Connecticut’s infrastructure conundrum persists amid renewed focus
During the Connecticut Business & Industry Association’s (CBIA) recent 2022 economic update session held at the Trumbull Marriott, the watchword was arguably “infrastructure.”
This was especially on display during the panel discussion
titled “How Connecticut Should Spend Federal Infrastructure Funds.” Mark
Boughton, commissioner of Connecticut’s Department of Revenue Services,
moderated the discussion and was joined by Tom Santa, president and CEO of
Santa Energy in Bridgeport; David DeMaio, president of the Pat Munger
Construction Co. in Branford, and Tom Jensen, vice president of government
affairs for UPS.
Boughton, a former Danbury mayor, explained that his role
was both to provide a single point of contact in the government for concerned
business leaders and to serve as the governor’s senior adviser on
infrastructure matters.
“People think we just have cash rain down on us in Hartford
for stuff like roads, bridges, broadband, trains, things like that — and that’s
not really true,” Boughton said, explaining that while there are roughly $5
billion which the state can direct toward already existing programs, the part
he found most exciting was the $580 billion earmarked for competitive grants.
“That’s really where I think Connecticut will excel,”
Boughton said. “But there’s a catch. The catch is we’ve got to be like Ricky
Bobby in ‘Talladega Nights’ — if you ain’t first, you’re last. You have got to
get those applications in fast.”
Boughton then asked his interlocutors: “What does government
need to get right to ensure that this bipartisan infrastructure law is
transformative for generations to come? What do we need to get right?”
“Road construction is obviously the low-hanging fruit,”
answered DeMaio. “If you think about what really needs to happen is you need to
add lanes. However, that’s an almost impossible undertaking if you look at the
effort that would take. So, we need to bolster our freight railways. The
infrastructure’s there but it needs to be updated.”
DeMaio added that shifting significant amounts of freight
from trucks to trains would benefit everybody remaining on the highway and
would make for a generational change. DeMaio also said he would like to see
improved utility infrastructure in currently underserved communities, like
Guilford where the lack of a sanitary sewer has killed multiple development
projects.
Jensen agreed that adding lanes was unfeasible, but that
interchanges between I-95 I-91, and I-84 could all be improved to provide
increased “fluidity and velocity.”
“If you’re not trying to figure out capacity to the extent
it’s possible,” Jensen said, “and I know it’s challenging in Connecticut, but
if you’re not trying to figure out capacity, you’re planning to fail.” Watching
changes to consumer behavior and a shift to an increasingly remote workforce
are also necessary according to him.
Santa echoed many of his colleagues’ statements but added
that the state’s deep-water ports also needed investment. His business deals
with shipping products on Connecticut waterways, which Santa called “dormant
assets that really beg to, without a huge amount of money, be brought back to
life.”
Boughton also put the question to the panel of what
businesses need to do right to ensure that transformative efforts by the state
have the maximum impact.
Santa suggested that a “big picture” approach was necessary,
that different stake holders need to look at the costs and benefits to
decisions outside of their immediate environment. He gave an example of a
business opposing the reactivation of a rail line near its property despite the
fact the small sacrifice of a minor daily disruption could greatly revitalize
the local economy and provide with many more opportunities to do business.
Jensen said that more of a focus on user pay for user
benefit would help ensure infrastructure is funded as it is needed. He called
the recent gas tax holiday a bad policy, stating it will lead to a hole in the
state’s transportation budget, and he floated the idea that paying for the use
of highways through a means other than the gas tax will prove necessary as more
commercial fleets and private cars are electrified.
DeMaio’s response was that businesses need to embrace
outside the box thinking and explore options such as incentivizing the use of
public transit by employees to help bolster state efforts to improve
transportation more generally.
The controversial study will cost $1.5 million. It could shape future of Hartford-Brainard Airport
HARTFORD — A controversial, $1.5 million study examining whether Hartford-Brainard Airport
should remain open or be closed for redevelopment has been approved by
the General Assembly, a study some hope will finally shape the future of the
century-old airfield.
The study must be completed by October 2023, pushed back
from the initially proposed Jan. 1. The study will examine environmental,
regulatory and economic aspects on both sides of the debate and wouldn’t be
ready until the 2024 legislative session.
“We extended it because we became convinced that by the time
you got going on this and got the analysis going, we weren’t going to be ready
for the next session,” state Sen. John W. Fonfara, D-Hartford, said. “We
thought we had better take our time and do it right.”
The future of Brainard has been debated for decades,
stretching back to the late 1950s when a large portion of the airfield was
taken for redevelopment in the city’s South Meadows.
The discussion heated up again last year when the Hartford
City Council passed a non-binding resolution supporting redevelopment.
The debate has pitted those who support redevelopment,
including Fonfara and Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin, against those who say the
airport should be further invested in as an economic development amenity.
Advocates for keeping the airport open, including the
newly-formed Hartford Brainard Airport Association, whose members are local
pilots, Brainard tenants and others, have pushed back against the airport being
cast as a “a playground for rich folks” with single- and twin-engine planes.
They also say Brainard is vital for its pilot training
schools and entry into the field of aviation. Fonfara has said there are more
than a dozen other airport options within 20 miles of Brainard that could
provide a similar function.
Fonfara said the study will be led by the state Department
of Economic and Community Development, which will oversee hiring consultants.
In 2016, a legislative report recommended keeping the
airport open and investing further in its development.
Redevelopment, the report said, would be too costly, require
large public subsidies and take at least two decades.
Fonfara said he expects this study will provide a more
in-depth, objective analysis.
“A lot of emphasis in the study will be on what is the true
value of the airport,” Fonfara said.
“Advocates want people to think there are these millions of
dollars spun off in economic activity,” he said. “And then you have others
saying there is very little. I happen to be one of those.”
A mixed-use redevelopment would benefit both the city and
the region, drawing visitors and making the greater Hartford area more
attractive to a young, sought-after workforce, Fonfara said. Redevelopment
would open up more access to the Connecticut River and complement plans for the
waterfront in East Hartford, Fonfara said.
Michael Teiger, the association’s executive director, said
the group supported the 2016 study, “which apparently wasn’t good enough for
everybody.”
Tieger, a Hartford pulmonologist, said he doesn’t expect the
new study will make any new revelations.
“We believe they are going to find what we know already:
that the land is contaminated and would be exorbitantly expensive to
redevelop,” Tieger said. “And they will just stop with the idea of redeveloping
Brainard and go on as we should.”
“We’re happy to participate to find out just what is going
on down there,” Teiger said. “But we think it’s a waste of time and a waste of
$1.5 million.”
Last month, concerns about soil contamination under the
airport surfaced, including coal tar, a by-product of coal gasification plants
that existed in virtually every American city at the turn of the last century.
The Metropolitan
District Commission, the regional water and sewer authority, spearheaded
the last airport redevelopment proposal in 2006. The proposal called for nearly
7 million square feet of commercial and manufacturing space, stores,
apartments, a marina, a rebuilt trash-to-energy plant, an expansion of its
nearby wastewater treatment plant and a river park.
The MDC plan was headed up by William DiBella, a former
Democratic state Senate majority leader who remains the MDC’s chairman.
No other conceptual plans for the area exist besides the
2006 vision advanced by the MDC.
Windsor could adopt stronger regulations on large
distribution facilities this week, responding to resident concerns over a boom
in development in recent years.
The Planning and Zoning Commission could vote as early as
Wednesday – following a public hearing – to adopt a regulation making
warehousing, logistics and distribution centers subject to special permits,
rather than simply being allowed by right in industrial and warehouse zoning
districts.
Under the proposed change, applications to build new
logistics centers and warehouses would require public hearings, rather than
simply being subject to site plan review. This would allow the Planning and
Zoning Commission to set conditions on approvals that address resident
concerns, rather than simply request accommodations from developers, Town
Planner Eric Barz said.
Members of the commission asked for more control following
resident complaints about the approval process for the BDL Logistics Center
development in 2021, according to Barz. Scannell Properties gained approval to
add two buildings with a combined 487,200 square feet at 1190 Kennedy and 451
Hayden Station roads.
Interest in building logistics and distribution centers in
Windsor remains heavy. Two applications for large centers were recently
submitted.
Indus Realty, on April 13, submitted plans for a
248,000-square-foot distribution center on 61.7 acres at 105 International
Drive. This proposal is subject to site plan review.
Missouri-based NorthPoint Development has submitted plans
for a nearly 750,000-square-foot distribution center on 93 acres inside
Windsor’s Great Pond Village mixed-use development, which sits along Day Hill
Road. As Great Pond Village is an approved planned development, this
application is subject to staff review alone.
The Indus and NorthPoint projects are both being proposed on
a speculative basis.
NEWTOWN — The good news is Connecticut is willing to support
a proposal to redevelop two empty hospital buildings into apartments and
commerce by helping Newtown gain national historic status for its Fairfield
Hills campus.
The bad news is the state’s historic preservation office
wants a commitment from Newtown to keep all the other vacant former hospital
buildings standing on the town’s 180-acre campus for at least five years after
the completion of the redevelopment project.
The state condition represents a conflict for town leaders.
On one hand leaders are encouraged by a Boston developer’s plans to convert two
vacant Fairfield Hills buildings known as Kent
House and Shelton House into housing and shops. On the other hand,
leaders believe demolition is the only option for other dilapidated structures
on the campus that have no reuse value.
“The way a project would have to happen is the developer
needs historic preservation tax credits, and the National Park Service is how a
project would get assigned credits,” said Newtown First Selectman Dan
Rosenthal. “We have worked closely with the state Office of Historical
Preservation and need their blessing to have things progress to the level where
credits would be awarded by the National Park Service.”
The federal credits, which Rosenthal estimated at $10 or $11
million, are what make the developer’s investment possible in World War II-era
hospital buildings that have been vacant for decades, leaders said. Without tax
credits, Newtown’s deal with WinnDevelopment would
be off, and the redevelopment prospects would be as bleak for Kent and Shelton
houses as it is for the campus’ other large buildings.
“Renovating Kent and Shelton would run $50-to-$60 million,
so the economics get away from you pretty quickly without the tax credits,”
Rosenthal said.
Should Newtown agree to keep the entire campus in
preservation for five years after the redevelopment of Kent and Shelton, it
would probably be 2031 before Newtown could raze buildings in the worst
condition.
Newtown has been tearing down larger buildings in unsafe
shape over the last decade, as the budget permits, while trying to
market smaller buildings for creative reuse, such as the former staff dining
room of the hospital known as Stratford
Hall, which today is home to NewSylum Brewing Co.
“If we don’t agree (to the state’s condition) the whole
campus becomes a demolition project on the taxpayer’s back,” Rosenthal said.
“If I say ‘yes,’ I am encumbering the campus.”
The next step is to bring the discussion before the town’s
Legislative Council and Board of Finance, ideally at a joint meeting with the
Board of Selectman, Rosenthal said. Such a meeting could come as soon as June.
“The historical question is a threshold issue,” Rosenthal
said. “I am looking for consensus.”
A top Newtown planner said the benefits of preserving Kent
and Shelton houses with apartments that the town needs outweighs the
disadvantage of having the town’s hands tied for five years after the
development is complete.
“My opinion as an economic developer is that it’s a priority
of the campus to redevelop these buildings,” said Christal Preszler, deputy
director of economic and community development. “If we don’t move forward, this
project doesn’t happen.”
Preszler is referring to Newtown’s decision in 2021 to work
with WinnDevelopment on the residential and commercial reuse of Kent House, a
200,000-square-foot structure built in 1940, and Shelton House, a
90,000-square-foot structure built in 1933.
WinnDevelopment, which won a bidding war, had informally
proposed building 56 apartments in Shelton House and 113 apartments in Kent
House. WinnDevelopment’s selection followed a two-year public
campaign to encourage a limited amount of housing in the largest of
Fairfield Hills’ buildings, and save the relics from demolition.
The campaign faced opposition from residents who said the
pastoral character of the campus would be ruined with residential development.
In 2020, Newtowners voted 9,400 to 7,300 to authorize the town to rezone
Fairfield Hills for a mix of housing and commercial space in no more than two
of the abandoned buildings.
Today, the developer is waiting to submit blueprints to the
Planning and Zoning Commission until the matter of its federal historic
preservation tax credits is satisfied.
Newtown tried in vain to convince the state to allow some of
the buildings in the worst shape to be razed. The hospital buildings are listed
on the state register of historic places.
“We had hoped for a more limited historic district,”
Rosenthal said. “But the state wants all the buildings on the 180 acres that
the town owns (preserved).”
Bloomfield panel endorses plan to build 90 townhouses, duplexes
Richard Chumney
BLOOMFIELD — A developer has been given the approval to move
forward with plans to build 90 townhouses and duplexes on a site that was
initially proposed for single-family homes.
The Bloomfield Plan and Zoning Commission voted last week to
approve a master plan from Krown Point Capital to construct the project on a
nearly 54-acre site at the end of Ryefield Hollow Drive.
Reggie Kronstadt, Krown Point’s principal, said the company
plans to build 68 townhouses and 22 duplexes, which he described as luxury
rental units that will each feature up to three bedrooms.
He said the units will be marketed to people who are
uninterested in owning a home but want to live in a residence with more space
than traditional apartments, a market he argued is rapidly growing in the
Hartford region.
“The site plan that we’ve come up with will allow us to
really program for the type of housing that we think is missing in Bloomfield,”
Kronstadt said. “Over the course of COVID, there’s been a huge shift to the need
for larger scale rental housing.”
According to documents submitted to the town, a local
construction company originally intended to build 71 single-family houses on
the largely undeveloped site and sell the units to individual buyers.
But the builder never moved forward with construction and
now plans to sell the property to Krown Point. Kronstadt said his company opted
to expand the scope of the local builder’s proposal due to soaring construction
costs.
“It's very tough to make the 71-unit project work,” he said.
“Costs are up 35 percent and continue to go up with really no ceiling at this
point.”
Kronstadt said the homes will include a private garage,
patio, yard and basement storage. The housing development will also feature a
clubhouse with pool, gymnasium, work stations and community spaces.
Plans show the development will be accessible to drivers
from an entrance on Ryefield Hollow Drive. Kronstadt said the property will be
staffed by an on-site management team.
Dave Ziaks, an engineer working on the project, said 25
acres of the property will be set aside as permanent open space for the town. A
small dog park will be built inside the development.
Kronstadt said construction of the project is expected to
take up to 24 months to complete. If the town approves a site plan for the
development, the work could begin as soon as this fall.
Here’s what’s in Westport’s $11.7M Post Road improvement project
WESTPORT — Post Road certainly has its traffic troubles,
some of which were highlighted at a recent
public forum focusing on downtown.
Some much-needed help is on the way though, in the form of
an $11.7 million project that will improve various intersections along the busy
corridor. The project was celebrated Monday by several officials, including
First Selectwoman Jennifer Tooker, state Sen. Will Haskell and state Rep.
Jonathan Steinberg.
“Anyone who travels on this road knows that bumper-to-bumper
traffic is a daily occurrence, and accidents are all too common,” Haskell said.
“Much of that traffic and many of those accidents can be avoided with a little
bit of investment, including traffic signals that can sense how many cars are
coming and are responsive to the flow of traffic.”
The project aims to make the road — which averages about
24,000 cars a day — safer and more efficient, which in turn will help local
businesses and make them more accessible, according to Haskell’s office.
The work includes adding left turn lanes at three
intersections along the Post Road, also known as Route 1. The areas include the
Fresh Market and Village Center intersection, the Roseville and Hillspoint
Roads intersection and the Bulkley Road North and South.
“I’ve been driving on Roseville Road since I got my driver’s
license. I can tell you having a turn lane there will have a significant
difference for people right here in Westport,” Steinberg said. “It’s a project
that’s practical, long-needed and why infrastructure investment is so important
in every community, just like this one.”
A two-way left turn lane will also be added from the Village
Center driveways to Roseville and Hillspoint roads allowing people to turn left
into commercial driveways.
It will also align the offset Buckley Avenue intersection
and add new traffic signals that better meet current traffic conditions.
“These are very critical improvements for the town of
Westport,” said state Department of Transportation Senior Advisor Carlo Leone.
“The roadway is very busy and these intersections are very difficult to cross.
The improvements from this signalization are going to be key to making those
improvements for the safety of the people of Westport.”
The project also adds bus shelters, curb work, sidewalks and
crosswalks to make it safer for the pedestrians who frequently cross the Post
Road and those who ride the bus.
“This road is home to one of Connecticut’s most-utilized bus
services, the Coastal Link,” Haskell said. “Unfortunately, too often the folks
waiting for these buses are left braving the rain or cold.”
Josh Morgan, a DOT spokesman, said the safety project has
been in planning and design for several years.
The State Bond Commission approved the $11.7 million for the
project on March 30. Of that amount, 80 percent will be covered by federal
funding and 20 percent will be covered by the state.
Morgan said it’s expected to go out to bid this summer and
awarded in the fall. Work will continue in three phases, to be completed in
2025.
“In order to keep traffic flowing and allow continuous access
to businesses, the work will be done over three construction seasons,” Morgan
said.
The first part will be from Westport Plaza down to the Fresh
Market. The second phase is the Roseville and Hillspoint intersection, ending
with the Buckley Avenue intersection.
Tooker said it’s an excellent project and thanked the state
officials for their work on it.
“Anything we can do to improve this corridor from a traffic
and pedestrian safety standpoint is thrilling.” Tooker said.