In Biden's infrastructure moonshot, a big question: Can the nation still achieve its highest ambitions?
WASHINGTON - Dueling proposals to fund the nation's ailing
infrastructure network follow decades of timidity in Washington - a period that
has seen roads crumble and a warming climate threaten investments of the past.
A line of presidents couldn't make transformational
investments in infrastructure, despite big promises and yawning national needs.
For those in the trenches, the question in 2021 is whether the nation still can
make good on its aspirations - from upkeep of its physical foundations to
meeting the challenges experts say will intensify with a changing planet.
"NASA just landed on Mars and we had a big
vaccine," said Costa Samaras, who worked as a transportation engineer in
New York City and now studies infrastructure resilience at Carnegie Mellon
University. "We can do big things - but we should be doing big things in
infrastructure, right?"
Biden and his supporters have echoed those appeals in
seeking to build support for a $2.3 trillion infrastructure and jobs proposal,
which Republicans have knocked as too sprawling and expensive. Biden also set a
goal of halving U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, work that would be
spurred by his infrastructure plan.
But experts say achieving those ambitions would take a level
of creativity and perseverance that have failed a generation of leaders in
Washington.
Standing at a union shop floor in Pittsburgh to unveil his
proposal, Biden invoked the collective accomplishments of the 20th century as a
national muse, citing World War II, the build-out of interstate highways and
the space race against the Soviets as inspirations for his approach.
He called for modernizing transportation networks while
battling climate change through a vast addition of new jobs targeting both
priorities. "A blue-collar blueprint to build America," he called in
a joint address to Congress.
Republicans have seized on his broad definition of
infrastructure - which includes racial justice issues, worker rights and community
colleges - to dismiss Biden's plan as a grab bag stuffed with liberal
priorities, backed by job-killing tax hikes.
Both parties say they want action on infrastructure. That's
where the consensus starts to fray, as it has many times before. Communities
across the nation are looking to Washington's leaders, wondering whether the
outcome in this time will be different.
The broader ambitions of Biden's plan reflect those of some
local leaders, transportation experts and environmental advocates outside
Washington who have spent decades pushing for aggressive action on
infrastructure.
After Biden won the election, Pittsburgh joined cities in
Ohio, West Virginia and Kentucky in calling for hundreds of billions in federal
dollars for electric cars and trucks, efficient buildings, clean energy and job
training.
Elsewhere, expansive plans would stretch transit lines
through traffic-choked Los Angeles, electrify passenger ferries in Washington
state and dig a new train tunnel into Manhattan. A partner in the nation's
capital could fuel major accomplishments, advocates say, with some calling it
an Eisenhower-esque opportunity.
Transportation experts, mindful of the interstate highway
system's launch in the 1950s, are calling for undoing the polluting and community-bulldozing
practices of that earlier national push, ideas embraced by Biden and his team.
"It won't have that same kind of concrete quality, so
to speak, of something like the interstate highway network,"
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in an interview with The
Washington Post. "It's got a different shape because the investments are
distributed. So this is often playing out one community at a time."
As the biggest source of U.S. emissions, transportation is
at the center of Biden's climate plans. For many, the challenge is clear: how
to cut the annual tally of more than 1.9 billion metric tons of emissions from
the transportation sector to zero, improving quality of life and helping to
stave off severe environmental consequences.
The scope of the endeavor is significant.
Samaras compared the scale of improvements needed to address
climate change in the infrastructure realm to the equivalent of building
Boston's Big Dig in nearly every American community. That massive and
disruptive tunnel-and-bridge project took a quarter-century and cost nearly $15
billion.
Reflecting a view shared by many climate and infrastructure
experts, Samaras urged a shift from gasoline and diesel to electric vehicles,
and a vast expansion of public transit. He also called for redesigning roads to
make them safe for widespread biking and walking. And, he said, that must be
done while rejecting racist development practices of the past, such as routing
highways through Black neighborhoods.
Biden's plan calls for spending $115 billion to rebuild
highways and bridges, reduce congestion and cut emissions, but even more - $174
billion - to spur electric vehicles. Tens of billions more would support clean
energy and climate research.
"We're in a crunch here. We've got to reduce emissions
and we need to do it quickly," said Robbie Orvis, a modeling expert at San
Francisco-based Energy Innovation, which advises policymakers on climate
efforts and helps tally the effects of potential policies.
During the campaign, Biden set a goal of reaching net-zero
emissions from all sources by 2050, and his targets at an April climate summit
would be a major step along that path. His infrastructure plan embraces some of
the policies experts say are needed to get there, but do not go far enough to
meet the most ambitious goals.
It makes sweeping commitments, promising that "every
dollar" spent on rebuilding infrastructure "will be used to prevent,
reduce and withstand the impacts of the climate crisis." And 40% of the
benefits of that spending will go toward disadvantaged communities, according
to his plan.
Although efforts to calculate the effects of Biden's
proposed policies are ongoing, Orvis said the president's push for installing
500,000 charging stations, offering rebates for electric vehicles and doubling
federal transit investments would cut emissions. But the part of the plan that
could have the biggest effect on transportation-related emissions is the
proposed clean energy standard, which would require utilities to transition
from fossil fuels to clean technologies.
"The more you decarbonize the grid, the more benefit you get from moving to (electric vehicles),"Orvis said. "They're all part of the same story."
Regardless of efforts to shape emissions, highway
construction will be a significant part of any infrastructure package that
passes Congress. An existing highway and transit funding bill is set to expire
this fall.
Biden has decried research showing 1 in 5 miles of highways
and major roads are in poor condition, and he points to tens of thousands of
bridges that need work. His plan would modernize 20,000 miles of road, take on
10 of the nation's biggest bridge-reconstruction projects and repair 10,000
smaller bridges.
Republicans say the focus should be on conventional ideas of
infrastructure. Dismissing Biden's plan as an "expansion of the welfare
state," Senate Republicans offered a $568 billion alternative that
prioritizes roads, but also includes spending on broadband and water projects.
The Republican plan is hundreds of billions of dollars smaller than Biden's and
does not call for raising corporate taxes.
"This needs to be about roads and bridges," Rep.
Sam Graves of Missouri, the top Republican on the House Transportation
Committee, said at a hearing with Buttigieg. "A transportation bill needs
to be a transportation bill," not a catchall or environmental wish list,
he said.
Despite calls for shifting priorities, the bulk of
government transportation spending in the United States goes toward roads.
According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, in
2018, the federal government spent about $98 billion on transportation, with
state and local governments spending another $273 billion. About two-thirds was
used for highways, one-fifth for transit and rail, and 13% for aviation.
The need for more funding is great, according to the
American Society of Civil Engineers, which routinely surveys the nation's
infrastructure needs. Its most recent report card, issued in March, pegged the
level of spending needed to bring the nation's transportation networks into a
state of good repair by 2029 at $3.1 trillion.
Local leaders also have a vast appetite for money.
A team at Rice University's Kinder Institute surveyed the
nation's 100 largest metropolitan areas last year, developing a list of 1,800
proposed infrastructure projects that local officials identified as top
priorities. More than a third were transportation projects.
They included a $1 billion investment in the Port of New
Orleans and $56 billion for high-speed rail in Texas. But others were far more
modest, such as $500,000 for bicycle and pedestrian projects in the Tampa area.
The federal government needs a clear vision for the future
it's trying to create, said Adie Tomer, who leads the metropolitan
infrastructure initiative at the Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan think
tank. For Tomer, that means abandoning the expanding patterns of development
that have shaped the nation since its founding.
Meeting the kinds of environmental and social goals the
Biden administration has prioritized means looking inward, he said.
"The United States has enough financial resources to
invest in infrastructure at any scale that we need to remake the country,"
Tomer said.
The House last year passed a five-year road, rail and
transit funding bill that was designed to get states - which are responsible
for spending highway funds - to fix existing roads before building new ones,
and to get officials to factor climate change in their planning.
Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., chairman of the House
Transportation Committee and the bill's architect, said any new transportation
funding legislation can't simply be an extension of policies crafted in the
1950s.
"The Eisenhower program was 'let's link the country
with what he saw - the autobahn in Germany,' " he said. "That was a
plan for its time and we were the envy of the world for a while."
DeFazio said it's time to move on: "I'm not going to
Eisenhower 8.0. That's not how we deal with our problems of the 21st century in
addition to dealing with climate change."
Debate over the 2020 bill was bitter, with Republicans
accusing DeFazio of upending the committee's bipartisan approach.
Biden returned to the swing state of his birth for his own
infrastructure launch. Pittsburgh's riverside steel plants, fueled by coal,
helped build the nation but left the City of Bridges thick with pollution as it
hemorrhaged jobs and people. Civic leaders have since sought to tap innovations
in transportation and energy to make it a model for cleaner growth and new
technology jobs.
Biden said his proposed infusion of federal dollars, paid
for by partially undoing Trump-era corporate tax cuts and raising other taxes,
would be the biggest American jobs investment since World War II. The plan
would dig out and replace all lead drinking water pipes, strengthen American
manufacturing and spend hundreds of billions of dollars caring for seniors and
people with disabilities, part of what his plan calls "care
infrastructure."
About $600 billion would go toward transportation, according
to the White House.
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, the top
Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee, said in an interview
before Biden announced his plan that the GOP is open to problem-solving on
emissions and building on efforts by automakers to embrace electric vehicles.
"There's definitely a willingness to engage," she said.
But in a statement after Biden's announcement, she was sharply critical, calling Biden's plan "a partisan proposal that goes far beyond" the traditional notions of infrastructure and undermines West Virginia's fossil fuel economy.
The nation is saddled with outdated and, at times,
vulnerable infrastructure.
Samaras, an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon, and
other researchers calculated that 97% of the interstate highway system was
built before 2004 - the year the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
started to update rainfall information used to design infrastructure.
"All of those roads were designed for the weather of
the 1950s and '60s," Samaras said. If taxpayers are funding new road work,
"we need to ensure that the vehicles on that roadway are zero-emissions,
and that the infrastructure is built to last so we're not on the hook to
rebuild it before we planned."
Tomer said different approaches to overhauling
transportation will work best in different parts of the country.
Cities that developed in the 19th century can more easily
emphasize bikes and pedestrians. But in large Western cities, the challenge is
greater and probably involves promoting denser development, he said.
"No reasonable amount of transit construction can
overtake what the built environment tells people to do," Tomer said.
"In Dallas - and most of the country looks like Dallas - we have to
drive."
In Los Angeles, leaders are bumping up against the limits of
car-based development.
LA Metro, the region's transit operator and transportation
planning agency, in the fall adopted a $400 billion, 30-year plan to overhaul
how the 10 million residents of Los Angeles County get around. The plan aims to
more than double the number of daily transit trips to 2.5 million by expanding
the rail system and dedicated bus routes. It also calls for 100 miles of new
transit lines, nearly doubling the size of the system.
The proposal is explicit about its aim to reduce the number
of car trips, but at the same time it would invest billions in highways to try
to relieve congestion.
"We are not the enemy of automobiles," said
Phillip Washington, chief executive of LA Metro. "What we're saying is you
can use both."
Washington served as the leader of the Biden
administration's Transportation Department transition team. He said he has
briefed Buttigieg on the Los Angeles plan.
The plan is funded, in large part, by local sales taxes,
which voters agreed to raise in 2016. Washington said that means his
"basket is at least half full" but added that help from the federal
government is vital.
The proposal in the nation's second-largest city pays particular attention to what it calls "equity focus communities," those with a large number of lower-income or non-White residents, or where car ownership is low. That work is also a priority of the Biden plan.
Buttigieg said he thinks of the opportunity to remake
infrastructure not only in terms of Eisenhower but also President Abraham
Lincoln, who established the nationwide train network. When it came time to
engineer a highway system, the process did not abolish trains but recognized a
more important role for cars, Buttigieg said.
"We're recognizing a new reality, which is that policy
shouldn't revolve around the vehicle, it should revolve around the human
being," he said. "Sometimes that human being is in a car, sometimes
on a train, sometimes on foot or two wheels, sometimes flying - and all of that
needs to be incorporated into our vision."
Walking and cycling have not been a focus of federal
transportation policy. Road funding has been routed primarily through state
transportation departments, which emphasize large projects for drivers.
Karina Ricks, director of Pittsburgh's Department of
Mobility and Infrastructure, said the agency identified gaps in the city's
sidewalk network that it wants to fill in to benefit transit users and
pedestrians.
But using federal money to build a sidewalk in the city
means undertaking a lengthy and expensive review process the state designed
with major road projects in mind. Unlocking $1 million could cost $300,000 in
planning and turn a four-month project into an 18-month project, she said.
"There is not a different process for those six feet of
sidewalk than there is for a six-lane freeway," Ricks said. "It is
not logical."
Buttigieg said road-building should be shaped by lessons
learned over decades.
"There was a period when we didn't know any better,
when we thought that if you had a congested road, you just made it
bigger," he said. "And it turns out that sometimes that works,
sometimes that just gets more people to drive and the road gets that much more
congested."
Rail is among the alternatives being pushed by Biden, a
longtime Amtrak rider. His administration has thrown support behind the Gateway
Program, which would stretch a new train tunnel under the Hudson River,
connecting New Jersey and Penn Station. As a young engineer, Samaras helped on
the initial route planning and environmental work for an earlier version of the
project, and had sent a set of plans by FedEx to the World Trade Center on
Sept. 10, 2001.
They didn't make it, and were returned after the towers
fell. The effort languished for years, over politics and resources.
"That's just a couple of tunnels. And it's now 20 years
later. Imagine what it's going to look like when we need to build massive
amounts of clean and resilient infrastructure for climate change," Samaras
said.
He sees this moment as an urgent challenge.
"It's like, are we're going to do this or not?"
Samaras asked. "Are we going to basically live off of the successes of the
space race and the Cold War through the 2050s? Why don't we build our own
successes right now?"
Brookfield is looking to expand its greenway and connect with Danbury, New Milford
Currie Engel
BROOKFIELD — The town hopes to secure $229,000 in state
funds to complete a study on how to connect the Still River Greenway to
neighboring Danbury and New Milford.
The application for a corridor study, which the town
submitted last Friday to the Western Connecticut
Council of Governments, or WestCOG, was sent along with letters of support
from Danbury Mayor Joe Cavo, New Milford Mayor Pete Bass, and the Connecticut
Greenways Council. The minimum request for a grant was $150,000 and the project
had to be regional.
The $229,000 requested by Brookfield in their application
would fully cover a study on existing greenway construction gaps between the
three towns.
“One of the things that have held [the committee] up is we
never had the money to do a full design,” said First Selectman Steve Dunn of
efforts to get a plan in the works for the tri-town greenway expansion.
Only three applications will be selected by WestCOG to be
sent to the Department of Transportation for project grant funding, said
Community Development Specialist Greg Dembowksi.
Trail usage was up 38 percent across the state in 2020, and
local leaders are working together to strengthen and expand existing greenway
trails for residents.
So with little notice, several town commissions and leaders
worked together to put together what they’re hoping will be a strong
application for the grant money. Dunn called up Cavo and Bass to ask for their
support.
“You have to put your best foot forward,” Dembowski said.
“We took it even a couple steps further.”
With help from one of the engineering companies working on
the town’s streetscape project, the town completed a review of all existing
studies on the Still River Greenway expansion, including those in Danbury and
New Milford, in two days.
According to Dembowski, the commissioned study found in part
that New Milford has already completed a preliminary engineering report on the
greenway expansion and has an 11-phase plan to extend and connect the greenway
into their town. Danbury has had plans in the works for years, too, Dembowski
said.
“If we’re awarded the grant, obviously there will be a
chance for public participation. There will be updates to see how the greenway
is progressing,” said Bass.
This spring and summer, New Milford is working on phases two
and three of their own greenway expansion project with the hopes of connecting
two portions of the trail together to create a fluid line to the downtown area.
The finished New Milford project will be a 13-mile trail
that will follow the Housatonic River south through the downtown area to
Brookfield border.
“This is going to be a multi-decade project, so the goal is
to chip away at it little by little and use as much grant money as we can,”
Bass said.
In what officials hope will add yet more helpful weight to
their application, the CT Greenways Council has selected Brookfield to host
their annual awards ceremony on June 4 at 10 a.m. A document outlining plans at
a recent Still River Greenway task force meeting said hosting the ceremony will
“bring strong visibility to the [greenway] and our pursuit of expansion” in
part because the 50 or so attendees will include representatives from WestCOG,
CTDOT, and the council itself.
After awards are handed out, the town plans to have
attendees stroll along the greenway.
“I think it’ll stand a good chance of winning,” Dunn said of
the town’s application.
On June 8, an advisory group will review applications and
make recommendations to WestCOG. By June 17, WestCOG will have made its
selections and will send their decision to the Department of Transportation on
July 1.
“It really provides so much in the way of community
character for our three towns,” said Dembowski. “I expect to see a lot of
support for it.”
Deal is a game-changer for Tweed, and a boon for New Haven, East Haven, officials say
Mark Zaretsky
NEW HAVEN — Get ready for a whole new Tweed New Haven
Regional Airport, with a longer runway, a new terminal on the East Haven side —
three times the size of the current one — an entrance off Hemingway Avenue in
East Haven, a new partnership with its longtime manager and a new airline.
Not to mention 1,000 new construction jobs and 175 permanent
jobs.
And while Andrew Levy, CEO of Avelo Airlines, wasn’t
prepared to announce destinations just yet, he said at the big announcement
Thursday that Avelo is making Tweed its first East Coast base, will begin
flights from Tweed in the third quarter of the year and will fly to places
local people want to go.
“We’d be crazy not to fly to Florida,” for instance, Levy
said immediately after a press conference to announce all the changes. Other
destinations he mentioned as possible were “Chicago, maybe D.C.”
Charlotte, N.C., which American Airlines stopped flying to
when it temporarily shut down Tweed service a few months ago, also is a
possibility, but it’s not Avelo’s first priority, he said.
Tweed’s only service right now is 5-day-a-week American
Eagle service to Philadelphia. American currently only is committed to stay at
Tweed through September.
Levy spoke immediately after a press conference in front of
Tweed’s existing terminal in which airport, Avports and Avelo officials, joined
by a host of local, state, business and congressional officials, announced a
“major agreement,” described as “a game-changer” that will result in a $100
million project.
Avports will spend its own money — about $70 million to
start and $100 million overall — to extend the runway and build the
74,000-square-foot terminal. Avelo will spent $1.2 million toward renovation
costs of the existing terminal in the meantime.
All of that would happen while eliminating the $1.8 million
in state and city subsidies that Tweed currently receives, which Avports will
cover as part of a 43-year agreement, officials said.
The agreement requires additional approvals from the Federal
Aviation Administration as well as the New Haven Board of Alders, authority
representatives said.
“It took awhile, but we’re doing it right,” Gov. Ned Lamont
said. “This is part of something a lot bigger. It’s a really important project
in the most important region of the state,” he said, referring to some of the
research and new tech, biotech and biomedical industries that come out of Yale
University and New Haven.
“This is how you open up a state. This is how you get a
state moving again,” Lamont said.
“I took this job 18 months ago with one goal in mind, which
was to increase service and to help this airport reach its full potential,”
said Tweed New Haven Airport Authority Executive Director Sean Scanlon. “Today,
we are proud to announce a comprehensive agreement to do just that.”
The deal announced Thursday will be a benefit “not just for
this airport, not just New Haven and East Haven but for the entire region and
the entire state of Connecticut,” said Scanlon.
With the help of Mayor Justin Elicker of New Haven and Mayor
Joe Carfora of East Haven, “we have come up with a comprehensive community
benefits package to make sure that we help the residents of this area and that
our prosperity is shared” and “we move together as one community,” Scanlon
said.
“We are committed to making this airport both financially
and environmentally sustainable,” Avports CEO Jorge Roberts said. “We will
invest more than $100 million over the next 40 years so this airport can become
a beacon of economic growth both for the City of New Haven and the (Town) of
East Haven. As part of these investments, we aim to build a carbon-neutral
terminal, develop the airport in an environmentally responsible and sustainable
way.”
Avports also plans “to invest in the community through noise
mitigation and traffic improvement measures,” Roberts said. “We also are
committed ... to ensuring the diverse and inclusive local workforce and service
providers.”
Avelo Airlines will make a $60 million investment, including
stationing three 737-700 Next Gen aircraft at Tweed by the end of this year and
adding more than 100 crew members, officials said.
Those positions will include pilots, flight attendants,
technicians and customer support personnel.
Avelo’s investment at Tweed includes $1.2 million to help
fund improvements at the airport’s existing terminal on the New Haven side of
the airport, the authority said.
Elicker thanked Carfora “for standing shoulder to shoulder
with the City of New Haven to make sure that this benefits all of our
residents,” as well as the city’s economic development team.
“For decades, the city of New Haven and the airport
authority have been unable to come up with a plan that works for everybody, and
that plan is finally here,” he said. “...We finally landed on something that
works.”
Over the past 20 years, “the city has put in over $22
million” to Tweed, Elicker said. But under the new agreement, “that subsidy
will end.”
In the current year’s budget, “there will be $325,000 to the
airport. In next year’s budget, there will be $162,000 — and in fiscal year
’24: zero dollars, fiscal year ’25: zero dollars, fiscal year ’26: zero
dollars,” Elicker said.
One resident of the city’s Morris Cove section who showed up
at the press conference said he didn’t feel as if the city had sought his
opinion or those of his neighbors before moving forward — and the first he’d
heard about Tweed’s expansion plans was when he read it in Thursday’s New Haven
Register.
“You never knocked on my door,” Edward Fitzgerald, who lives
on Burr Street — directly across the street from Tweed — told Elicker during a
question-and-answer session. He said he was on a Zoom call when the new airport
master plan was being discussed in an online public hearing and would have
thought the airport would go to residents before announcing the news.
Scanlon told Fitzgerald — who later had a face-to-face
meeting with Elicker as the press conference continued — that “what we’ve
announced today is that we’ve reached an agreement” and “the next step is to
hear from you.”
In fact, “we haven’t even done the environmental impact
study yet,” which the Federal Aviation Administration requires before any
expansion of the runway or construction of a new terminal can take place.
Fitzgerald could be heard telling Elicker at one point that
his experience dealing with Tweed is that “it’s just been one lie after
another.”
After months of negotiation with the authority and a federal
court decision that makes it clear runway extension can go forward, East Haven
Mayor Joe Carfora also was on board.
Carfora said he first got contacted by Scanlon 17 months ago
when Carfora was “a rookie mayor coming in ... and 17 months later I feel bad
about the way I treated him. I had all kinds of demands, and they were harsh
demands.
“.. But this just goes to show you how people can sit down
and work out all our differences,” Carfora said at the press conference. I
depanded a PLA (project labor agreement.) I demanded an enterprise zone right
up until Route 80. I demanded some extra seats on the” airport authority. “I
demanded a lot,” he said.
“This is a great project. It’s going to move both
communities forward. I am 100 percent on board right now,” Carfora said.
Avports is “a top-notch company and they do deserve a big round of applause,”
he said.
East Haven resident Paula Dagostino, 75, who lives on Roses
Farm Road, emailed the Register after reading an earlier story Thursday and
said that while she is in favor of “enlarging and improving Tweed,” she
nevertheless worries about the safety of neighbors and she’d like to see
officials address those concerns before expansion takes
“On behalf of myself and other neighbors on Roses Farm Road,
we love to hear from someone regarding plans for our side of the airport,”
Dagostino said.
Other speakers at the press conference included U.S. Rep.
Rosa DeLauro, D-3; U.S. Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, both
D-Conn.; Airport Authority Chairman John Picard; Joe Toner, president of CT
Building Trades; Andrew Inorio, president of Laborers Local Union 455; Greater
New Haven Chamber of Commerce President Garrett Sheehan; and Jennifer
DelMonico, managing partner of the law firm of Murtha Cullina and a past
chairwoman for the Connecticut Business & Industry Association and the
Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce.
DeLauro called it “a glorious day” and said the agreement
“would represent wins for East Haven,” which will derive economic development
from the expansion, “and Morris Cove, which will see lower traffic.
“Tweed is one of the top regional airports in the country; a
great economic asset to our community,” DeLauro said. “I’m a longtime supporter
and ... it’s about time that the greatest small city in America had the
greatest small airport in America.”
Murphy offered congratulations and said, “It’s very
difficult to overhype how big a deal this, not just for New Haven but for the
whole state of Connecticut,” he said.
Blumenthal said Tweed “has had real glory days ... and today
marks a return to those glory days,” and “it’s not just about those jobs. ...
It is very much about this area and about our state. This airport is going to
be an economic driver.”
Picard said Tweed will provide “thousands of temporary jobs
and hundreds of permanent jobs — and it will create more of them in the future”
because it will allow the state to attract more viable businesses, he said.
“... So Tweed is going to be a game-changer and Tweed is going to help in so
many ways.”
Toner thanked the officials involved “on behalf of the
30,000 unionized construction workers” in Connecticut, both for what they
announced Thursday and what they do every day.
The project labor agreement “ensures that Connecticut
workers are going to work on this project with a livable wage, with secure
retirement and health benefits. It also ensures ... that local folks are going
to work on these projects,” including both New Haven and East Haven residents.
Is the Tweed deal bad news for Bridgeport’s Sikorsky Airport?
Brian Lockhart / Mark Zaretsky
BRIDGEPORT — “Regional airport strikes game-changing deal to
build new terminal, expand passenger service.”
That was the announcement Mayor Joe Ganim’s administration
was working toward two years ago when it unsuccessfully
attempted to finalize a deal with a new airline, Moxy — since renamed
Breeze — to the city’s Sikorsky Memorial Airport and expand its offerings
beyond business, charter and private flights.
On Thursday Tweed New Haven Regional Airport beat Bridgeport
to that goal and then some, with officials claiming their
$100 million project to lengthen Tweed’s runway, erect a new terminal and offer
Avelo flights would cost no goverment cash.
Bridgeport’s plans, in contrast, have relied on the private
market matching a $7 million, still-to-be-released state investment.
So where does the Tweed news leave efforts to have
commercial passenger service at Sikorsky?
Ganim’s office Thursday took the position that nothing had
changed.
“Similar to the partnership that Tweed has just announced,
private investment is also anticipated in Bridgeport based on easy access and
preferable location of the Sikorsky airport,” read the statement. “The city is
pleased about moving forward with our own current plans which would include new
150-passenger planes that can utilize the existing runway length at Sikorsky.”
But in the fall of 2019 — about six months before the global
coronavirus crisis struck Connecticut — Gov. Ned Lamont unveiled a
transportation initiative that essentially pit
Sikorsky versus Tweed in terms of which deserved attention and
investment.
With the Lamont administration’s efforts to answer that
question seemingly stalled due to the health crisis, Bridgeport this spring got
proactive. The Ganim administration partnered with some Sikorsky tenants
to fund
a $47,000 study of the airport’s potential by Fred Carstensen’s
Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis at the University of Connecticut.
Sikorsky Manager Michelle Muoio at the time told
Bridgeport’s City Council the study was in part inspired by the “idea that was
initially proposed by the governor’s office in their transportation plan ... to
evaluate what would be the better investment between Tweed and Sikorsky.”
Asked Thursday about Sikorsky at the Tweed announcement,
Lamont told Hearst Connecticut Media, “It’s not an either/or, but Tweed’s going
first because the private sector’s voting with their feet” and supported that
facility’s expansion.
“We’ve been talking about (the possibly of expanding) Tweed
for 20 years,” Lamont said. “I think it’s going to be ... a shot in the arm”
for the entire region and for Connecticut.
That is the same pitch Bridgeport has for the past few years
made about its plans for Sikorsky.
The one big difference between Sikorsky’s future and Tweed’s
is the runways. Bridgeport has a deal with neighboring Stratford, where
Sikorsky is located, not to lengthen its two runways.
Instead the Ganim administration has been trying to get the
state to release
some of that promised $7 million to overhaul one of Sikorsky’s aged runways,
not only to keep it in operation for existing tenants but to help attract a
commercial passenger airline.
City officials in 2019 said the Moxy/Breeze deal could not
move ahead because of the need for FAA-required airport compliance upgrades
which included the runway work.
The city Thursday also said it had not tried to bring Avelo
to Sikorsky because the company uses older planes that need a longer runway.
Bridgeport is counting on taking advantage of newer technology allowing
aircraft to take off with shorter distances.
Carstensen, who is in the middle of conducting the study of
Sikorsky’s economic potential commissioned by Bridgeport, said Thursday’s news
out of New Haven is “not necessarily” bad for Bridgeport’s airport.
“A smart development strategy, it seems to me, is you want
to exploit all the assets you have in the state, and Sikorsky is an asset,”
Carstensen said. “To some extent they (Sikorsky and Tweed) may have overlapping
and therefore to some degree competitive operations. But Sikorsky is obviously
the airport that serves the needs of the Fairfield County corporate and private
jet market. ... Kudos to New Haven and the folks at Tweed, but let’s double
down on what we also can achieve at Sikorsky.”
However David Faile, head of Friends of Sikorsky, questioned
whether Avelo’s deal for flights out of New Haven would dampen any other
private carrier enthusiasm for Sikorsky.
“People always think I’ve been against airlines at
Bridgeport. I’m not if they can operate on the runways we have,” Faile said.
“It’s the financial (question) — who’s gonna build a terminal they need, plus
(plane) taxiway and ramps?”
Faile said ultimately whether airlines fully recover from
COVID will determine Sikorsky’s future.
“It all depends on how the market shakes out,” Faile said.
“If there’s a full recovery and we’re traveling like crazy again, (Sikorsky)
could support it. I’d love to see it happen.”
Berlin officials weigh apts., retail, hotel on turnpike
Matt Pilon
Rocky Hill developer’s plan to build 200 apartments, retail buildings and possibly a hotel along a wooded Berlin Turnpike property heads back to the town’s planning board Thursday evening.
BT 2008 LLC, headed by Peter D’Addeo of Rocky Hill-based Commercial Services Realty, is seeking approval to construct five four-story apartment buildings, a gas station and convenience store, a second retail building, and an approximately 100-room hotel on the nearly 36-acre property just south of Deming Road.
The project would be built in four phases, starting with the gas station and residential buildings, which have been named the Beach Hill Riverfront Apartments and feature a clubhouse and pool. Of the 200 units, 40 would be mixed-income.
The hotel would come last, and D’Addeo has pitched planning officials several alternatives — medical offices or 12,000-square-feet of additional retail — should the hotel piece of the project not move forward in the future.
D’Addeo initially submitted a site plan application for the mixed-use project last October, according to town records. After several hearings that concluded in mid-April, the planning board voted to continue its deliberations to its meeting this week.
Kenneth R. Gosselin
HARTFORD — An ambitious vision for the redevelopment of
downtown Hartford’s Pratt Street into a new, $50 million hub of nearly 200
apartments above restaurants, entertainment space and shops is now under
construction as the city heads into the uncertainty of life after the COVID-19
pandemic.
“I’m not a fortune teller -- nobody’s a fortune teller --
however, our sense is we are detecting a very positive and strong interest in
leasing,” said Michael Seidenfeld, chief operating officer of Shelbourne Global
Solutions LLC, of Brooklyn, N.Y., a partner in the project. “We have even seen
some serious interest for new retail on Pratt Street that would bring a perfect
vibe to street.”
Pratt runs between Main and Trumbull streets and is viewed
as a critical “walkable” connection among the North Crossing development around
Dunkin’ Donuts Park, the XL Center, new apartments on Allyn Street and Union
Station. But vibrancy has eluded Pratt Street for decades, despite the charm of
its brick-paved street and sidewalks and late 19th- and early 20th-century
structures, many of them architecturally ornate.
The Pratt Street project is part of a larger, $100 million
vision for the heart of downtown Hartford, reaching east along Pratt to Main
and Market streets. Plans call for adding more than 300 apartments over the
next few years, reinvigorating storefront space and replacing a decaying
parking garage.
Shelbourne, downtown Hartford’s largest commercial landlord,
has partnered with LAZ Investments, headed by parking magnate Alan Lazowski,
and developer Martin J. Kenny on the project, a veteran of development projects
in the city.
Shelbourne, which acquired much of the south side of the
street in 2018 and 2019, sees the addition of apartments, replacing tired,
often vacant office space as crucial to paving the way to not only a cool place
to live but also to visit.
The pandemic has taken a heavy toll on businesses downtown,
as office towers emptied and restaurants and other businesses struggled. New
apartments initially saw an erosion of occupancy but have, in recent months,
turned around. Rents are, for the most part, stable, but landlords are offering
tenants incentives to move in.
As painful as the pandemic is, mid-sized Hartford could
stand to benefit from a further migration of employers -- and people -- out of
more densely-populated urban centers such as New York, Seidenfeld said.
Southwestern Connecticut -- and to a lesser extent, Hartford
County -- already has seen a migration out of nearby urban areas during the
pandemic.
“Whereas, in the past, a lot of companies, retailers and
people would not even give Hartford a second thought, the pandemic has caused
people to rethink, take a fresh look at, everything in life,” Seidenfeld said,
during a recent tour on Pratt Street. “And we have seen that in Hartford as
well.”
Shelbourne plans to cultivate a “vintage hipster” vibe on
Pratt, taking advantage of the historic nature and look of the street.
Shelbourne also is pairing those efforts with a 12-month marketing campaign for
the capital city at large. The goal is to reposition Hartford as a destination
-- lifestyle, arts and cultural center -- in the Northeast.
“Ultimately, Pratt Street, I think, rises or falls to the
extent that it is able to draw from and become relevant to the rest of the
city, if not the region,” Michael Berne, president of MJB Consulting in New
York, a planning and real estate consultant, who has closely followed Hartford
redevelopment. “And that’s a challenge.”
Shelbourne also has to contend with owning just the south
side of the street, the opposite side controlled by Northland Investment Corp,
of Newton, Mass.
So far, Berne said he is seeing positive signs from
Shelbourne. The company understands that it will need to “get creative” with
leasing terms to cut down on the risk for retailers and other entrepreneurs, he
said.
For Pratt to become a success, however, the street also will
have to carve out a distinct personality from Front Street near Hartford’s
convention center, Berne said. Front Street includes an entertainment district,
apartments and the University of Connecticut’s regional campus.
“The key will be -- and to some degree this is a marketing
challenge -- can you effectively and convincingly differentiate Front Street
from Pratt Street, not just in the minds of consumers -- physically, it’s a
very different experience -- but also in the minds of prospective tenants and
retailers?’' Berne said. “That’s a little bit of threading the needle, no
doubt.”
More rentals downtown
The new apartments on Pratt Street are part of a major wave
of new rentals downtown that launched in 2014, whose financing was bolstered
primarily by state-taxpayer backed, low-cost loans from the quasi-public
Capital Region Development Authority.
So far, about 2,000 rentals have been added to 1,200 that
previously existed, with the idea that urban centers need residents and not
just 9-5 office workers. The goal is to bring 3,000 new rentals downtown,
boosting the residential population in and around the central business district
to 5,000.
The larger, $100 million project now kicking off with Pratt
Street also includes a revamping of the former student housing behind the Lofts
at Main and Temple into rentals and the replacement of the decaying Talcott
Street garage. So far, the project has been approved for $14 million in CRDA
loans, $12 million for Pratt Street.
The $29 million conversion of 99 Pratt St. will build on
Shelbourne’s 32-unit, $5.8 million apartment conversion project at neighboring
196 Trumbull last year. Those “co-living” rentals are tailored to participants
in the city’s Upward program, a downtown hub of 21st-century entrepreneurs and
innovators.
The project at 99 Pratt St., just around the corner from the
Trumbull Street conversion, will add 97 apartments, including 72 studios, 19
“studio-plus” and 6 one-bedroom units.
The units will range in size from 360 square feet to 462
square feet, with rents spanning $1,150 to $1,250 a month, plus parking.
Amenities will include a fitness room, community room, pet
washing station, library and “arts room,” a “nod to creative, free-spirited innovators
and people who have a creative vision” that Shelbourne hopes will form the
foundation of its tenants on the street.
Plans for a rooftop lounge, however, have been scrapped
because it presented too many construction challenges, Seidenfeld said.
Built for the Steiger’s department store in the 1920s and
part of the downtown destination shopping scene until the 1960s, the 5-story
building at 99 Pratt will retain its Art Deco-inspired flourishes outside and
contrasting painted medieval beamed ceiling in the lobby.
Construction is expected to run through July of 2022, with
apartment pre-leasing beginning at the end of this year.
A second phase in four more buildings owned by Shelbourne
just to the east of 99 Pratt could add another 60 rentals on the street.
Berne, the real estate consultant, said COVID-19 has
accelerated the move by millennials to the suburbs as they start families, so
downtown projects such as Pratt Street will have to focus in on what Generation
Z -- future tenants now teenagers through recent college graduates -- will be
crucial.
“We have a whole new generation -- Generation Z -- that is
really going to drive things in our downtowns and those are the ones whose
feelings on downtowns are really front and center,” Berne said.
Berne said it is assumed that Generation Z will want many of
the same things as millennials in cities: vibrancy, energy and a population for
finding friends and, likely, a significant other.
“But what will that look like?” Berne said. “For instance,
among teenagers, gaming is huge. It’s big business. To what extent are the
gathering places that Generation Z favors going to revolve around gaming?”
Investing in Hartford
Shelbourne is a relative newcomer to the Hartford market,
buying it first office tower, 20 Church Street, in 2014. But it quickly added
to its holdings with Metro Center One, at the western end of Church Street; 100
Pearl and One Financial Plaza, the “Gold Building,” partnering on the purchase
with Lazowski.
Shelbourne also has purchased properties outside of
downtown, including the sprawling, former Fuller Brush complex in the city’s
North End.
Seidenfeld said Shelbourne -- in addition to offering
special promotions and events with retailers on Pratt Street -- can offer its
tenants use of space in its nearby office buildings.
“So let’s say, someone needs conference space, someone needs
flex space, if someone wants to use a gym in another place, if someone wants to
host a big meeting, we will be cross amenitizing all of our assets downtown for
our residents as well,” Seidenfeld said. “We’re not siloing anything.”
Seidenfeld said its entry into mixed-use development is a
new step for Shelbourne, which has built its real estate portfolio in the
prime, Class A office space.
“But what Hartford as shown us and taught us and we’ve
learned that in order for one to thrive, all have to thrive because it’s an
ecosystem,” Seidenfeld said. “So you need a strong residential, you need a
strong corporate office presence and you need a strong presence of retail. You
need all of that.”
How quickly office workers -- a significant component that
downtown ecosystem -- return and in what numbers is still not known, but
Seidenfeld is upbeat about prospects in Hartford.
“Despite people working from home and learning how to
acclimate to the new reality -- humans need humans and people are eager to get
back with other people, whether it’s at events, whether it’s on the street and
certainly in the office space,” Seidenfeld said.
“COVID was certainly a setback,” Seidenfeld said. “We view
it as a temporary setback -- very painful -- and we respect and acknowledge
that 100%.”