Mary Biekert
East Lyme — The Board of Selectmen on Wednesday chose an architectural firm to complete renovation design plans needed for the town’s future policing and public safety facility.
Silver, Petrucelli & Associates, an architectural and design firm based out of Hamden and with offices in New London, will redesign the former Honeywell office building at 277 W. Main St. into a state-of-the-art policing and public safety facility that will “serve the town for the next 50 years,” First Selectman Mark Nickerson said by phone Thursday.
“We are very confident with their ability,” Nickerson said. “They came in at a good, competitive price, and they are a proven firm with a great reputation.”
The 30,000-square-foot Honeywell building, which sits on 17 acres on the far western side of town, was chosen by officials last year as the site for a new policing facility. Nickerson announced the proposal to purchase and renovate the building last November, with voters passing the proposed $5 million plan at referendum in February.
Plans for the building outline consolidating the town's dispatch center, fire marshal's office and emergency operations center, which currently are housed in Flanders, with police, while plans for the police department include training rooms, locker rooms, office space and conference rooms, as well as a sally port and holding cells, said Paul Dagle, a selectman and chair of the Public Safety Building Vision Committee, which is overseeing the renovation of the facility.
The proposed building also would include an evidence room, armory and storage, all of which are now housed at the Waterford Police Department.
The town's 24-officer police force currently is housed in a small building on Main Street, which the town leases from Millstone Power Station owner Dominion Energy for $1 a year.
The Honeywell building was purchased for $2.77 million in May, leaving an additional $2.23 million approved for design and construction costs, among other expenses, to renovate the office building.
The committee, after a lengthy request for qualification and research process, unanimously selected Silver, Petrucelli & Associates at a meeting earlier this month before forwarding their selection to the Board of Selectmen for approval, Dagle said.
Dagle said design costs will fall somewhere between $110,000 and $137,500, depending on which services the Vision Committee decides to pay for.
Nickerson said the design period will last four to five months and that the building may be move-in ready by the summer or fall of 2020. Town officials will negotiate and sign the contract with the firm next week, he said.
“It’s a slow process, but it’s a very confident building process where I know the town will be set for the next 50 years on this building,” Nickerson said. “We want to do it right and we want to do it once and we want to be confident of the scope of work that will be done.”
Dagle said that based on qualifications, cost and scheduling, Silver, Petrucelli & Associates was the right choice and had “the right renovation experience applicable to our task of renovating the building.”
“Not that the other firms didn’t have that, but we thought they would do a good job,” Dagle said. “We felt they gave us the best chance of coming out with the best results in the end, the best public safety building to serve the needs of the town.”
Construction underway at Hartford HealthCare facility in Mystic
Mystic — Hartford HealthCare announced Thursday that it has begun building a $24 million medical building off Interstate 95 and Coogan Boulevard.
The 47,000-square-foot project, scheduled for completion in 2020, will provide neuroscience services, including a movement disorders center for conditions such as Parkinson’s disease, tremors and Tourette’s syndrome, as well as neurosurgery services, making it a hub for Hartford HealthCare’s Ayer Neuroscience Institute.
The health center is located next to Mystic Aquarium on the Perkins Farm campus, a large mixed-use development that also will include upscale housing for active adults and professionals.
Many of the physicians who will move into the building have a presence in the Mystic area.
"The center's design was inspired by Mystic's heritage and the feedback we received from the local community," said developer and owner David Lattizori. "We've all heard of destination resorts. This will be a destination medical center, a place where people can get comprehensive care in one convenient location."
For more information, visit www.hartfordhealthcare.org/mystic.
CT June housing permits up 10%
Joe Cooper
Permits for new housing construction across Connecticut rose about 10.5 percent in June.
There were 327 homebuilding permits issued last month, up from the 296 permits issued in June 2018, according to the state Department of Economic and Community Development (DECD).
The permits were issued in 104 cities and towns the U.S. Census Bureau regularly samples.
Among the 327 permits, 160 covered construction of single-family dwellings, 85 were for five or more living units, and the remaining 82 were for two-to-four living units.