GREENWICH — Forty years ago this month, the bridge carrying
Interstate 95 over the Mianus River in Cos Cob collapsed in the middle of the
night.
When Toni Boucher, former state senator and
co-chairwoman of the General Assembly's Transportation Committee, heard about
the collapse of part of Interstate 95 in Philadelphia earlier this week, she
said it "absolutely" reminded her about what happened in Cos
Cob, almost exactly four decades earlier.
Boucher said she used to drive over the Mianus River
Bridge at least twice a week with her then three young kids in the back of her
car. So she said the bridge collapse hit close to home for her.
"You imagine yourself in one of those horror movies
where the car is dangling off of a bridge, a lot of those action movies and so
forth," she said. "This was really happening and it was reality. It
was very frightening."
As a result of two corroded pin-and-hanger assemblies, a
100-foot section of the Mianus River Bridge collapsed into the waterway shortly
after midnight on June 28, 1983. Two cars and two tractor-trailer trucks fell
70 feet, killing three drivers and injuring three others.
Those that heard the collapse described it as "a
thunderous boom," according to an article in the June 29, 1983 edition of
The Advocate.
"'I heard what sounded like an explosion,"
Riverside resident Gordon Gilman told The Advocate. "Many individuals
pitched into help at scene. ... I called 911 immediately and told them the
bridge had collapsed and to come to the end of Buxton Landing. The police
and rescue truck responded very quickly — within a few minutes."
Rescue workers recovered people from cars and in a wreckage
of beef that fell off of a tractor-trailer truck into the water.
“It was scary as all hell,” Brad Schlegel, volunteer
with the Cos Cob ambulance corps, said at the time. “It was spooky — you really
couldn’t see what you had.”
Almost 40 years later, another part of I-95 crumbled, this
time caused by a driver who lost control of their truck.
On June 11, a truck driver that was hauling gasoline lost
control on an I-95 off-ramp and flipped on its side. This ignited a fire that
collapsed the northbound lanes and damaged the southbound lanes, according
to The Associated Press.
The driver, Nathaniel Moody, 53, died in the accident and
authorities said he was heading north to deliver fuel to a convenience store
when he lost control, The
AP reported.
Jim Cameron, a commuter advocate and founder of the Commuter
Action Group, said what has come out of the early investigations shows that the
incident was a "different kind of experience" as the fire that came
after the crash impacted the I-95 structure.
"I do not think it was structural lack of
inspection," Cameron said.
However, the Mianus River Bridge collapse was caused
due to poor structure upkeep.
According to the June 29, 1983 issue of The Advocate,
residents had "warned the state for years the bridge was dangerous."
"I called the maintenance people in March, and so did
my neighbors," Gilman said back in 1983. "We told them the
bridge was noisy, vibrating and dangerous."
First Selectman Fred Camillo said the Mianus River
Bridge collapse was a "wake-up call" when it comes to ensuring the
safety of roads and bridges.
"You're driving along and you have no idea what's
underneath you and what condition it's in," Camillo said. "Any
lessons to be learned are always to fund and maintain the routine maintenance
checks. That is critical. You can never ever skip on that. It's just a reminder
that if it happens anywhere, it can happen here and it certainly did happen
here in our backyard. Those of us who lived in Greenwich at the time will never
forget it. … We actually lived through it.”
On July 1, 1984, the General
Assembly created the Special Transportation Fund, which was dedicated to
maintaining and improving the state’s transportation system. Just a few days
later on July 9, 1984, the state created the Office of Bridges and Structures
to inspect and create safe bridges on the state’s highways, according
to the Department of Transportation's website.
The
state is responsible to inspect around 4,000 state-owned bridges,
along with about 1,000 municipal bridges that are longer than 20
feet. Also, bridges
engineered like the Mianus River Bridge with its "pin and
hanger" were modified to prevent future collapses and new ones of that
type banned.
“I think the DOT learned a crucial lesson from
(the Mianus River Bridge collapse) and I don’t think anybody at the DOT
will allow that kind of structural failure due to lack of inspection ever again
in their professional careers,” Cameron said.
Still, Cameron said the Philadelphia I-95 incident brings up
other highway safety issues including inspecting, increasing state police
control and cracking down on highway speeders.
“I-95 is either constantly in bumper-to-bumper conditions
because of traffic or – and I can hear this at night – there are people out
there speeding, just in incredible road races in the middle of the night and
that’s not safe especially if you’re driving through a work zone area,” Cameron
said.
I-95 collapse in Philadelphia evokes memories of similar 2004 incident in Bridgeport
RICHARD CHUMNEY
BRIDGEPORT — When Scott Appleby, the city’s director of
emergency management, saw the news that part of Interstate
95 in Philadelphia had collapsed earlier this month due to a large
truck fire, his thoughts almost immediately turned to 2004.
On an early spring evening nearly two decades ago, a
similar scene unfolded on the same interstate in Bridgeport after a
sedan struck a Mack tanker, igniting an explosion that halted traffic along one
of the country’s most traveled highways.
“The fire looked as if it was a tornado,” Appleby, a
longtime city official, said in an interview last week. “I remember the heat.
This was March and it felt like I was in the middle of August.”
Though no one was seriously injured, the ensuing blaze
burned through about 8,000 gallons of home heating oil and melted an elevated
section of the roadway near Exit 26, forcing crews to redirect tens of
thousands of vehicles through city streets.
Appleby said his thoughts are with officials and motorists
in the City of Brotherly Love who are experiencing the same level of disruption
his own city faced for several days while crews raced to build a temporary
bridge.
“Philadelphia is going to have their hands full,” he
said.
Traffic came to a standstill on I-95 in north Philadelphia
on June 11 after a gasoline truck overturned beneath an overpass and caught
fire, killing the driver and causing the northbound section of the bridge to
collapse. The southbound span was later removed after officials uncovered
structural issues.
In an approach similar to the one Connecticut officials took
19 years ago, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro announced Wednesday that
construction crews have begun building a temporary road at the site of the
collapsed overpass.
“I want to get this road reopened as quickly as possible,”
Shapiro said at a news conference.
It is not yet clear how long it will take until cars will be
allowed to travel on the temporary structure. Crews are working to fill the
area under the since-destroyed bridge with recycled glass so it can support a
provisional six-lane highway. A permanent replacement for the bridge will likely
take months to complete.
In Bridgeport, contractors managed to install an erector
set-like structure to replace the road’s damaged southbound lanes in
just six days — a feat Appleby credited to close collaboration between
city, state and federal officials. The U.S. Department of Transportation
allocated more than $13 million for the repairs.
“We were fortunate enough that we were able to work together
and get ourselves back to normalcy,” he said.
Still, traffic delays persisted along I-95 due to reduced
speeds on the temporary span and the multimillion dollar effort to restore the
bridge permanently. Ken Flatto, who was serving as first selectman in nearby
Fairfield at the time, said the backups inconvenienced thousands of commuters
and bus riders for several weeks.
“There was a lot of spillover to local roads,” he
recalled.
But unlike in Philadelphia, officials in Bridgeport only
needed to build a temporary structure for half of the roadway. The steel
girders on the northbound side were largely spared from the fire, which allowed
traffic to continue on those lanes before the temporary bridge was in place.
A state police investigation later determined that the
18-year-old driver of a 1987 Toyota Corolla caused the crash when they abruptly
crossed lanes and clipped the tanker. The driver of the Toyota was issued
a ticket for failure to drive in the established lane and fined
$128.
Appleby said both crashes are good reminders to remain
vigilant and cautious while driving, especially in an age of cell phones and
other distractions. He noted that state Department of Transportation data shows
fatal crashes in Connecticut jumped
to the highest levels in the last five years in 2022.
“People need to stay alert and they have to share the
roadway,” he said. “It only takes one split second for something to occur and
cause a crash of this magnitude that unfortunately is going to disrupt a lot of
folk’s lives.”
CTDOT to install advanced wrong-way signs on highway ramps in Bridgeport, Norwalk, Westport
Kalleen Rose Ozanic
As the state experiences an increase in highway crashes
caused by wrong-way drivers, the Connecticut
Department of Transportation has identified 236 “high-risk” highway
ramps across the state that will receive advanced “wrong way” signs.
The DOT expects about 50 signs to be installed in 2023, nine of which will be
in Bridgeport, Norwalk and Westport.
There will be three new wrong-way signs in Bridgeport, four
in Norwalk and two new signs in Westport on a variety of different highways.
According to Josh Morgan, a spokesperson for the DOT, these
new wrong way signs are a “mitigation treatment” for dangerous accidents that
occur when motorists drive on the wrong side of a limited access highway.
The greatest factor in determining which of Connecticut’s
over 700 ramps would get new signs is proximity to a location that serves
alcohol, Morgan said.
These 236 high-risk ramps, including the nine local ramps,
often have the on- and off-ramps next to each other — which can make it easier
for impaired drivers to merge onto the wrong ramp, he said.
The signs will be installed at Exit 17 on northbound
and southbound I-95 in Westport; at southbound Exit 40A on the Merritt Parkway,
at the terminus of northbound Route 7, at Exit 2 of northbound Route 7 and at
Exit 14 of southbound I-95 in Norwalk; and at Exit 5 on both northbound
and southbound Route 8 and Exit 29 of southbound I-95 in Bridgeport.
Wrong-way driving crashes in
Connecticut tripled in 2022, according to Gov. Ned Lamont's office. Last
year, 13 wrong-way crashes resulted in 23 deaths, compared to four wrong-way
fatal crashes in 2021 and two in 2020. In January, state Rep. Quentin
"Q" Williams of Middletown was killed by a wrong-way driver after
leaving Lamont's inaugural ball, casting a spotlight on the issue.
Most wrong-way driving happens during impaired driving,
Morgan said.
Unless a crash or accident happens, most motorists driving
on the wrong side of the road will go unreported, he said. So the most
efficient way to determine ramp locations for the signs is to put them where
instances of impaired driving are more likely, he said.
“Unfortunately, these crashes are usually fatal,” Morgan
said.
These signs can help twofold: they can notify authorities
regardless of a crash, meaning faster emergency dispatch if a crash
does happen, Morgan said.
The new signs differ from conventional wrong way signs
because of advanced technology supplied by TAPCO, a company that provides traffic
safety solutions.
The new signs will be equipped with cameras that identify
when cars drive the wrong way, Morgan said. Once identified, the signs’ lights
will start flashing and it will notify the closest state police barracks and
DOT Highway Operations Center of the wrong-way driver.
The cameras will be affixed to nearby poles or the poles to
which the wrong way signs are attached, he said.
The TAPCO website says its technology can reduce
wrong-way events by 38 percent, according to a Texas A&M University study for
the Texas Transportation Institute.
According to Joseph Dinho, public information officer
at the Norwalk
Police Department, there were 65 DUI arrests in Norwalk between Jan. 1 and
May 31, 2023. He said he favors installation of the wrong-way signs.
“This is excellent,” he said in an email. “Anything that can
be done to keep the public safe is a huge plus!”
Administrative police Lt. Eric Woods said the Westport
Police Department favors the technology, which can make Connecticut
highways safer.
“Anything they can do that can help reduce the likelihood of
wrong-way drivers, we’d support that,” Woods said.
The DOT's Morgan said the signs can make a difference as a
secondary precaution, with safe driving as the first precaution.
“The biggest thing that could help is driving sober, but we
have a responsibility to help with these signs,” Morgan said.
But the DOT has not yet completed construction on any of the
signs due to supply chain issues, Morgan said.
Because of this, it is “unclear” when groundbreaking will
take place, but Morgan said the Department of Transportation hopes to begin
installing signs by late June or early July.
He said it is difficult to pinpoint how long each signs’
installation will take. The signs will either be hard-wired or solar-powered,
and the hard-wired signs will take longer to put in place.
On Norwalk River, removal of 'vanity' dam is 'biggest thing we can do to improve' waterway's health
Jarret Liotta
WILTON — An extensive
dam deconstruction project underway on the Norwalk River is meant to
improve the health of the body of water and even help the so-called “vampire
fish” return to the river.
The work to remove the dam in Wilton is orchestrated by
Trout Unlimited, a national nonprofit that aims to restore rivers and streams
to foster more fishing opportunities for trout and salmon.
Its Mianus Chapter, which is based in Wilton — working in
conjunction with Save the Sound, a New Haven-based nonprofit aiming to improve
Long Island Sound’s water quality — has been trying to move forward the $2.7
million Dana Dam removal project for decades.
According to the groups, with removal of the dam, 20 miles
of the river north of Long Island Sound will see a return of certain fish,
including sea lamprey, and the original ecosystems will potentially be restored
to the waterway. Work along the shores of the river, including native tree
planting, will also help mitigate flooding in some places, as well as
ultimately play a part in filtering toxins in runoff.
“This project is the biggest thing we can do to improve the
health of the Norwalk River,” said Gerald Berrafati, Mianus Chapter president,
who led a June 4 tour of the project at Merwin Meadows in Wilton, along with
Alex Krofta, ecological restoration project manager with Save the Sound.
He explained that the cement dam was originally constructed
decades ago in order to create
a swimming pond, making it what he called a “vanity dam.”
Because the river is now much higher north of the dam, a
series of stone “ripples” will be installed that will allow the water to run
down more gradually. Consequently, lamprey and other fish that seek to spawn
upstream will be able to make that journey unimpeded.
“It’s a very altered system,” said Krofta. “It’s been
completely changed from the original river channel.”
In 2018, the obsolete Flock
Process Dam was removed from the river in Norwalk in a $1.7 million
project that included state, federal and local involvement. As a result, for
the first time in 125 years, he said, the native sea lamprey have appeared in
the Norwalk River.
Once reviled, known as the “vampire fish,” in recent years
lampreys have become recognized as important participants in North American
ecosystems.
Part of the construction project involves crafting how the
river will meander, with some of the banks getting “armored” in order to keep
the course from heading closer into manmade infrastructure, such as the nearby
railroad branch line.
“We can’t just let the river do its thing,” Krofta said. “We
have to take a more active approach.”
The project, which has received the blessing of the town and
several area environmental groups, required various state approvals, including
that of the Department of Transportation.
Working during the river’s “low flow” summer season, Krofta
said the bulk of the work is due to be completed by the end of summer, with
some cool-weather plantings taking place in the fall.
Having created a large woodchip-covered roadway through the
forest area to abet access for construction vehicles, the hope is that the area
will see repair when the work is done.
“We’re very interested in the environmental restoration of
this trail,” said Samia Wiest of Wilton.
“We live down the street and we’re always walking this
trail,” she said.
Several people who attended the tour expressed their
approval, including Diane Lauricella, founding president of the Norwalk River
Watershed Association.
“I think it’s terrific,” she said, applauding the work it
took to make it happen.
“The Norwalk River had been manipulated for so many decades
and the flood of '55 really changed its future,” she said, but this kind of
work could ultimately return it to its original condition.
Lauricella explained that a thriving ecosystem along the
river will lead to better soil and sediment, which in turn can produce more
transformative bacteria that can help filter and potentially process some
pollutants before they reach the water.
Major CT developer proposes 3 apartment buildings in Rocky Hill, 10% ‘affordable’ units
The Simon
Konover Co. is planning to expand its Stepny Place
apartment complex with 72 new units, including 10% set aside as
affordable housing.
Konover, among the largest real estate development and
residential property owners in Connecticut, wants to build three multi-story
apartment buildings along with an amenities center on land alongside Stepny
Place’s existing 171 units.
Konover’s request for site plan approval goes to a hearing
of the planning and zoning commission on Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. at town hall.
The roughly 3 acres that would be developed are all behind
commercial businesses facing the Silas Deane Highway, less than a minute drive
from the I-91 interchange.
So far there has been no sign of neighborhood opposition or
support, possibly because the project is along an already intensely developed
commercial thoroughfare that’s mostly shielded from nearby homes.
Mayor Lisa Marotta said Friday that the project could be a
benefit for the town since it would create new housing and also provide amenities
that can be shared by tenants of the existing 139 units at Stepny Place.
“It will have a clubhouse that can be used by existing
tenants, and it can add business for all the mom and pop shops near there,”
Marotta said.
Konover’s zoning application doesn’t specify the sizes of
the new apartments or what they’d rent for. The current Stepny Place units
include studios along with one-, two- and three-bedroom configurations, ranging
in square footage from 438 square feet to 1,600 for a three-bedroom with two
bathrooms.
Stepny Place in Rocky Hill. (Don Stacom/The Hartford
Courant)
If the town gives its approval and Konover constructs the
new units, Stepny Place would end up with a total of 26 studios, 102
one-bedroom units, 105 two-bedroom units and 10-three bedroom apartments.
Konover is proposing to add enough parking for the expansion that the total
project would have 388 spaces.
The plan is to use several partly wooded acres on the Stepny
Place property to construct three three-story buildings with 24 apartments
each. The expansion would also include a 4,410-square-foot community building for
all Stepny Place tenants.
Konover operates the existing Stepny Place buildings as part
of its inventory of 34 multifamily complexes in Connecticut. In the state’s
central region, those include the Clocktower Mill in Manchester, Eden &
Main in Southington, Federation Square in West Hartford, Industrial Commons in
New Britain, in Griswold Gardens in Glastonbury, Sigourney Square in Hartford
and others.
Konover’s traffic consultant, F A Hesketh and Associates,
wrote in a report that the 72 new apartments in Rocky Hill would add at most
about 25 hourly car trips during peak morning or afternoon rush hours to the
adjoining road, Marshall Road.
“These site-generated traffic volumes are relatively minor
and based on the background traffic volumes of between 1,500 to 2,000 vehicles
an hour, the increase should not represent a significant impact on local
roadways,” according to an April 26 letter from Hesketh to the planning and
zoning commission.
Rocky Hill, like many central Connecticut towns, has seen a
sharp increase in apartment construction over the past two to three years. The
Stepny Place property, for instance, is a little under 2 miles north of where
Belfonti Companies has demolished the old Ames discount store headquarters and
is planning a 213-unit apartment building.
Former Port Authority board member agrees to pay $18,500 over alleged ethics violations
Austin Mirmina
HARTFORD — The state has reached a settlement with
a former Connecticut Port Authority board member who allegedly used his
status on the board to secure work for a company that he partially owned.
Henry Juan, who served on the CPA Board of Directors from
2016 to 2018, agreed to pay the Connecticut Office of State Ethics $18,500 over
the alleged kickback scheme. The settlement is one of the largest ever reached
by the OSE, the agency stated in a news
release.
The state had alleged that Juan violated two Codes of Ethics
when he attempted to influence CPA staff and other members to award
contracts to Seabury Maritime, a New York investment firm that Juan co-founded
in 2016. The contracts related to the development
of the New London State Pier.
“Misuse of public office is the precise offense that spurred
the creation of the State Ethics Commission back in 1977," OSE Executive
Director Peter Lewandowski said in the news release. "Now, nearly 50
years later, we are continuing this important work by ensuring that officials
are not leveraging their position or knowledge for personal financial gain.
"In enforcing state ethics laws, the Office of State
Ethics sends a clear message that there is no tolerance for gamesmanship in
state government,” Lewandowski added.
Juan did not immediately respond to a message seeking
comment that was left with his employer, Greenwich-based Strategic Rail
Capital, on Monday afternoon. Juan is a president at the company, according to
his LinkedIn page.
During his time on the CPA board, Juan acknowledged "on
multiple occasions" that he had a conflict of interest due to his
role as a managing director with Seabury Maritime, which sought to gain
contracts and other business from the CPA, a quasi-public agency responsible
for the marketing and development of the state's ports and maritime industry,
the release stated.
Despite those admissions, the state alleged in the release,
Juan used his official position "to advance Seabury Maritime’s interests
in doing business with the CPA relative to the New London
State Pier."
Juan resigned from the authority around Feb. 2018. Three
months later, the authority controversially chose to hire Seabury Capital to
help find a new pier operator. Juan's company was paid $700,000 for that work,
including a $523,000 “success” or reward fee.
Had the case proceeded to a hearing, the state said it was
ready to prove that Juan should have registered and filed appropriate reports
for his paid efforts in 2017 and 2018 to lobby before the CPA on behalf of his
employer.
Seabury Maritime has been in trouble with the Office of
State Ethics before.
In May, the firm was ordered
to pay a $10,000 fine for undisclosed lobbying before the CPA.
Ethics officials alleged that in 2017 and 2019, Seabury spent a total of
$17,500 on lobbying before the port authority.
Under state law, lobbyists are required to register with the
Office of State Ethics if they spend more than $3,000 each year, and are
required to file itemized financial disclosures. State officials
claim Seabury didn't adhere to either of these requirements.
In 2022, the firm was fined $10,000 for providing
gifts to employees and a port authority board member in 2017 and 2019,
documents show.
A port authority employee was also
fined last year for failing to disclose that Seabury gave them a
ticket to a National Hockey League playoff game in Boston in May 2019.
Windsor Locks growth set for takeoff with $225M warehouse plan and incoming train station
Liese Klein
Beyond its packed front parking lot, the view from DORO’s Marketplace in Windsor Locks offers a glimpse of this small town’s challenges and opportunities — a constant stream of trucks and cars headed to and from Bradley Airport.
“They’ve been open probably a year now and they are still on fire,” Windsor Locks First Selectman Paul Harrington said of the eatery. “You can’t get a parking spot.”
Launched first in West Hartford, the bakery-cafe draws patrons from across the region to its Windsor Locks location with its European-style fare. DORO’s is just one of the new businesses newly opened or coming soon to Windsor Locks, prompting Harrington to plan for an economic takeoff in the coming years.
“We’ve been able to continue to grow our grand list, entice businesses and entice industry to come into town,” Harrington said, adding that Windsor Locks hasn’t raised its mill rate in eight years.
“That’s Windsor Locks punching above its weight class,” Harrington said.
Despite housing most of the airport within its limits, Windsor Locks gets only $3.6 million a year in direct revenue from Bradley’s operations, an amount that hasn’t changed in decades. That sum barely covers the added police and fire services needed for the now-international transportation hub, with its 5.7 million passengers passing through his town every year.
Of the nearly 2,500 acres of airport land and billions of dollars in property, Windsor Locks also gets to collect taxes only on rental cars, worth about $2 million a year to the town.
Not that proximity to the airport is a bad thing: Windsor Locks’ location plays a major role in attracting projects like the $225 million warehouse proposed for a 76-acre expanse of a former tobacco farm at 700 Old County Road, the town’s last major parcel of undeveloped land.
Indiana developer Scannell wants to build two structures on about one-third of the property's footprint, for a total of more than a million square feet of warehouse space. The company is asking for the property to be rezoned from business to industrial, with the town having oversight over any future changes to usage.
At a Windsor Locks Planning & Zoning Commission on Monday, consultant Mike Goman of East Hartford’s Goman+York said warehouses would be the best use of the property, once eyed for both an outlet mall and sports complex.
“The market is very supportive of high-end industrial development,” Goman said, adding that similar properties in the region were fully leased, unlike office and retail complexes with double-digit vacancy rates. “The highest and best usage for large sites like this are high-end warehouse industrial.”
Scannell does not yet have a tenant for the warehouse but is confident it can lease it within six months.
“This is the best site, the best location there is in the whole region,” said Daniel Madrigal, director of development for Scannell Properties.
Residents of nearby homes have expressed concern about the potential traffic and pollution from the planned new warehouse and are expected to speak at a July public hearing on the proposal.
Airport-linked travel is fueling ambitions around the new $87 million Windsor Locks train station, which broke ground last September and is currently under construction.
When the station opens in summer 2025, a bus will meet passengers every time the train stops in the town to take them directly to the airport, but town leaders hope the hub will also attract housing and retail. Developers are taking note of the available land around the hub and making inquiries, Harrington said: “We’re starting to see the uptick in interest.”
The adjacent former Windsor Locks Commons shopping plaza has been emptied of tenants and is being eyed by a developer for a 75-unit apartment complex. Land across the street from the new station is also for sale, with proposals for a walkable neighborhood that meets the state’s transit-oriented development goals.
The town hasn’t completely escaped recent economic headwinds: Manufacturer Serta Simmons Bedding announced in April it would close its Windsor Locks factory and lay off 157 workers. The state is looking to claw back part of an $8 million loan it gave to Serta in 2015 to move some of its operations to Connecticut.
On the positive side, the owners of Windsor-based Bear's Smokehouse BBQ bought a 24,436-square-foot industrial building at 24 King Spring Road in June as part of expansion plans.
As it prepares for future development, Windsor Locks is also suffering through some growing pains.
In a recent example, the presentation at Town Hall on Monday of plans for the new warehouse on Old County Road was interrupted by an unruly crowd gathered to debate a proposed new policy on the keeping of chickens.
The town fire marshal interrupted a technical discussion on the warehouse plan to stop the meeting as dozens of poultry-mad residents crowded the meeting room in excess of 150-person capacity limits and spilled into the hallway.
Some riled-up chicken partisans responded to the fire marshal’s ruling with loud grumbling and a shout of “Bullshit!”
Votes on both the warehouse and chicken issues were continued until the planning commission’s July meeting.
Biotech development is reshaping New Haven here's why
The third floor of the Pierce
Lab, a philanthropic research organization in New Haven, underwent a
major change during the pandemic. The old lab space where volunteers pushed
their bodies to the limits for Project
Daedalus, a human powered aircraft experiment, were gutted and renovated
into a biotech incubator, New Haven Innovation Labs.
The result is a glimpse of a new economic engine
transforming New Haven as science labs and fledgling biotech companies grow and
expand. Already, two companies that started at the innovation labs have moved
on to larger spaces in Connecticut.
“In the year they’ve been here the companies have raised
over $20 million and added 38 employees,” said Kim Kelly, vice president at
Biotech, a nonprofit that supports bioscience growth that is working with New
Haven Innovation Labs. “That’s a good statistic.”
Just up the street, construction is nearing completion on
the 101 College Street laboratory tower. The biotech industry has physically
reshaped downtown New Haven. It’s hard not to feel as if Boston or Cambridge
Massachusetts’s Kendall Square has sprouted here.
Twenty years ago, there was barely any private lab space in
New Haven proper. West Haven was still home to the Bayer campus. The startup
scene wasn’t really present, and the site of the new lab tower was a highway
spur. Now there are more than two million square feet of lab space in New Haven.
Yale alone spins off roughly ten startups every year from its massive patent
portfolio. Biotech is booming.
According to analysis by AdvanceCT, a nonprofit economic
development group, Connecticut ranks second in academic bioscience investment
and third in bioscience venture capital funding. The state has the fourth
highest number of bioscience patents. New Haven anchors a substantial portion
of the state's biotech real estate market.
“All of this creates momentum,” said John Bourdeaux head of
business development for Advance CT. “The investments that have been made in
the past and will continue to be made in New Haven will have a magnifying
effect statewide. That will spill over into adjacent towns and throughout the
state as well.”
New Haven also happens to be in the middle of two major
biotech hubs, Boston and New York, with lab space costs that are roughly half
to roughly a third of the cost. Cost of living is also cheaper here, relative
to other biotech hubs.
“There’s this misperception that if someone moves to
Connecticut for a role (in biotech) and the company goes bust they’re not going
to find another opportunity. But there’s much more happening here than people
understand” said Jodie Gillion, CEO of BioCT, which worked to help develop the
innovation labs. “There’s this budding ecosystem.”
A city that makes sense
The parcel at 101 College Street was reclaimed as part of
the Downtown Crossing Project, a partnership between city, state, and private
actors to reconnect downtown New Haven to the Yale Medical School campus using
a biotech industry cluster. Downtown Crossing used to be the Route 34
expressway, a highway spur that divided this area in half.
As Route 34 came down, replaced by frontage roads, shining
laboratory towers went up. 100 College street is home to a 14 story tower
divided between Alexion and Yale. 101 College Street will house local companies
Arvinas, Alexion Pharmaceuticals and 58,000 square feet of incubator space.
“Boston is amazing but it’s super expensive,” said Dr.
Ranjit Bindra, a professor of radiation oncology at Yale and serial biotech
entrepreneur. He rattled off the transit options, the music and restaurant
scene and the travelling theater companies that come through. “You want a place
with a good cost of living and good access to Boston and New York … schools
living by the shoreline. Mix that all together and you can see why this makes
sense.”
Meanwhile at New Haven Innovation Labs, researchers working
out of the medical campus can rush across the road to check on their startups.
“There’s been a big push in the city of New Haven and state of
Connecticut to have people stay here and do science here instead of rolling out
of Yale and leaving,” said Chris Vandola, operations director for the lab
space. “We wanted to get involved with that.”
BioCT, a partner with the New Haven Innovation Lab, is
a professional organization that represents the Connecticut biotech industry.
They also provide discounts, networking, and a pair of incubators, one in New
Haven and one on the Pfizer campus in Groton to members.
“We want it to be a turnkey so they can move in and just
start,” said Kim Kelly vice president of BioCT's incubators. She ran through a
laundry list of expenses including specialty equipment and insurance. The
renovation at New Haven Innovation Labs took about $1.5 million to get the labs
up to modern spec. They range in size from small, shared lab benches to 1,000
square foot private spaces.
Kelly said that BioCT’s incubators were designed to be
turn-key. “It allows them to stretch their capital. If they had to build their
own space the VCs are not interested in that for an early-stage company.”
Partnership with Yale
But the growth of biotech in the city was not a foregone
conclusion. It is a product of material conditions and cultivation by public
and private actors. To understand why New Haven became a biotech hub we need to
go back to the 90s.
In the early to mid-90s Yale didn’t have a formal technology
licensing apparatus or staff dedicated to technology transfer. That would
change by 2000 with a dedicated process to help researchers spin technologies
off into the private sector.
This coincided with major technological changes. The Human
Genome Project was wrapping up. Biology was just starting to experience a rapid
boom in new techniques to accelerate and intensify research. The stage was
getting set.
“There was a company called Curagen, the granddaddy
of all the life sciences companies,” said Robert H. Motley senior director of
Cushman and Wakefield, a commercial real estate company. “They struck a billion
dollar licensing deal … that was the wake up call that life sciences was going to
be a big deal in Connecticut.”
At around same time, Yale got in touch with developer Carter
Winstanley, who had been working in the Cambridge area developing lab
space.
“They expressed an interest in having a partner in town who
could create private sector life science space in close proximity to the
university,” said Winstanley. “These companies are formed off science coming
out of the university, so there’s a highly collaborative environment in place.”
The first building Winstanley identified was an old telecom
building at 300 George Street. He converted this half-a-million square foot
building into 5,000 square foot incubator lab spaces. As those spaces filled up
Winstanley and Yale looked for more candidates.
New Haven had a significant stock of buildings that were
compatible with the heavy machinery required to for a lab setup.
“In the early 2000 everyone who owned a commercial building
was throwing their hat in the ring saying I can do life science,” said Motley.
“But the reality is that 95-98 percent of these owners have no idea what’s
involved.”
Unlike a traditional tech company, where you can start out
with some computers and desks in a room, biotech has demanding physical
needs. Motley ran through a list. Labs need a lot of power, advanced
HVAC, gas, suction and floors that can bare heavy equipment. Lots of office
buildings just can’t accommodate these things. New Haven could.
What is now Science Park was the Winchester Firearms
manufacturing campus. Those buildings, Motley explained, were built with
strong, vibration-resistant floors, and could accommodate massive HVAC systems.
They also happened to be cheap to buy.
“With an old factory building you could take all that
ductwork and run it through an old freight elevator shaft,” said Motely. “Or
you’d take these massive exhaust systems and bolt them to the side of the
building, signaling to the neighborhood Hey I’m a Life Science Building.”
These spaces paved the way for biotech startups to stay in
New Haven. While many of the initial class of those startups have gone under,
or were bought out, others have put down roots. In the case of Alexion, it was
both purchased by Astra Zeneca and left intact as a research department.
“These companies that spun out of Yale really started to
stoke the fire of biotech development,” said Dr. Bindra. “Once you get those
big anchors it becomes easier and easier for other companies spinning out of Yale
to stay in New Haven.”
This created more demand for lab space. Winstanley recounted
a conversation with a startup tenant of his at 300 George. The tenant pointed
across the Route 34 Expressway to the medical school.
“He looked at me and said, our success depends on the
scientists in that building coming over here for lunch, looking through our
microscope and letting us know if we’re headed in the right direction,”
recalled Winstanley. “If you put me down on Long Warf that’s never going to
happen.”
New Haven escaped the biotech crunch that hit the larger
hubs in Boston and San Francisco this year. Growth here has been steady. But
everyone agrees that there remain some real challenges to keep the momentum
going.
Housing, for
one, could hold back the biotech wave now boosting New Haven.
While New Haven leads the state in terms of new
apartment construction, it’s still not enough. According to reporting in
the New
Haven Independent last year, there was a 8,300 unit shortfall for
low-income renters and a 3,200 unit shortfall for higher income renters.
Suburbs have not kept up with the pace of New Haven’s development. Winstanley
said that the amount of residential development wasn’t enough.
“There’s a real need for cost-effective residential
options,” said Winstanley. “I don’t think we have enough out there and there’s
got to be affordable opportunities as well.”
Winstanley was adamant that the growth of biotech wasn’t
just about bringing jobs to the city.
“I want kids walking out of this building feeling like they
are entitled to the jobs here, that they are comfortable with these jobs,” said
Winstanley. “I want them to graduate and come back and work in the building
that their mom or dad built.”
He pointed at the connections 101 College Street would have
to the New Haven public school system, a scholarship program, and the Biopath
program at Gateway Community College and Southern Connecticut State University.
“We see internship postings that say students need two years
of experience. Students ask, how am I supposed to do that,” said Peter Dimoulas
grant program administrator for BioPath. “That’s where we come
in.”
BioPath has in the past year placed 38 students in jobs and
internships. They also provide financial support to students trying to enter
biotech through scholarships. They’ve been working with the New Haven public
school system to get local kids excited about biotech.
“The students go into those labs, behind the proverbial steel and glass panes to see what’s going on,” said Dimoulas. “And they imagine, hey, I could do that.”