Madison unveils details of new $60 million elementary school
MADISON — A referendum date on a project that would allow
Madison to build a new elementary school and shutter three others is set for
early next year.
A draft of the $60 million plan,
presented at a Sept.
14 Board of Education meeting, would create the new Jeffrey Elementary
School and would close Jeffrey and Ryerson elementary schools and the Town
Campus Learning Centers.
The vote is scheduled for Feb. 15, 2022.
Under the current plan, Brown Intermediate School would be
converted to a kindergarten- through fifth-grade school, and Polson Middle
School would be renovated.
The elementary education specifications were presented by
Dan Hansen, an educational consultant who has been helping guide Madison Public
Schools through the project’s process. He specifically helped develop the
education specs for the school, which must be submitted to the state when
applying for grants.
A draft of the $60 million plan,
presented at a Sept.
14 Board of Education meeting, would create the new Jeffrey Elementary
School and would close Jeffrey and Ryerson elementary schools and the Town
Campus Learning Centers.
The vote is scheduled for Feb. 15, 2022.
Under the current plan, Brown Intermediate School would be
converted to a kindergarten- through fifth-grade school, and Polson Middle
School would be renovated.
The elementary education specifications were presented by
Dan Hansen, an educational consultant who has been helping guide Madison Public
Schools through the project’s process. He specifically helped develop the
education specs for the school, which must be submitted to the state when
applying for grants.
Other special spaces include a world language room, rooms
for tutoring and special services, and a library media center.
The building will include four preschool classrooms, five
kindergarten classrooms, nine first- and second-grade classrooms, and 11 total
for grades three, four and five. Every classroom will have air conditioning,
and Wi-Fi that can handle one-to-one devices, according to the draft.
The current plan also includes separate play spaces for the
younger children that will be closer to their classrooms, whereas those for
older children will be closer to the gymnasium.
Community use was also taken into account. Plans for the gym
to be 6,000 square feet with a platform stage would allow groups such as the
Madison Parks and Recreation Department and Registrar of Voters to continue
using the space.
Cooke said the gym will not be as large as Brown
Intermediate School’s but will be usable for full-court basketball and other
activities.
The draft also details energy efficiencies being considered
for the new building, such as roof-mounted solar panels, geothermal walls, and
light sensors to reduce electrical loads.
After the plan was presented, board member Katie Stein
questioned classroom numbers, wondering why they changed so much between grade
levels. She wondered why, since kindergarten has five classrooms in the plan,
first grade didn’t as well.
“We oftentimes get bubbles where we’ll have a large
kindergarten class, and then maybe need one less classroom the next year in
kindergarten, so we wanted to be prepared on the high end of that, because, as
you see, the kindergarten classrooms are larger than the other grade levels,”
Cooke replied.
Stein also said the board had heard from the community about
school space if Madison’s population increases, as the plan calls for closing
two schools in the district.
Cooke said that the plans for the new elementary school were
based off the district’s eight-year projection, which will be updated this
fall. He said that Brown Intermediate School would be bigger than the new
school, giving the district additional space.
The earliest this new school plan would go into effect would
be for the 2025-26 school year.
The project’s budget will be presented at a Board of
Education meeting Oct. 12.
Madison Public Schools is also working on purchasing
property on Mungertown Road for the project.
Norwich City Council approves $800,000 support for $8.8 million Main Street development
Norwich — An $8.8 million proposed Main Street
renovation project got a second chance at city support through the city’s
federal American Rescue Plan grant Monday.
The City Council voted 6-0 to approve $800,000 for the
project, two weeks after stripping the funding by setting limits on amounts for
single projects.
The $8.8 million renovation of two mostly vacant buildings
at 77-91 Main St. was put in jeopardy Sept. 7, when the council placed a cap of $300,000 per project on a $2
million grant to the Norwich Community Development Corp. Prior to the council
vote, the NCDC board of directors had approved a $400,000 grant and additional
$400,000 loan to the Main Street project.
Developer Norwich Luxury Apartments LLC has proposed renovating the
two buildings into 42 market rate apartments and eight commercial
spaces on Main and Water streets. The developer purchased the
property in August for $1.8 million.
The City Council Monday granted the $800,000 to NCDC,
specifically for the Main Street project — a $400,000 matching
building code upgrade grant and a $400,000 loan.
The council on Sept. 7 objected that NCDC had
approved funding for the Main Street project prior to the council vote on
distributing the first round of ARP money. And the council’s majority four
Democratic aldermen opposed a single development receiving nearly half of
the total $2 million NCDC money economic development money. They
preferred much of the money be reserved for small businesses and directed at
least $400,000 of the $2 million be reserved or businesses with 10 or fewer
employees.
During council discussion Monday, Democratic Council
President Pro Tempore Mark Bettencourt asked for quarterly updates on the
Main Street project as one condition. And if the project is not completed
by the end of 2024, the city could recapture the funding from NCDC.
Democratic Alderman Derell Wilson said the conditions were
important to safeguard the city’s funding for the project.
Republican Alderwoman Stacy Gould said she was disappointed
the council removed the project two weeks ago. She called it important to
put “feet on the street” downtown and spur more development to support the
tenants.
NCDC President Kevin Brown said the Main Street project
would bring private investment downtown, and when the project is
completed, it would yield an estimated $128,000 in city property taxes.
Norwich Public Utilities General Manager Chris LaRose said
the finished renovation also is expected to bring in about $100,000 in utility
revenue to NPU, which then distributes 10% of its revenue to the city.
NCDC attorney Mark Block told the council that both the
grant and the loan would not be paid to the developer until the project is
completed, assuring that the city money would not be at risk.
Resident Beryl Fishbone questioned how the project funding
would work, how and when the loan would be repaid and asked for more
accountability for all the ARP money given to NCDC.
Fishbone said, “Since the City Manager, Mr. (John) Salomone,
Mayor (Peter) Nystrom, City Councilors Ms. (Stacy Gould) and Mr. Bettencourt
and Mr. LaRose of NPU are all on the NCDC Board of Directors, it should
not be at all difficult to give a quarterly report of the funding with a bit of
detail how all of the city is benefiting from the use of the ARP funding.”
Data centers target eastern Connecticut for development
Data centers could soon be coming to Groton, Bozrah and
Griswold.
Montville and Norwich, also candidates for data centers, are
a bit further away from putting in such facilities.
During this past legislative session, lawmakers passed
a measure erasing the property and sales tax burden on data center
developers for 20-30 years, depending on the size of the developer's
investment. The move is important to eastern Connecticut, a potential landing
spot for such facilities, which can help grow a town’s grand list.
A qualified data center is defined as a facility that houses
networked computer servers in one location, centralizing the storage and
dissemination of data.
Related story: Will
Connecticut's race to attract data centers pay off? For some, it's unclear
Gotspace Data Partners LLC, a company based in Groton, has
entered into host agreements in Groton, Wallingford, Griswold and Bozrah.
Griswold also has adopted the necessary zoning changes. Host agreements with
towns and cities require data centers to pay a fee because of the long-term tax
abatement created
by the state. While critics argue data centers would be paying more if
taxed, developers have indicated they won’t build at all without favorable
taxes.
Groton Town Manager John Burt said town staff members have
been meeting and talking “semi-regularly” with Gotspace.
“They have been getting a lot of interest in their sites.
The focus of Gotspace right now has been more on working with Groton Utilities
to officially submit a request for power,” Burt wrote in an email. “My hope is
that things will move quickly, but it’s always hard to gauge what will happen
with large projects.”
Gotspace currently pays to have the right to buy the Groton
properties. Once the developer is ready, it can trigger the sale.
“My understanding is that they are in the process of
officially buying those pieces,” Burt added.
The Bozrah Planning & Zoning Commission had been
scheduled to meet Wednesday for a public hearing about making a zoning change
to allow Gotspace to build on the site. The commission termed it an
“application to amend the zoning regulation of the town of Bozrah by adding” a
“technology park district” that would establish “a floating zone,” in the
hearing notice.
Commission Chairman Stephen Seder said that if the public
hearing, which he expects to be rescheduled soon, goes well, the commission
must decide on how to move forward with zoning.
“We’re a small town, we don’t have a lot of infrastructure,
and we’re a fairly conservative town,” he said. “We try to balance everything
with the town’s character. Will it be a good fit? Probably. But there are a lot
of questions that we still have. Everything is in the details ... It’s
dollars, but the dollars do not override the character of the town.”
If the commission agrees to change the zoning after the
public hearings, then it will “move right forward with a master plan,” Seder
said.
While Gotspace has expressed interest in a location in
Norwich — one such possible location is included on its website — no host agreement has
been entered.
Montville has had plans for a data center in place since
2019, when the Planning and Zoning Commission unanimously approved
a site plan for the first phase of the project. Developer Verde Group
LLC had hoped to build two large data storage buildings — at 87,000 and 166,000
square feet, each with an office, electrical room and data hall with computer
and networking equipment — on 65 acres, with room for potential expansion on a
300-acre site.
Town Director of Planning Marcia Vlaun said in March the
Verde Group still is ready to develop the data center between Route 32 and the
Thames River but hasn't taken the next step. But, Joel Greene, who formed Verde
Group LLC and was pushing for the data center, died in July, Montville Mayor
Ron McDaniel wrote in an email. Greene was being sued for breach of
fiduciary duty, breach of the duty of good faith and fair dealing and breach of
contract, related to the proposed data center in Montville.
"The principals were involved in litigation regarding
the property and that has not been resolved and has been put on hold,"
McDaniel wrote.
He said Montville has permissive zoning in place for a data
center, "but no plans have been filed, and they have not approached the
town to negotiate a host agreement as they have done in Groton and
Wallingford."
Bob Lickwar sees recreational cannabis legalization as an
opportunity to significantly expand his firm’s business in Connecticut, even
though UHY Advisors doesn’t manufacture or sell the plant.
UHY, an accounting and consulting firm that serves a wide
range of sectors, is aggressively seeking clients in the state’s nascent
cannabis industry, Lickwar said. The move makes sense, he added, because
starting a legal marijuana business involves scaling a number of regulatory
hurdles while figuring out complicated state and federal tax questions, in
addition to dealing with capital raising, municipal land use and myriad other
issues.
“I see [cannabis] becoming a very big practice area here in
Connecticut, no question about it,” said Lickwar, whose Michigan-based firm has
an office in Farmington. “The reality is people need the tax work, there’s
compliance work that needs to be done.”
Companies that want to grow and sell cannabis in Connecticut’s
newly legal recreational market are already jockeying for positions in what
will almost certainly be a lucrative statewide industry. But those businesses
will all require ancillary services from accountants and lawyers to contractors
and consultants.
Similar to how merchants made a fortune selling shovels
during the California gold rush in the mid-1800s, myriad service providers see
Connecticut’s recreational marijuana industry as a way to generate new revenues
without directly being involved in the industry.
“The companies within industries that decide to embrace this
very safe, very lucrative, highly-regulated industry first will maximize the
most profit and retain the most market share,” said Ezra Parzybok, a principal
at Massachusetts-based cannabis business consulting firm Blue Skies Unlimited.
Growing practice
Lickwar, a partner at UHY’s Farmington office, stands on
firm ground in predicting Connecticut’s cannabis industry could be a boon for
his firm. UHY’s Michigan office began leaning into the cannabis industry in
2017, putting it at the forefront of sector-related issues by the time that
state legalized recreational marijuana two years later.
UHY’s Michigan office currently serves north of 50 cannabis
industry clients and has 10 staffers working solely on marijuana business,
Lickwar said, adding he thinks the firm’s Farmington office could post similar
numbers in Connecticut.
“I think it’s a great opportunity for us here in the
Connecticut market because we have developed expertise through our Michigan
office,” Lickwar said. “What’s going to distinguish us is our ability to
provide services even before the business is up and running.”
That could include anything from setting budgets and
deciding whether to establish a company as an LLC or corporation, to separating
certain parts of the business for tax purposes, Lickwar said.
Parzybok said he’s seen companies in varying industries
benefit from legalization in Massachusetts. Realtors, for example, have done
well selling industrial properties to companies starting grow operations. Some
have even enjoyed the phenomenon known as the “marijuana markup,” where
warehouses are selling at higher prices due to increased demand, Parzybok said.
For example, Mao Moon LLC, an investment property company
connected to cannabis firm Exotica Farms LLC, bought a building in Holyoke,
Mass., for $1.3 million in 2020, five years after the same property sold for
$200,000, according to the city’s assessor’s office.
Additionally, security companies have gained lucrative
contracts guarding dispensaries and grow operations; attorneys have new clients
seeking to stay on the right side of state laws; and construction companies are
getting work on cannabis-related building projects, Parzybok said.
“Cannabis companies are really going to need ancillary
[industry] allies,” Parzybok said. “If you’re willing to embrace the industry
and embrace the idea that it’s here to stay, you stand to profit ahead of the
other guys.”
Niche expertise
Kurt Smith, a business line manager at Manchester-based
engineering firm Fuss & O’Neill, said his firm has already developed
expertise in the industry, doing projects for more than 200 cannabis clients
over the past five years.
The company does everything from assessing prospective sites
for cannabis dispensaries and cultivation operations, to conducting traffic
flow studies to present to municipal boards, to designing solutions for issues
like odor mitigation, Smith said.
“For us, it’s a significant portion of what we do on an
annual basis,” Smith said. “We’ve done as much business as $3 million to $4
million in engineering and planning services for these businesses.”
Since Connecticut legalized adult-use cannabis, Fuss & O’Neill
has already signed contracts for two cultivation facility projects — one in
central Connecticut, the other on the shoreline — and is in talks with other
companies, he said.
Smith said he predicts his group can increase its book of
business by up to 30% when the state’s recreational market comes fully online.
Firms serving the Massachusetts cannabis industry have
certainly been able to increase their business, said Michael Sweitzer of
Massachusetts-based Sweitzer Construction, which does work in the Bay State as
well as Connecticut.
For most of its four decades in business, the family-owned
company focused on dental and medical building projects, but took on its first
cannabis development in 2018 with a grow facility expansion, Sweitzer said.
After that project, Sweitzer developed expertise in cannabis projects from the
kind of heavy-duty HVAC systems needed at grow facilities, to which
municipalities might be difficult sites for dispensaries due to zoning
restrictions.
Sweitzer Construction has five cannabis projects on the
books for the next year, which make up about 90% of the firm’s overall
workload. Sweitzer said he thinks the company is well-positioned to expand its
services to Connecticut.
“We know what makes a successful location, we know what equipment
costs will be, what equipment is necessary, we know what makes an adequate
site,” Sweitzer said. “We plan on taking all of the information we’ve learned
to Connecticut.”
Law firms in Connecticut are also anticipating an uptick in
marijuana industry clients, and advertising their cannabis practice groups.
Hartford-based Shipman & Goodwin started its cannabis
practice after the 2018 federal Farm Bill legalized and regulated hemp, said
Sarah Westby, a Shipman attorney who works in the firm’s cannabis practice
group. With adult-use cannabis now legal, the firm is hoping to expand the
practice.
“We have, I would say, a decent number of clients who’ve
approached us in the last couple of months looking to start cannabis
businesses,” Westby said. “We’re really seeing growth … and we really expect
that to increase exponentially.”
The cannabis industry could provide a consistent stream of
work for Shipman, as companies in the sector have unique needs in remaining
compliant with the state’s new cannabis law, in addition to representation for
issues common to companies in any industry like contracts, mergers and
acquisitions and real estate transactions.
Michael Fritz, another Shipman attorney in the cannabis
practice group, said that in addition to serving cannabis companies, his firm
stands to expand the business it does with current clients who are looking to
invest in these businesses.
“It’s an interesting space,” Fritz said. “It’s the
opportunity to be involved in something from the ground floor.”
Parking structures will be key to Hartford’s Bushnell South development
Terry Corcoran
Parking structures will be a key component of Bushnell
South, a development that seeks to replace acres of parking lots with up to
1,200 new housing units and 60,000 square feet of retail and commercial space.
“The core focus is to leverage the [Capital Region
Development Authority’s] work in some critical properties and investments
they've already made in the Clinton Street parking garage,” Ben Carlson,
director of urban design for Goody Clancy, a Boston-based architectural and
planning firm, said in a Sept. 16 update to the CRDA board.
As the existing supply of surface parking diminishes,
Carlson said they’ll need to create more parking structures, then operate them
in a shared-use format that has residents, office workers and theater goers
using them at different times of the day and week.
“We minimize the cost and land area needed and it opens
opportunities for development,” Carlson said.
The project focuses on about 20 acres bordered by Capitol
Avenue, and Elm, Trinity and Main streets near the Bushnell Center for the
Performing Arts.
CRDA built the new $16 million parking garage on Clinton
Street. It is also contributing $13.5 million toward the conversion of the
former state office building at 55 Elm St., into 164 residential units, a $63
million project that’s part of the first phase of the Bushnell South
development. Overall, the first phase will have 278 housing units.
CRDA Executive Director Michael Freimuth said the authority
owns several parcels in the area and expects to underwrite other projects
consistent with the plan prepared by Goody Clancy.
The second and third phases take advantage of the addition of two levels and
about 135 spaces to a CRDA parking structure by creating a mixed-use building
facing the state office building, Carlson said.
Phases two and three represent half the project’s housing
potential, he said.
Contractors react to upcoming federal vaccine mandates
Sebastian Obando
Since President Joe Biden issued plans to mandate vaccines
in some workplaces earlier this month, a number of construction companies are
encouraging their employees to get vaccinated and are trying to figure out what
the new rules mean for their workplace.
Biden
announced on Sept. 9 that private employers with more than 100
employees will be required to either mandate vaccines or conduct weekly
COVID-19 testing, while government employees and employees of government
contractors will be required to get vaccinated, with no option for regular
testing in lieu of vaccination. These policies are expected to affect over 100
million workers.
DPR Construction, a California-based commercial contractor
with over 9,000 employees, is gearing up to meet the new mandate, according to
Jay Weisberger, communications leader at DPR. The company recently implemented
a system where employees can share their vaccination documents with the human
resources department. Company officials estimate that more than 50% of the
workforce is vaccinated.
EllisDon and PCL Construction, two of Canada's largest
general contractors, announced last week that they are implementing
vaccination verification requirements. Both companies will require Canadian
employees working at any location on company business to be fully vaccinated
for COVID-19 by Nov. 1. Unlike the Biden administration mandate on government
employees, testing will be offered as an alternative to full immunization.
Concerns and questions
While Associated Builders and Contractors encourages people
in the construction industry to get vaccinated, the group has concerns about
several “unresolved questions” related to the new COVID-19 vaccine policies,
according to Ben Brubeck, ABC vice president of regulatory, labor and state
affairs. ABC officials plan to share these concerns with the Biden
administration.
Other contractor groups said Biden's actions are too broad
and would put undue burdens on firms that are already having a hard time
finding workers. They are concerned that workers will leave their jobs rather
than get vaccinated.
Executive Director of the Association of Oklahoma General
Contractors Bobby Stem believes the executive order will impact highway
construction in Oklahoma and across the United States by "effectively
shutting down much-needed work to build, maintain and replace dangerous roads
and bridges," he said in
a statement to The City Sentinel.
"Yes, we do, and need to, take the new COVID variant
very seriously," said Stem. "However, a blanket mandate on
companies with more than 100 workers who do highway construction is grossly
unreasonable and not a fit for every workplace."
Confusion on policy implementation
There is some confusion as to exactly who these mandates
will affect and when they will begin.
The Biden administration announced the plan will go into
effect immediately, "but we expect there will be some notice period that
employers can react to," said Gabrielle Wirth, partner at law firm
Dorsey & Whitney, during a recent company webinar. Panelists during the webinar
said they believe that the mandate for employers with 100 or more employees
will go into effect sometime in October.
The proposed OSHA action plan requires all private employers
with more than 100 employees to either ensure their workforce is fully
vaccinated or require any workers who remain unvaccinated to produce a negative
test result on at least a weekly basis before coming to work. Several questions
arise from this mandate, such as:
How do you determine whether an employer has more than 100
employees?
Are subcontractors counted in this number?
Who will pay for the weekly testing?
What are the penalties for non-compliance?
"Right now, we don’t know what kind of employees will
be covered. For example, do part-time employees count? Do seasonal employees
count?" said Katie Ervin Carlson, senior attorney at Dorsey &
Whitney, during the webinar. "I've also had questions that I don't know
how to answer yet in terms of how do you calculate 100. So, what if an employer
has a few employees in multiple states, is there going to be some sort of
distance requirement?"
There is also confusion as to what classifies a federal
contractor or a federal subcontractor. A federal contractor is an organization
that has a direct contract with the federal government. By comparison, a
federal subcontractor is a company that does business with another company that
holds direct contracts with the U.S. federal government.
Federal contractors and subcontractors, unlike private
employers with more than 100 employees, will be required to get the vaccine and
will not have the option for testing.
There are a number of ways to find out if a business is
considered a federal contractor or a federal subcontractor. The easiest way to
know is to receive a letter from a governmental contractor saying that your
organization is a subcontractor necessary for the performance of a government
contract. Other ways include checking the Federal Procurement Data System or a
recent EEO-1 report, said Drew James, associate at Dorsey & Whitney, during
the webinar.
"If one of your customers has ever asked you to sign an
affirmative action plan, sometimes that's a signal that you might be a
[federal] contractor," said James. "If you're part of a large
company that has a parent organization and that parent has contracts with the
federal government, it's worth calling a good lawyer because you may well be a
[federal] contractor."
Some states will fight the ruling in the courts
Nearly
two dozen governors have threatened to sue the Biden administration
over the vaccine requirement on private sector employees, claiming the federal
government cannot impose a nationwide mandate. Arizona's attorney general filed
the first lawsuit challenging the new mandate on Sept. 14.
But Wirth said lawsuits like these will most likely not be
successful. There's a lot of legal history confirming that as long as there's
evidence of grave danger, the executive branch has the power to have OSHA issue
these kinds of regulations, she said.
Some health and safety advocates said they would like to see
the mandates go even further by adding requirements for other types of COVID-19
mitigation protocols.
The new vaccine mandate for private sector workers is a
"missed opportunity" for a broad, comprehensive effort to
prevent the spread of COVID-19, said Marcy Goldstein-Gelb, a co-executive
director of the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health, in a press
release shared with Construction Dive.
Social distancing, improved ventilation, shift rotation and
protective equipment to reduce exposure are all important components of an
overall plan to reduce risk and stop the virus, said Jessica E. Martinez,
co-executive director of National COSH. But those strategies are missing from
the mandate.
"COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective, but they are
only one piece of a broad effort needed to keep workers safe," said
Martinez. "The highly contagious delta variant of COVID-19 requires a
comprehensive approach to protect all workers."