant poll. Other issues where Lamont failed to muster support included increasing property tax credits for middle-class voters, legalizing recreational marijuana, and working out a deal allowing for another casino and sports betting in Connecticut. His successes include settling a long-running dispute with the state’s hospitals over the provider tax; ramping up Connecticut’s renewable energy push by putting an enormous wind-power contract out to bid; and negotiating a restructuring of payments to the state employee and teachers’ pension funds, producing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of short-term savings. Scoring his performance When HBJ interviewed Lamont in late 2018 about the year ahead he laid out several overarching goals: Help to drive a turnaround in how Connecticut is perceived from the outside and within, and push for a state budget that would provide as much certainty to employers and others as possible. Reflecting on his experience 11 months later, Lamont said he certainly made progress. The two-year, $43.5 billion budget was “a good start,” he said. It didn’t raise rates on major taxes, although it did raise hundreds of millions of dollars in new revenues through new and higher fees and a broadening of the 6.35 percent sales tax. The budget was also signed on time, which has become a rarity in recent years. “That was driving everybody crazy,” Lamont said. “We got it done on time; that doesn’t always happen.” The state is also in a better position when the next recession hits, because it has built up its reserves (to nearly $3 billion) and reduced borrowing. Meantime, when it comes to perception, there’s plenty of self-loathing within Connecticut, Lamont says. But bringing more business leaders into his administration’s orbit, including through the re-organized Connecticut Economic Resource Center and the recently convened Governor’s Workforce Council, raises the state’s stature with outsiders, he said. So too does a change in the state’s debt rating outlook, fueled in part by Lamont sticking to his guns on reducing borrowing through his self-described “debt diet” and refusing to drain the state’s budget reserves, despite steady appeals from nonprofits and myriad others. Finally, Lamont pointed to his efforts to meet with the Wall Street Journal’s famously conservative editorial board, which gave him some mostly favorable ink in September, detailing the deep fiscal hole he’s inherited and giving him credit for not making matters worse. “I’ll take these things when it comes to perception,” Lamont said. “That was really important when it comes to the folks who I’m trying to get to take a second look at the state.” As Lamont heads into his second year, he says his biggest priorities include workforce development and continuing to chip away at the state’s fiscal challenges.

State DOT project makes changes at Naugatuck intersection
ANDREAS YILMA
NAUGATUCK — The state Department of Transportation is half way through a project to improve the intersection of North Main, Union and City Hill streets.
James Zaharevich, a project engineer with DOT, said foundation and underground conduit work is complete.
A new traffic island between Union Street and City Hill Street was built closer to North Main Street than the old one. The new location of the island changed traffic flow for drivers turning left from Union Street onto City Hill Street. Previously, drivers turned before the island, now they turn onto City Hill Street after the island at the traffic light.
The remaining work includes replacing the existing span poles and cable-suspended traffic signals with steel poles with mast-arm-supported traffic signals. When it’s finished, Zaharevich said, there will be an additional traffic signal facing traffic on City Hill Street.
Work to install the new poles and signals is expected to start in the coming weeks, followed by the electrical work, according to Zaharevich. The DOT also needs to paint new road markings.
The project, which is expected to be finished by April 15, is estimated to cost $221,326, Zaharevich said. The project will be paid with federal funds, he said.
The borough hosted a public information meeting, which drew a little more than two dozen people, on the project in December at Naugatuck Town Hall. Some people expressed concerns about school buses and firetrucks being able to make the left turn around the traffic island from Union Street to City Hill Street. DOT officials conducted successful field tests with a school bus and firetruck to make a left around the island, according to Zaharevich.
If a tractor-trailer cuts the corner of the island, the rear of the vehicle would be able to roll over the 2-inch-high island, according to Zaharevich.
Burgess Rocky Vitale and Zoning Enforcement Officer Ed Carter also expressed concerns that the new traffic flow around the island would cause traffic on Union Street and City Hill Street to back up, since drivers turning left from Union Street now have to wait for the traffic signal.
Union Street will have a longer green light for just traffic on the road, which officials say will help traffic turn left through the intersection.
Vitale added the new location of the traffic island cuts down on the site distance and time drivers on Union Street have to see cars that are traveling fast coming off Route 8, which has on- and off-ramps at the intersection.
Natasha Fatu, a transportation supervising engineer with the DOT, said the Naugatuck project is one of many across the state to upgrade and add traffic signals.
The DOT is making improvements at 13 intersections in nine towns, Zaharevich said. The entire project is estimated to cost roughly $2.5 million, he said.
Fatu said changes can be made after the project is complete.
“As the maintenance life of a signal decreases, we upgrade our signals periodically. This is just one in a number of signals that we’re replacing,” she said. “We can adjust. We work with the town after the signal gets installed. They can alert us to any concerns. Then we’ll review again.”

Construction company moving into former Volvo dealership in Torrington
BRUNO MATARAZZO JR.
TORRINGTON — Burlington Construction Co. plans to move their offices to the former Mitchell Volvo dealership on New Litchfield Street next spring.
The local construction company purchased the former dealership for $550,000 from Volvo Realty Sales LLC, a company owned by the Mitchell family.
Mitchell Volvo closed its Torrington location in August 2018 and consolidated its business into the Simsbury location.
The 57-year-old building will require some renovations to doing away with the dealership features and convert it into office space and a conference room, according to Justin Giampaolo, president of the construction company.
The new spot will more than double the space at Burlington Construction’s longtime offices at 67 Prospect St., which has about 3,200 square feet. The new location has 6,600 square feet.
Giampaolo said the company’s 16 employees are expected to move to their new home in April. The new space will offer space for possible expansion in the future.
“We have a good reputation and do quality work and as time goes on, we can add people in the right spots,” Giampaolo said. The company worked on several projects in recent years in Torrington, including the expansion and renovation projects at Brooker Memorial, the Torrington Library and Cook Funeral Home. The company is currently working on an addition project at Torrington Saving Bank’s main offices downtown.

CT Construction Digest Tuesday December 24, 2019

Looney, Fasano Tackle Tolls, Transit
Paul Bass
Passenger tolls will be off the table for good when the state legislature begins 2020 by revisiting the great unresolved question of 2019: How to pay for a transportation overhaul?
So said the State Senate’s leading Democrat, President Pro Tem Martin Looney, and leading Republican, Minority Leader Len Fasano.
The pair offered listeners a status update on the Great Transportation Fix Quest during a joint appearance Monday on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven.”
Gov. Ned Lamont started the year by calling for highway tolls for both passenger vehicles and trucks in order to fund an overdue $21 billion 10-year rebuilding of roads and bridges and the rail and (allegedly) bus systems. That didn’t fly — in part because only months before he ran for office claiming he would never, ever seek passenger tolls. Just truck tolls.
So Lamont ended his first year without being able to convert his first-year-in-office political capital into passing difficult big legislation. Now, before the calendar gets too near the November elections, Democrats are seeking to pass some form of a transportation plan in a January special session.
Fasano said on “Dateline” that people have lost confidence in government to spend money the way it promises, and therefore won’t trust government to use toll money long-term on transportation rather than divert it to other uses. “The lottery was going to be for education. Casinos were going to be for municipal aid,” he said. “Promises were made that never came true.
Looney embraced Lamont’s latest plan to fund the 10-year transportation plan — now pegged at $19 billion — with the trucks-only tolls on bridges. He argued that a constitutional amendment created a transportation “lockbox” can provide the guarantee needed for toll receipts to be spent as promised.
Fasano said he agrees with the goal of finding the money (he pegged the figure at $18.6 billion) for a 10-year transportation fix. His caucus has produced an alternative plan that avoids any tolls. He noted that Rhode Island passed a trucks-only toll plan — and that is currently mired in a protracted legal challenge. Why pass a plan that might turn out to be illegal and need to be cashiered, he asked? The Republican alternative plan would remove $1.5 billion out of the state’s rainy day fund, use the money to pay off some of the state’s pension debt, then devote the subsequent savings on annual debt service payments to fund the transportation plan.
Looney countered that he believes the Rhode Island plan will survive the court challenge, and argued that it would be a mistake to raid the rainy day fund. The state has worked hard to build that fund back up to 12 percent of the budget; analysts have rewarded the state with ratings upgrades.
“It is important to preserve that rainy day fund until we get to 15 percent,” Looney argued.
The Republican plan has also raised concerns about the state’s ability to address an expected recession in the near future.
Fasano countered that the fund would still have $1.2 billion in it. That’s far more than the state has needed to draw down in past economic downturns, he said. And he predicted that the for self-interested reasons, politicians in Washington will not allow a recession to begin taking hold at least through the 2020 election season.
As Hartford’s top legislative Democrat and Republican, Looney and Fasano have forged a cordial and productive working relationship that stands in contrast to the national political moment. They are able to disagree respectfully, continue to negotiate, and find common ground — especially on health care legislation. They have shepherded to passage bipartisan measures addressing medical office “facility fees” in the past. The two predicted that the 2020 legislative session will see more bipartisan health care legislation. They said they’re open to laws allowing the import of lower-cost prescription drugs from Canada, or instance, and the funding of “navigators” to guide patients through the ever-more-complex health care system.
The senators have played an influential role in the debate over proposed expansion of the runway at Tweed-New Haven Airport. Looney and Fasano represent the sections of New Haven and East Haven, respectively, that house the airport. “There is a path to making Tweed more of a viable airport,” Looney said Monday. For that to happen, he said, Tweed must produce more “community benefits” (like more home soundproofing) for East Shore neighbors and shift its entrance to the East Haven side so travelers would drive there along commercial Hemingway Avenue rather than the residential Annex and Morris Cove. Fasano predicted that a state study will show that it makes more sense to expand commercial service at Sikorsky Airport rather than Tweed. If Tweed is to expand, he said, corporate interests pushing the expansion should foot the bill. “Yale and Yale-New Haven talk about the need for this. They have the money,” he said. “They should put the money where their mouth is.”

The Downtown Highway That Could Drive Hartford’s Comeback
Anthony Flint

 
HARTFORD, Ct.—If Connecticut’s capital city was looking to adopt a theme song, Elton John’s hit single “I’m Still Standing” would be a fitting anthem.
Battered by population loss and the departure of manufacturing and corporate anchors, Hartford has been on the brink of bankruptcy for several years. In response, the city has taken a sophisticated multi-pronged approach in plotting its post-industrial future: It’s implemented a series of zoning and land-use reforms, encouraged adaptive reuse of historic buildings, and improved mobility with new transit and better facilities for bike riders and pedestrians.
But in an illustration of how a mid-sized legacy city can work smart and still face existential challenges, Hartford finds another monumental task in its way: a crumbling piece of 20th-century infrastructure, a stretch of the Interstate 84 viaduct adjacent to downtown that is well past its expiration date. Completed in 1965, the elevated thoroughfare was part of the national urban-renewal campaign to ram freeways through downtowns, and it did extraordinary damage to Hartford’s urban fabric. The ideas for what to do with it now range from a plain-vanilla rebuild to a tunnel system more elaborate than Boston’s Big Dig.

Optimists might argue that the viaduct dilemma represents an opportunity for city-building on a grand scale. But most are unhappy—even resentful—about being stuck with this problem; it’s like working hard to rehabilitate a sore shoulder, then being told you need an expensive hip replacement.
Ultimately, the choices ahead will hinge on how much the state, and even more so, the federal government, is willing to invest. It will also be a test of the belief that a megaproject will truly save the day—or whether a more frugal and incremental solution would be the wiser path.

Hartford’s story is painfully familiar, of glory days giving way to poverty, crime, and abandonment. Founded in 1635, Hartford lays claim to a number of American firsts—the nation’s oldest continuously operated public art museum (Wadsworth Atheneum), the oldest publicly funded park (Bushnell Park), and the oldest continuously published newspaper (the Hartford Courant). Mark Twain wrote many of his treasured works while a resident there.
Through the turn of the last century, manufacturing and innovation was robust—Hartford gave the world firearms, typewriters, sewing machines, bicycles, and one of the nation’s first electric cars. The city also surged in the finance and insurance industries, earning the sobriquet as “the nation’s filing cabinet.” But the hard times arrived in the postwar period through the 1960s to 1990s, with a real estate collapse, a restructuring in finance and insurance, and a downsizing of defense contracts that accelerated manufacturing decline.

The exodus of tens of thousands making healthy salaries led to an inevitable hollowing out; the original G. Fox & Co. department store closed; the beloved Hartford Whalers NHL team left town. Aetna insurance—an important employer and symbol of local commerce— announced its departure to New York City in 2017 (though more recently promised to stick around a little longer).
Despite 11 years of economic expansion nationally, unemployment remains stubbornly high—11 percent at last check. Property tax revenue—the foundation of municipal fiscal health—has declined as the cost of city services increased. Hartford considered filing for bankruptcy in 2017, saved by effectively a state bailout on some debt. More support is unlikely as Connecticut struggles with fiscal woes, exacerbated by the departure of major companies like General Electric, which is moving from Fairfield to Boston.
Orchestrating a comeback has taken different forms. The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston’s Working Cities Challenge promotes worker retraining and education to develop appropriate skills in the transition to a more technology-based economy. City leaders also tried some standard economic development pump-priming—a César Pelli-designed science center that opened in 2009, a small reclamation of the Connecticut River, a convention center and hotel. In the late 1990s, Hartford almost became home to the New England Patriots, but the team withdrew its proposal and got a new stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts.
In the past few years, however, the thinking has shifted away from such silver-bullet schemes and more towards laying the foundation for more incremental, entrepreneurial development.

“If the U.K. can afford to make this investment to rebuild its infrastructure and economic potential, why can’t we?”

Led by planning chair Sara C. Bronin—wife of Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin—the city’s zoning code was completely overhauled, bringing down confusing and unnecessary regulatory barriers. (In one example of bureaucratic red tape, Hartford had different rules for factories making rice versus vermicelli.) Special areas were created to encourage adaptive re-use of abandoned industrial properties for small-sized “maker spaces.” Incentives were thrown in to reward energy efficiency and composting, and the city encouraged everything from hemp to beekeeping. Absurd minimum parking rules that required two or more spaces for each new residential home were replaced by parking maximums, plus guidelines for encouraging bikes and electric vehicles. Building is mostly now “as of right,” under a form-based code that does away with outdated rules separating uses.“We’ve really felt within the city we have to take matters into our own hands,” Bronin told me in an interview for the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy’s Land Matters podcast.
Zoning reform is just one part of a broader planning effort. The city recently kicked off a new comprehensive planning process called Hartford 400—a reference to Hartford turning 400 years old in 2036. Surveys posed big questions to the citizenry about what the city should look like by that time. The Capitol Region Council of Governments, representing 38 communities and a population of nearly 1 million in the metropolitan region, started using the cutting-edge practice of scenario planning—making multiple projections into the future, to manage uncertainty and be more nimble in setting policy prescriptions or plunging ahead with physical interventions.
Amid all that earnest activity, however, the nagging question remains: what to do with the two-mile section of I-84 just outside downtown, which in an ironic reference to past glory is known as the Aetna Viaduct. Its projected lifespan ended in 2005, and engineers are now worried about catastrophic failure.Replacement options under consideration include just fixing the viaduct so it is in a state of good repair ($2 to $3 billion), or lowering the highway with a series of decks ($4 to $5 billion). A study commissioned by the city calls for a more artful integration of the urban streetscape and the area’s existing rail and bus rapid transit system, known as CTfastrak.
From there, things get more creative. Connecticut Congressman John Larson seeks to bury not only I-84 in a tunnel, Big Dig-style, but also I-91 just to the east of downtown, in the process reclaiming waterfront property along the Connecticut River. The estimated price tag: at least $10 billion.
Yet another proposal would take the need to rebuild I-84 and combine it with the ultimate in big plans: a re-routing of Amtrak’s Acela through New Haven, Hartford, Springfield, and Worcester. Linking those post-industrial cities to New York and Boston via the Northeast Corridor’s popular high-speed rail service would open up economic development opportunities all along the way. Vehicular and rail traffic could be combined in a multi-level tunnel through Hartford, similar to Boston’s never-built North-South Rail Link, which was proposed to be bundled with the Big Dig.

That solution is found in the Rebooting New England initiative, a University of Pennsylvania studio led by Robert Yaro, president emeritus of the Regional Plan Association. The plan was inspired by the U.K.’s Northern Powerhouse scheme for the north of England, which includes $100 billion in infrastructure, downtown regeneration, applied research, skills training, and governance reforms to revitalize a similar set of older industrial cities from Manchester to Newcastle.

High-speed rail has great potential to link proximate hot-market cities, inherent in the proposed Cascadia route providing a speedy trip between Portland and Vancouver, British Columbia (and plainly seen in high-speed rail connections that have long been in place in Europe and Asia). A new rail route through New England would benefit not only New York and Boston, but all the left-behind places in between, Yaro argues. Planners need to look at these larger collections of cities as megaregions, he says—broader geographies that open up all kinds of possibilities as agglomerated housing and labor markets. Those priced out of Boston and New York could find more affordable housing in places like Hartford—as long as they have 21st-century transportation infrastructure to get to work.
“We all know cities are where young talent wants to live, and these cities in Connecticut have great bones,” Yaro says. Re-routing Acela through Hartford could cost up to $100 billion, and combining the rail with the I-84 reconfiguration would require billions more. But the payoff, he believes, would be activating a megaregion to its utmost potential. “The combined economy of New England and the New York metro region is $3 trillion—making it the fifth-largest economy in the world, larger than California’s. If the U.K. can afford to make this investment to rebuild its infrastructure and economic potential, why can’t we?”

Earlier this month, Connecticut officials announced that they will put the brakes on all plans to consider the bigger picture of the region’s transportation challenges.

All the while—and amid doubt that massive investment in infrastructure is forthcoming—momentum is growing for yet another idea: getting rid of the highway altogether and replacing it with surface boulevards—a feat accomplished in cities like Portland, San Francisco, Milwaukee, and Rochester. A similar process is underway for the Sheridan Expressway in New York City and under consideration for New Orleans’ Claiborne Expressway and in Syracuse, New York, to name a few.The Congress for New Urbanism’s Highways to Boulevards database calls out the Hartford I-84 stretch as the perfect place for such a dramatic conversion. Backers of this approach say the surface boulevards could be designed to accommodate the roughly 175,000 vehicles using the current interstate system every day—and would avoid spending billions on an elaborate reconfiguration. “It’s time to stop doubling down on expensive urban planning mistakes and kick I-84 out of downtown Hartford,” wrote Connor Harris, a policy analyst at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research.
So go big with a transformative megaproject, or find creative ways to make more incremental progress, similar to the successful efforts in zoning reform? That is the decision confronting one legacy city in its ongoing quest for regeneration. Planners are going to have to bring their best game to study the scenarios and keep the hope alive.
 

As five towns wait for Hartford Line train stations, transit-oriented developments move forward
Sean Teehan
Gov. Ned Lamont’s 10-year, $21-billion transportation plan announced in early November included funding for two new Hartford Line train stations in Windsor Locks and Enfield, which are seen as key to driving transit-oriented developments in those two northern Connecticut towns.
But while funding for those stations could be in jeopardy after Lamont failed to garner political support for wide-scale tolling, those communities and others hoping to one day land a train station have already kick-started plans to build apartments and other mixed-use developments that could thrive with easy access to rail service.
“We’re actually doing things,” said Chris Bromson, town manager of Enfield, which plans to spend up to $4.2 million for a train platform if state funding for a $50-million train station doesn’t materialize. “We’re not waiting, we’re not sitting on our hands with our hand out.”
Lamont’s CT2030 transportation investment plan, which included tolling cars and trucks in 14 locations, was soundly rejected by Republicans and Democrats, forcing the governor to support a scaled-down, trucks-only tolling option he says would raise $187 million in annual revenue, helping to finance $19.4 billion in transportation improvements over a decade. A spokesman for Lamont said the administration still views the train stations as a critical investment, but stopped short of guaranteeing funding for them under the trucks-only tolls plan.

Lawmakers could vote on that plan in January during a special session.

The Hartford Line currently has eight stops — seven in Connecticut, and one in Massachusetts — which have already spurred various developments along the 62-mile Springfield-to-New Haven route.
Investments in new mixed-use developments near existing or proposed Hartford Line rail stations have totaled approximately $430 million, according to Judd Everhart, spokesman for the state Department of Transportation.
Those projects, which encompass 1,400 residential units and 242,000 square feet of commercial and office space, date back to at least 2010, years before the Springfield-to-New Haven line expansion debuted, but in anticipation of its potential impact.
In Berlin, for example, there is an $18-million plan to build a mixed-use village with 76 apartments and 19,000 square feet of medical office and commercial space on a four-acre parcel near the town’s recently built train station at 51 Depot Road.

However, there wasn’t enough funding to build train stations in five other communities: Enfield, West Hartford, Windsor Locks, Newington and North Haven.

In recent years those towns have quietly put together development plans near potential train-station locations, hoping that would get them to the front of the line when state funding becomes available.
Lamont’s transportation plan originally chose Windsor Locks and Enfield as winners, though that funding now remains uncertain.
Regardless, most of these towns are still moving forward with transit-oriented development plans, hoping that stations or platforms will one day be built in their backyards.
Enfield has long lobbied for a train station in its Thompsonville section, Bromson said. That desire played a large role in recent development in the area, like the conversion of the former Bigelow-Hartford Carpet Mills factory on North Main Street into a 471-unit apartment complex adjacent to where the train station or platform will go.

The luxury apartments are about 95 percent occupied, Bromson said, adding that such living units with close proximity to rail service attract older individuals who are downsizing, and younger people fond of public transportation.

“There isn’t this love affair as much today, especially among young people, with cars,” Bromson said. “They use mass transportation like my parents and grandparents did; so that’s a remarkable change.”
West Hartford was hoping for a train station near its CTfastrak busway stop on Flatbush Avenue, said Kristen Gorski, the town’s economic-development specialist.
A rail stop would bolster efforts the town has made to attract developers to the New Park Avenue corridor, and make the area less car-centric, Gorski said.
In 2015, the town amended zoning regulations to allow for mixed-use development in the New Park Avenue district, which is home to several key manufacturers like Colt, to allow for residential as well as industrial development.

Three years later, Trout Brook Realty Advisors completed the $20-million 616 New Park mixed-use development, which includes 54 apartment units and 3,000 square feet of retail space, Gorski said.

The developer has already proposed a similar 52-unit mixed-use apartment project nearby, Gorski said.
West Hartford and Department of Transportation officials were relatively early in the planning stages for the train station when funding was cut, Gorski said. But she believes development that has already occurred near the CTfastrak station at the intersection of New Park and Flatbush avenues demonstrates the likelihood of further development benefiting Hartford as well as West Hartford if the train station were built.
“We were incredibly disappointed as a community to find out that funding was cut,” Gorski said. “I think the Fastrak stations have helped us a great deal in terms of increasing transit-oriented development and having conversations with prospective developers who may now have interest in that area where they may not have before.”
Planning ahead
Windsor Locks already has a Hartford Line rail platform, but the town wants to build an actual station on Canal Bank Road.

That station would sit next door to the $64-million, 160-unit Montgomery Mill apartment redevelopment that debuted in August.

Windsor Locks Director of Planning and Development Jennifer Rodriguez said the project was partially meant to encourage DOT to build a train station nearby, but it’s demonstrating other benefits.
“The Montgomery Mill is a perfect example of a transit-oriented development project, a catalyst site,” Rodriguez said. “We’ve had an uptick in small businesses on Main Street, we have more inquiries than we have space right now, so we’re hopeful that more new construction proposals will come in the near future.”
Additionally, the town recently selected a development group — Windsor Locks TOD LLC, led by project manager Todd McClutchy of Stamford-based JHM Group of Cos. — to lead the conceptual planning of a mixed-use development on Main Street near where the train station would be built. The area is known as Windsor Locks Commons.
The development group proposed a multi-phased project that would include construction of one or two four-story buildings with 15,000 to 20,000 square feet of commercial space and up to 70 residential units.

The town also proposed fixing a retaining wall and developing a parcel across the street from the Commons into another mixed-use building and parking garage, but no developer has officially expressed interest in that project.

Meantime, the town of Newington recently created a 64-acre mixed-use overlay zone north and south of Cedar Street, where a $55-million train station would go.
The zone would make transit-oriented development possible, said Andrew Brecher, the town’s economic-development director.
Brecher said a train station in Newington would be good for the town, and the Hartford Line.
“This Newington station has the greatest potential for any [proposed station] along the Hartford Line,” Brecher said
Waiting game
North Haven First Selectman Michael Freda said his town is an attractive place for a train station because of recent development that’s been done near the proposed site off the Route 40 connector, which is also accessible to Hamden and Cheshire residents.
The spot abuts a 144-unit apartment building, and medical facilities that employ about 400 people, Freda said.
The train station could also be a catalyst for redeveloping the vacant Pharmacia and Upjohn Company LLC site on Stiles Lane, but without state funding, North Haven can’t muster the funds necessary for the project, he said.
“The unknown is when the state transportation fund will have enough funding in it to get this project under construction,” Freda said. “So where it leaves us right now? We’re in a pause phase, we’re on hold.”

The ‘godfather’ of implant dentistry eyes $20M-plus hotel-event center in Bristol
Greg Bordonaro
Dr. Gerald A. Niznick is considered a pioneer in the dental implant business, but he’s a relatively unknown name in Connecticut.
That could soon change.
Niznick, who by accident became the owner of the city of Bristol’s only hotel, has a grand vision to build a second nearby hotel and an accompanying 35,000-square-foot event center that he says will become a first-class destination wedding venue unlike anything that exists in the state.
“I’d like for this to be a wedding destination where people come from all over the place,” Niznick told Hartford Business Journal in a recent interview. “It will be a hotel, banquet facility and reception hall all in one place.”

Niznick, a Las Vegas multimillionaire with few ties to Connecticut, isn’t just a dreamer with a grand vision. Since 2010, he’s already invested $25 million of his own money to renovate and rebrand the former Clarion Hotel at 42 Century Drive into a 141-room DoubleTree by Hilton.

He plans to invest another $20 million to $25 million to build the event center and a second, 82-room Home2 Suites by Hilton hotel, which is a newer, modern extended-stay brand.
The hotel would connect to the event center and current DoubleTree hotel. There would also be a 400-space underground parking garage.
Niznick said he’s going to pay cash to finance the project so funding is essentially in place. He wants to break ground in May, but he’ll need to go through a city approval process.
Bristol Mayor Ellen Zoppo-Sassu said she supports the project.

Niznick, a 76-year-old serial entrepreneur, recently acquired three long-vacant parcels immediately west of the DoubleTree hotel from Otis Elevator Co., which has a testing and research center in Bristol at 99 Century Dr. That space would be used to house part of the new development, which would extend into the 229 Technology Park, an industrial park whose tenants include Amazon.

Sports broadcast giant ESPN and family theme park Lake Compounce are also located nearby.
Niznick said his DoubleTree hotel hosts a lot of wedding parties but not actual weddings. He wants to capture that business by offering a first-class facility that competes with the likes of the Aqua Turf in Southington and other nearby venues. The hope is that the venue, which would also play host to banquets, corporate and other special events, will feed the hotels and vice versa.
“I’m just betting putting a second hotel there will create a critical mass,” Niznick said.
Zoppo-Sassu said the project was brought to her attention about six months ago and she met Niznick over breakfast at the end of the summer to discuss it.

“I believe [Niznick] sees marketplace demand,” Zoppo-Sassu said. “We have other conference facilities in neighboring cities and towns that take a lot of Bristol business and I think he is looking to fill that market need locally. I also think he is looking around at some of his corporate neighbors and seeing that there is a potential opportunity for them to do additional events in town.”

Zoppo-Sassu said manufacturers in and around the 229 Technology industrial park host events, as does the regional chamber of commerce, that could use the new facility.
Amazon, which has a package-sorting facility in the city, is currently using the DoubleTree hotel for employee training, she said.
“We look forward to any partnership and expansion opportunities that he continues to explore knowing that the end product will be very high quality,” Zoppo-Sassu said.Starting and selling
Niznick was born in Canada, went to dental school to train as a prosthodon
tist and then became a pioneer and serial entrepreneur in the dental implant field, having amassed a few dozen patents and founded and sold multiple companies.

Barron’s magazine once called him the “godfather of American implant dentistry.”

Most notably he started Implant Direct LLC in 2004, a dental implant business that offers a broad range of surgical, prosthetic and regenerative products and services. He said he sold that company for $300 million to a division of industrial conglomerate Danaher Corp.
Niznick is no longer in the dental implant business, but he’s been spending his money on new business ventures.
For example, he now owns Acromil Corp., a California-based aerospace company whose customers include Boeing, Lockheed, Northrop, Kaman Corp. and Barnes Aerospace, according to its website.
“I get into ventures that I like to play at,” said Niznick, who is an aviation buff and has a pilot’s license. “It keeps me busy.”

Niznick had no significant ties to Connecticut but more than a decade ago he said he made a loan to an investor who purchased the Bristol Clarion Hotel, which was built in 1988 and had a troubled history, including falling into foreclosure in 2007.

He says the investor failed to pay him back and he eventually took over the property with plans to sell it, but he couldn’t find a buyer.
“It was such a dump I couldn’t do anything with it,” Niznick said.
So instead, he decided to make it an investment property. It remains the only hotel he owns.
In 2013, the hotel changed flags, converting from a Clarion to a DoubleTree by Hilton, following a 13-month, $20 million makeover.

Niznick said he’s continued to make upgrades to the hotel, and his total investment is up to $25 million.

“It‘s worked out very well — I’m getting a 3 percent return,” he said.
Upgrades to the 141-room hotel, which Niznick said has become a cultural center of Bristol, have included a renovated lobby and a new five-story, 19-suite tower with a separate, private entrance for guests. Elsewhere on the property, two dining areas are available, including The Willows restaurant and TimeOut Sports & Pizza Bar.
His planned Home2 Suites by Hilton would be an extended-stay hotel, which Niznick said is growing in popularity. There is an extended-stay Homewood Suites nearby in Southington that he says is always busy.

Environmental, logistical concerns present challenges to developing Hartford’s waterfront
Joe Cooper
Cities like Buffalo, Pittsburgh and Cincinnati have been able to reinvent themselves with a slew of modern, mixed-use waterfront developments.
But building along a riverway to boost a city’s live, work and play profile isn’t always easy. In fact, sometimes it’s nearly impossible.
Environmental advocates say that’s largely been the case for decades in Hartford as several developers have tried but failed to come up with a commercial development that makes economic and environmental sense to build along the Connecticut River downtown.
Development there has been especially difficult because of potential impacts to an underground levee system that curbs the level of riverfront flooding on what is widely considered the narrowest part of the Connecticut River.

That is one of many challenges that will stand in the way of a New York developer who recently proposed building a sprawling “amphibious” promenade with restaurant, retail and event spaces south of the Mortensen Riverfront Plaza.

George Bryant of Aqua Ark LLC says his team has the technical know-how to make two proposed riverfront developments, ranging from $9 million to $40 million, viable.
Bryant says the promenade would be built on an acre of city-owned land and have the ability to float and rise with water during flood conditions using groundbreaking new technology.
“We think that it’s game-changing that people can reimagine what floodplain construction can be,” he said. “We think it has worldwide implications and we are pretty excited to show it.”
However, questions remain over how a riverfront development in Hartford would impact an extensive floodplain and an underground flood-control levee system that helps protect the river.

Also, part of the land proposed for development may be contaminated as it was formerly used as a coal stockpile in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

There is also uncertainty about how utilities, supplies for vendors, emergency services and handicap ramps would make their way down to the waterfront structure.
Other logistical issues include that the river beneath the nearby Founders Bridge is just 700 feet wide bank-to-bank. Environmental experts say the narrow segment of the 400-mile river typically triples the velocity of water flow, making it difficult for any boats attempting to access a riverfront structure, environmental and other riverfront experts say.
The smaller channel, among other factors, also contributes to regular flooding on Hartford’s riverfront, as water elevations rise up to eight feet during rain and snowfall in the winter months. Climate change, meanwhile, is also generating more severe storms and, as a result, additional flooding and ice flows, according to the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP).
Of course, all of these issues could be resolved, but they would require a significant investment by any developer, which could make the project impracticable financially, experts say.

Securing equity financing for the project would be Aqua Ark’s first order of business if it believes the city supports the development, Bryant said.

But they would also need to score permits and approvals from a long list of local, state and federal entities that get a say in riverfront development in the Hartford area.
Aqua Ark, Bryant said, is collaborating with engineering firms from Germany and Westport on designing the floating structure, connecting utilities and mitigating impacts to the levee system and nearby Mortensen Riverfront Plaza.
Bryant said he is confident the floating technology, similar to infrastructure used for the foundation of the Lumière Place Casino in St. Louis, can be successfully deployed in Hartford.
“We think we can justify the investment to investors,” said Bryant, whose firm has built floating structures overseas but not yet in the U.S. “It has to be a solid piece of engineering, and a solid economic play.”Seizing the moment
Hartford City Councilman John Gale is well versed in the issues thwarting riverfront development.
It was Gale’s resolution last year that requested the city, Riverfront Recapture and Greater Hartford Flood Commission to develop proposals for marinas, houseboat moorings, restaurants or floating residences to generate economic activity along the riverway.
Gale said he sees major commercial potential for the riverfront, which has grown into a recreational hotspot in recent decades with help from Riverfront Recapture, a nonprofit that manages Hartford’s and East Hartford’s riverfront parks and riverwalk trail system. It’s time, he says, for the city to leverage its riverfront as an economic engine like “every other city has.”
Gale says Aqua Ark’s proposal, or perhaps another one, offers an opportunity for the state and Army Corps of Engineers to begin discussions on how to upgrade the river’s levee system and address other issues preventing development.
“There are a number of hurdles that anyone has to jump to get any type of economic development that I want to see at the river,” Gale said. “But I think it’s time to look at how to exploit our riverfront. This proposal might provide the catalyst that would procure that.”Development red tape
There have been a handful of developers looking to build on Hartford’s riverfront in recent decades, but only two made it close to the finish line.
DEEP, which would need to approve any riverfront proposal, has denied two applications in the Hartford-East Hartford area since 1990. One 1991 proposal called for a floating restaurant on the river in East Hartford and another a few years later sought to build a barge-mounted floating home, according to DEEP.
DEEP in a letter following Gale’s resolution last year cautioned Mayor Luke Bronin that any riverfront proposals would raise numerous public safety and environmental concerns that would make authorization “problematic.”
Jeff Caiola, assistant director of DEEP’s land and water resources division, said he is worried about how Aqua Ark’s proposal could impact the river’s flood-control system.
To gain DEEP approval, the developer would need to at least provide sufficient proof that the commercial structure would not displace water in the river and would comply with Connecticut’s strict flood-management program, which Caiola says is more rigid than federal standards. Any upgrades to the levee system would also require federal oversight and will be costly to operate and maintain, he said.

Aqua Ark is not seeking public subsidy to offset development costs, but if it does, Caiola says environmental and safety standards would significantly increase.

“We have been on record denying any proposal there,” Caiola said. “There are some significant risks to the public. From our position, we would want the city to be in contact with the Army Corps about the impacts to the flood-control system.”
Riverfront Recapture leaders say they would like to see commercial development on the river, but understand the regulatory hurdles in play.
Marc Nicol, Riverfront Recapture’s director of planning and development, said Aqua Ark has been receptive to learning more about the longstanding environmental concerns of building on Hartford’s riverfront. That includes $1 million in potential upgrades needed to rework an underground concrete anchoring system.
But Nicol said he doubts this proposal or any others would make financial sense without some level of federal or state funding. Still, he said riverfront development will ultimately be driven by a developer’s willingness to spend and their projected return on investment.

“If it’s something that we feel will be a reasonable request and will benefit Riverfront Recapture, I think our board would support the developer,” he said. “We would like to see commercial development along the riverfront, but we are being realistic.”

CT Construction Digest Monday december 23, 2019

Norwich seeks state approval for $167 million sewer system upgrade
Claire Bessette
Norwich — After years of negotiations with the state, revised plans, rising costs, Norwich Public Utilities hopes it has developed a plan to upgrade the city’s nearly 100-year-old sewage treatment system that continues to pollute Norwich Harbor and the Thames River when heavy rains overwhelm the system.
NPU will propose a $167 million compromise plan to the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection in January in response to the agency’s rejection of NPU’s previous $150 million proposed upgrade plan and to counter DEEP’s request for a much larger $270 million pollution control plan.
NPU officials presented the new proposal to the Board of Public Utilities Commissioners on Thursday and will meet with DEEP officials in January in an effort to win state approval to move forward finally with the upgrade project. The state issued an order to the city in 2016 to correct the frequent sewage and stormwater overflows into the Thames River, which happen even with storms with as low as a quarter- to a half-inch of rain.
NPU General Manager Chris LaRose said the city utility will stress to the state that Norwich could not afford the state's proposed $270 million upgrade, which would call for installing controls on sewage overflows that would capture untreated runoff from all storms up to the worst average expected event in a typical two-year period.
NPU’s compromise plan would require average sewer rate increases of 5 percent per year for the first five years starting in 2021 for the project to be funded with a combination of state grants and low-interest loans through the Clean Water Fund. Construction would be done over a five-year period, and afterward, NPU is seeking state approval for a “capital recovery break” to ease the costs to ratepayers before continuing with longer-term system upgrades, LaRose said.
The proposed compromise plan has three main components: an $80 million major upgrade to the sewage treatment plant on Hollyhock Island on Falls Avenue, a $53 million new wet weather combined sewage overflow treatment plant to be built on Falls Avenue and a new Rose Alley pumping station underground at the city-owned viaduct parking lot.
Larry Sullivan, NPU wastewater integrity manager, said the new wet weather treatment plant would come on during storms when combined sewage and stormwater flows typically would overwhelm the existing treatment plant. The flow would be diverted into the new treatment facility, where solids and debris would be screened out and liquids treated with chlorine before the water is released into Norwich Harbor. When the storm ends and flows drop, the diverted system would shut down gradually.
Sullivan said in designing the new proposal, Norwich has learned from the experiences of the four other Connecticut cities already working to upgrade aging and polluting systems. New Haven learned that just cutting off stormwater collection from the sewer system meant the water ended up in private lawns and basements of homes and businesses. The better plan would be to divert the overflow into a wet weather treatment system.
Currently, the Rose Alley pumping station behind Main Street, the system’s largest, can handle 11 million gallons per day. The proposed new pumping station would handle 60 million gallons per day with a screening system to collect all manner of debris that ends up in the sewage system — 2-liter plastic bottles, a full-size mop and handle and a bath towel, to name a few recent items, Sullivan said.
NPU officials estimated the proposed upgrades would reduce the number of overflow events by 93 percent and the overflow volume by 80 percent.
If DEEP approves the compromise plan, NPU officials estimated final design work would be done in 2020 and 2021, and construction could start in 2021.
No interruptions in the daily operations are anticipated, Sullivan said, which is why it would take some five years to build. He likened the timeframe to state repairs and upgrades to a major highway. If you could close Interstate 95, for example, you could repair and repave it within days. But by keeping it open, the work could take years.

Opinion: Fight over tolls not going away
Patrick Sasser
Does our new governor and our elected state officials truly believe this past year has just been about fighting against tolls, or has this been a cry for help?
There is no doubt the year 2019 has been the year of the tolls (no tolls) battle royale, but as I sit and reflect on this past year, it’s clear to me this is much bigger than just tolls.
As our grassroots movement began to grow legs during the early spring of 2019, shortly after Gov. Ned Lamont took office, it was clear to me the people of our small state have had all they can take from the enormous tax machine under the gold dome in Hartford.
You could hear it in people’s voices when we would gather at one of the 40 roadside rallies we held across the state. People just could not stand to have another penny taken from them. As the movement grew and more than 100,000 people signed the petition, it was clear the taxpayers in Connecticut had reached their breaking point.
When 2,500 people gathered on a beautiful Saturday on the front steps of the Capitol they cried out “No Tolls!” but the true message was that Connecticut must stop the overtaxation. We are hurting the middle class and those who are struggling to live here. This was the real message coming loud and clear from the people of Connecticut.
The question I have is, why haven’t the governor or the Democratic leadership picked up on this? No matter how many toll plans they come up with, trucks and cars or trucks only, the cries from the people will always remain the same.
What’s worse for everyone — the governor included — is that the trust between the government and the governed is broken.
So I am encouraging the governor to dig deep into all departments in the state starting with the Connecticut Department of Transportation. Conducting these audits by a third-party vendor would show that the governor is willing to stand shoulder to shoulder with us the taxpayers. Let’s find out if every penny the state is collecting is being used efficiently and wisely. Almost every person who enters into the role of CEO of a business or corporation starts with finding ways to make the business more cost-effective and looks to make sure the company is not bleeding money.
It is important to have a modern, reliable and safe transportation system. The economic future of the state depends upon it. However, more taxes in the form of tolls is not the way to get there.
Ned Lamont came from the business world; he should understand this is a valid request from the people. Just look at what happened when the Port Authority was audited. Please, governor, for the sake of bringing back trust, order this audit before coming to the taxpayer for a single penny more. Tolls are now dead in the year 2019, yet the fight will continue in 2020 (an election year). Although it will be a new year, the feelings of the taxpayers will not change.
This is not just about stopping tolls; it’s much bigger now.
The governor has failed to mention the people. He’s talked about big business, labor unions and fellow lawmakers who all stand shoulder to shoulder with him, but the people have been left out of the conversation. What about us? What about “we the people”? Do we not matter, do we not have a say?
No Tolls CT gave every Democrat, Republican, independent or anyone of any party affiliation the platform to speak out and to be heard.
We don’t need to sit in a corner and let others dictate the path our state will follow. It is the people who choose the path of government, not the other way around. We have a voice, and we’re not going anywhere.
Patrick Sasser, of Stamford, is the founder of No Tolls CT.

CT Construction Digest Friday December 20, 2019

GOP accuses Lamont of playing politics with road funds
Eric Bedner

Several area towns received funding for projects during Wednesday’s state Bond Commission meeting, but Republican leaders are criticizing Gov. Ned Lamont, who chairs the commission and sets its agenda, for not including town aid for snow removal and roads as the winter season ramps up.

Senate Minority Leader Leonard A. Fasano, R-North Haven, and House Minority Leader Themis Klarides, R-Derby, wrote to Lamont and Democratic leaders last week, requesting the governor postpone the bond meeting until a comprehensive bonding package is completed, therefore providing the town aid for roads.

A large part of any forthcoming bonding package, however, depends on how much the state plans to borrow for transportation, which can’t be determined until the debate regarding tolls is over.

Fasano called the bonding delay a “political powerplay” by Lamont, who Fasano said is using borrowing as leverage to garner support for tolls.

“They are holding municipal aid hostage, hoping to pressure lawmakers into voting for tolls in exchange for needed money,” Fasano said. “It’s dangerous politics that puts our towns, our roads, our bridges, and our safety at risk.”

“The towns and cities are being punished for other political agendas and that’s not fair,” Klarides said.

She noted, however, that municipalities will continue to plow their roads, but some could be forced to use reserves or other funds not allocated for that purpose.

Office of Policy and Management Secretary Melissa McCaw, the city of Hartford’s former chief financial officer, said that municipalities often budget necessities, such as snow removal, in a way as to ensure services continue regardless of what happens on the state level.

“I do not believe that municipalities are at risk in ensuring that they meet their snow removal operations,” she said, adding that Lamont is committed to working to develop a bonding package in the near future.

Fasano continues to push for the Republican transportation plan that relies heavily on $1.5 billion from the Rainy Day Fund, but state Treasurer Shawn Wooden asserts that some of the outlook improvements result from the state’s multibillion-dollar reserve fund that protects the state in the case of a looming recession.

Wooden noted that the Rainy Day Fund, which is expected to reach $3 billion by the end of next fiscal year, is the result of bipartisan collaboration among legislators who included protections in budgets.

Wednesday was only the fourth Bond Commission meeting of the year. The drastic decrease in borrowing from previous years, which Lamont wanted when calling for a “debt diet” shortly after his election, “sends a signal around the country that Connecticut is getting its act together,” he said.

Along with the state’s reserves, the shift to less borrowing has been recognized by Wall Street as Connecticut has begun to see bond rating improvements from rating agencies.

“I think our fiscal discipline has been recognized around the country,” Lamont said.

Area towns, including Ellington and Enfield, will benefit from the Bond Commission’s approvals.

The Ellington landfill will receive a portion of $750,000 in funds for repairs to its methane gas system and provide drinking water filtration systems to two homes near the landfill that the state is currently providing bottled water to as a short term solution to contamination, according to Department of Energy and Environmental Protection officials.

Enfield will receive nearly $1.3 million in grants to assist with the rehabilitation of the 12-unit limited equity Pleasant Street Cooperative.

Nearly $1.3 million will also go toward roof replacement and repairs at the Carl Robinson Correctional facility, as well as a portion of $12 million for energy improvements at Osborne Correctional Institution in Somers.

Commission members also approved $15 million for the Small Town Economic Assistance Program, which small municipalities can use for various projects.

The grants are capped at $500,000 and towns must apply once Lamont releases a priority list in January.

The commission also approved allocations for energy audits of state facilities to help achieve Lamont’s first executive order, funds for clean water, transportation, affordable housing, and open space.

Senate approves $1.4 trillion deal to avert shutdown amid impeachment fight
HTV National Desk
The Senate on Thursday approved a nearly $1.4 trillion spending deal to keep the government funded and avert a shutdown at the end of the week.
The Senate passed the deal by green-lighting two separate legislative spending packages, which are now both cleared for President Donald Trump's expected signature. Government funding expires at midnight Friday. The first measure voted on in the afternoon passed by 71-23. The second legislative package passed later in the day and approved by a vote of 81-11.
The sweeping legislative package for funding through fiscal year 2020 includes a military and civilian federal worker pay raise, federal funding for election security grants and gun research, and a repeal of three health care taxes designed to help pay for the Affordable Care Act, alongside a wide variety of other provisions.

The deal maintains the current funding level of $1.37 billion for a border wall, significantly less than the roughly $8.6 billion the administration had been seeking for the president's signature issue, which triggered a shutdown at the end of last year, but the administration will still have the authority to transfer funds for the wall from other accounts.

Despite an escalation of partisan tensions over impeachment and a series of holdups, including the president's request for billions in border wall funding, top congressional negotiators succeeded in locking in the broad outlines of a bipartisan funding deal late last week.
House lawmakers passed the two legislative packages earlier in the week that together make up the overall spending deal and the 12 regular annual bills needed to keep the government running.
"A lot of hard work brought this appropriations process back from the brink," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said in remarks on the Senate floor Wednesday, adding that it would result in "stable, full-year funding for our armed forces, including research and modernization" and "deliver on vital domestic priorities," such as funding infrastructure and transportation projects.
How the spending bills deal with the border wall and other immigration measures
The White House signaled in negotiations that it would accept significantly less money -- the current level of $1.37 billion -- than requested on the border wall in exchange for maintaining the authority to transfer funds from Pentagon accounts to finance new wall construction, according to people involved in the talks. That agreement made it into the final deal.

The administration will maintain transfer authority, but the deal does not include money backfilling the $3.6 billion in military construction funds the administration transferred earlier this year to fund the wall -- a key priority for Democrats.

In another setback to the president's border wall push, a federal judge last week blocked the administration from using billions of dollars in Pentagon funds for wall construction, saying the administration cannot use military construction money to build additional barriers on the southern border. The ruling targets only one set of Pentagon funds, however, leaving in place money the Supreme Court allowed to be used earlier this year.
During a closed-door House Democratic caucus meeting Tuesday, debate over the spending bill was contentious, with liberal members from the Progressive Caucus and Congressional Hispanic Caucus objecting to any money for the border wall in the bill and the ability of Republicans to maintain transfer authority for the president.
According to one Democrat in the room who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal internal caucus deliberations, Reps. Pramila Jayapal, of Washington state, and Joaquin Castro, of Texas, each spoke up about their frustration that with Democrats in the majority in the House, they shouldn't be making such big concessions on the border wall. Leadership's message was this is the reality of governing with Republicans in control of the Senate and the White House.
The spending package also establishes a new position within the Department of Homeland Security designed to oversee immigrant detention.
The position -- dubbed immigration detention ombudsman -- serves a number of functions, including addressing complaints and conducting unannounced inspections of detention facilities. Over recent months, immigration facilities have come under increased scrutiny following overcrowding and deaths in custody. The position appears intended to address some of those concerns.
Deal includes wide variety of provisions
The sweeping deal includes an increase of $22 billion relative to fiscal year 2019 levels for defense spending and delivers a 3.1% military pay raise along with a pay raise for federal civilian workers. It provides $425 million in funding for election security grants.
Lawmakers also agreed to ban the sale of tobacco products to anyone younger than 21 and to repeal several health care taxes.
The medical device tax, health insurance tax and "Cadillac" tax on employer plans -- all of which have faced bipartisan opposition on Capitol Hill and have been targeted by health care industry lobbyists for years -- would be repealed in the agreement. Their opponents on Capitol Hill have been looking for a popular bill they can be attached to, and this spending package is the last train leaving the station in 2019.
The spending bill also includes $25 million for gun research at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health, which has long been a Democratic push. It maintains the long-standing prohibition on any funds being used to advocate for or promote gun control.

East Lyme officials still seeking residents’ input on conservation, development plan
Mary Biekert
East Lyme — Town officials tasked with rewriting the town’s Plan of Conservation and Development over the next year say they still need more resident feedback on issues such as growth and development, as well as conservation and sustainability.
The plan, which is required of every town in Connecticut and must be updated every 10 years, acts as a guiding document and roadmap for town leaders and officials on conservation and development efforts. Town officials, as well as boards and commissions, are expected to use and work from the plan as they make decisions regarding those issues, said Planning Commission member Michelle Williams, who also chairs the town’s POCD subcommittee tasked with rewriting the 256-page document by the end of 2020.
“This is creating a roadmap for the town so we all know the shared vision of where we are going,” Williams said. “But one of the things that we really want to do while we are updating (the plan) is to pull in as many people as possible, whether members of the public or representatives, to get them as a stakeholder in the document.”
So far, however, the subcommittee has received only a few hundred responses to an online questionnaire it formed earlier this year to help learn what direction residents think the town should be moving in. The hope, Williams said, is to get many more responses by the end of December, when the questionnaire will close.
The POCD “is the plan for our town,” Williams said by phone Thursday. “And residents should be pulled in to have their opinion heard.”
As part of the efforts of the subcommittee, composed of about a half-dozen members and formed earlier this year, Williams said the group recently held a workshop advising the town’s boards and commissions on how to submit their input on the POCD. The subcommittee also plans to hold several public forums allowing for more resident input. The first is scheduled Jan. 25.
In years past, the town has budgeted tens of thousands of dollars to hire outside help to distribute and conduct professional surveys to residents. But because the town did not budget for such services this year, the POCD subcommittee has been tasked with creating and distributing the informal questionnaire it is working with now, Town Planner Gary Goeschel said last week.
“We are hoping to get a general sentiment and some good ideas,” Williams said. “Mainly, we are hoping it will give us some clues as to what issues are very important to people and that we should dive into more.”
Williams said one of the biggest issues she’s heard residents talk about recently is town growth.
“There’s a lot of opinions out there, and I don’t think we have a handle on, or a clear mandate on, the pace of development,” Williams said. “We have been a growing town for the last 10 years plus. Is that something we want to continue doing? Or should we slow it down?”
“I think that is the key question that will lead into all kinds of other questions. If we don’t want to develop, how can we maintain our open space? Are we protecting our water quality? Are we utilizing our coastline effectively? Are we protecting our coastline from strengthening storms?” Williams said. “We need resident opinion about all of this.”
“This is really a questionnaire to guide our research and show us what we need to dig into more. We wanted to give people an opportunity to think about what’s in the POCD and tell us what they think in an open-ended and anecdotal way,” Williams said. “A good idea can come from anywhere. What is your great idea for the town of East Lyme?”
East Lyme residents can fill out the questionnaire online at bit.ly/ELPOCD.

Bond Commission Approves Funding For Landfill Work Including PFAS Remediation
Shawn R. Beals
The commission unanimously approved $750,000 Wednesday, adding to a previously-approved $700,000. The money will go toward a variety of upgrades needed at closed landfills in Hartford, Ellington, Waterbury, Wallingford, and Shelton.
Included in the project is work at two homes near the Ellington landfill, where PFAS chemicals have leached into the drinking water. The Department of Energy and Environmental Protection has been supplying bottled water to those homes, but will add filtration systems to remove PFAS (per- and polyfluorinated alkyl substances), the potentially hazardous substances found in thousands of consumer products.
DEEP has been responsible for the landfills since a 2014 reorganization of the former Connecticut Resources Recovery Authority that created the Materials Innovation and Recycling Authority.
Work in Ellington also includes repairs to the methane collection system on the site and filtration at the nearby homes. Work is also being done to determine whether other homes in the area are also seeing PFAS contamination.
DEEP staff said runoff is not collected or treated at the Ellington landfill like it is elsewhere in the state, but testing will be done throughout 2020 to determine where groundwater systems might be affected.
Landfills have been identified by the Governor’s PFAS Task Force as one of many significant sources of PFAS presence in the environment, and the Nov. 1 task force report recommends extensive further study of the contamination they can cause.
In Hartford, extensive work to the groundwater and runoff collection and treatment systems will be done, DEEP said. The North End site off the side of I-91 appears to need the most extensive list of improvements.
The Metropolitan District Commission filed its second lawsuit against the state, alleging that DEEP is responsible for PFAS contamination in the groundwater from the closed Hartford landfill.

A DEEP spokeswoman said the list for work in Hartford is “repairs to the groundwater control pumping system, repairs to methane gas wellheads, repairs to the landfill cap, remediation of erosion due to aging stormwater control systems, repair or replacement of leachate collection tank, and groundwater treatment evaluation.”

Improvements in Waterbury and Shelton include items like fending installation, tree removal and slope stabilization.
Legislators and the state must carefully monitor and address Connecticut’s waste needs, said State Sen. Kevin Witkos, R-Canton. He said the needed work at the closed landfills is just one part of a long list of deficiencies, including major renovations needed at the Materials Innovation and Recycling Authority’s trash-to-energy plant in Hartford.
“We do have an ongoing issue at the MIRA plant with not only its two turbines but the possibility of relocating it or tearing that down and rebuilding on the same location,” Witkos said during the meeting Wednesday. “At the end of the day it’s incumbent on us in the state to address our trash to energy versus shipping our stuff out of state to landfills.”
MIRA’s two turbines have been out of service many times in the last few years due to their age and heavy workload. The massive overhaul necessary to modernize the system that burns trash and captures the energy is expected to cost around $330 million.
Executive Director Thomas Kirk said Wednesday that if the agency’s current schedule holds, it could begin a three-year construction project by the end of 2020. Cost estimates came in recently higher than initially expected, so towns will need to be convinced that they should be a part of a regional trash infrastructure even though it will likely mean large disposal fee increases, he said.
MIRA will hold a meeting on Jan. 8 with municipalities to pitch the remodel plan, which needs long-term agreements with towns in order to finance the renovations.