State Bond Commission approves $340.2M for projects
The State Bond Commission on Friday approved $340.2 million
in funding for projects across the state.
Among other things, the commission approved redirecting
about $7 million previously allocated for redevelopment of East Hartford’s
Silver Lane and Rentschler Field corridor for construction of new apartments at
the 25-acre former Showcase Cinema site. At least 300 units are planned.
In addition, the commission approved:
$6.5 million for abatement and demolition of buildings at
Founders Plaza in East Hartford, including the former McCartin School and three
adjacent buildings. A developer has proposed a mixed-use project that includes
hundreds of apartments, along with new restaurants, entertainment, office space
and passive recreation.
$4.85 million for renovations to the state Capitol complex,
including skywalk upgrades, hearing room renovations, carpeting, technology
upgrades, and other improvements and repairs.
$9 million for the Department of Economic and Community
Development’s Small Business Boost Fund - formerly known as the Small Business
Express Program – which includes establishing at least one minority business
revolving loan fund.
$30 million to provide supplemental financing for
redevelopment and upgrades to the State Pier in New London. The plan is to
create a modern, heavy-lift port through a public-private partnership.
$20 million to finance loans for housing projects and
programs under the Housing Trust Fund. The funds would go toward the Time To
Own first-time homebuyer assistance Program.
$1.5 million for a mixed-use development on vacant
Hartford-owned land on Albany Avenue between Magnolia and Irving streets. The
property was previously slated to receive funds to create a neighborhood park,
but the money has been redirected.
$4.6 million for small programs and administrative costs
under the Economic Development and Manufacturing Assistance Act.
$750,000 to provide a grant-in-aid to the Eastern
Connecticut Chamber of Commerce to move its headquarters to downtown New
London.
Construction on $40M New London community center set to begin
John Penney
New London ― City officials expect construction to begin
this month on a $40 million community recreation center that is slated to open
its doors in 2025.
Work crews in July will descend on seven acres of city-owned
land on the Fort Trumbull peninsula and begin erecting the 58,000-square-foot
facility, Felix Reyes, director of New London’s Office of Planning and
Development, said this past week.
“We’re just waiting for the state (Department of Energy and
Environmental Protection) to sign off on the project’s flood plan certificate
and work can start,” he said. “That will happen within the next few weeks.”
The project’s initial $30 million price tag jumped by
approximately $10 million as more detailed cost figures emerged, Reyes said,
with the gap later filled with a combination of state and federal funding.
“When this proposal was brought to the City Council (in
2021) for approval of the original $30 million in bond funding, they were
assured that we’d leverage federal and state money to fill any (funding) gaps,”
Reyes said.
The center’s opening date, previously pegged for 2024, has
been tentatively pushed out to 2025 due to delays in securing a final round of
brownfield remediation funding, along with a lengthier-than-anticipated state
permitting process, Reyes said.
The city was previously awarded a $1.2 million grant through
the state’s Brownfield Remediation program for pre-construction site work. The
City Council in June approved the city’s application for $600,000 more in
clean-up funding from the state.
“There’s a chance the construction crews will make up that
lost construction time,” Reyes said. “We expect the bulk of the building to be
up by the end of next year. But months before the center’s done, we’ll start
bringing in members of the third-party company that will eventually run the
day-to-day operations of the center.”
While the city’s recreation department is expected to run
some programming at the site, general oversight and operation of the facility
will be the responsibility of a private company the city will hire. The hiring
process is expected to begin by the end of this year.
Plans for the center include a community lounge, classroom
space for early childhood programming, two-court gymnasium, eight-lane pool,
track area and workout and game rooms.
Reyes said area residents currently must travel to the YMCA
branches in Mystic and Westerly to avail themselves of similar recreational
options. The facility is expected to cost $2 million a year to run with revenue
generated by memberships, rental fees and sponsorships.
“The city was never looking for this facility to be a
moneymaker,” Reyes said. “It’s about giving all our residents access to
recreational options.”
Conversations about exactly what kind of programming will be
offered at the center are still in the early stages, but Recreation Department
Director Joshua Posey said the new facility brings with it a host of
possibilities, including expanded youth swimming and basketball offerings.
“And it’s not just sports I’m thinking about, but things
like cooking classes and other new enrichment programming,” he said. “As a
resident here for the last decade, this center is a dream come true.”
Bridgeport seeks to take over blighted Warnaco factory
BRIDGEPORT — The city is aiming, either through friendly
negotiation or more aggressive means like eminent domain, to get control of a
blighted, prominent former South End factory whose owner has failed to move
ahead with an eight-year old redevelopment plan.
"It's just a massive property right in the middle of a
residential neighborhood, so it's important that be addressed," Thomas
Gaudett, deputy chief of staff to Mayor Joe Ganim, said Monday.
The site in question is the three-and-a-half story,
100,000-square-foot former Warnaco clothing factory at 330 Myrtle Ave. New York
City-based CT Century Gardens LLC purchased it in 2004 and eight years ago
obtained zoning approval to build a nearly 350-unit apartment complex there with
ground-floor retail.
But that project never moved forward and late last year the
city condemned the dilapidated site to be demolished.
CT
Century Gardens, run by Albert Gad, is trying to overturn the condemnation in
state Superior Court. A remote status conference before a judge is
scheduled for July 20 during which, according to Bridgeport's law department,
the defendant has promised to present evidence of a partner prepared to move
the redevelopment forward.
Gad could not immediately be reached Monday. In May an
assistant of his responded she was "not authorized to comment" on
questions forwarded him at that time by Hearst related to the condemnation.
Russell Liskov, the municipal attorney handling that case, in
May argued CT Century Gardens has made the claim of a partner to advance the
redevelopment in the past "and nothing has panned out." Meanwhile
Thomas Gill, Bridgeport's economic development director, in a separate
interview in May accused the property owner of "land-banking" —
sitting on the site until at some point a potential buyer comes along.
This past spring CT Century Gardens put
Warnaco back on the market for $6.5 million, which Gill called a
"ridiculous price." The building has been appraised by the city's tax
assessor at far less — $1.9 million.
While the condemnation plays out in court, Gill's office
late last week submitted a resolution to the City Council seeking authorization
to "gain development control" over 330 Myrtle through more than a
dozen possible scenarios, from leasing it to a land swap to a
"friendly" negotiate purchase to seizing it through eminent domain.
"Eminent domain is always like the last option on the
table," Gaudett noted Monday. "We are seeking authority from the
council for acquisition in whatever way that may occur."
"We'll just keep going until those buildings are down
and the property's being developed," Gaudett concluded.
But city ownership does not necessarily hasten
redevelopment, depending on the costs of any environmental cleanup and private
sector interest. There are examples around town of publicly owned land that has
or is currently being developed and other sites, notably the Majestic
and Poli Palace theaters downtown, that have languished.
CT Century Gardens' court appeal of the condemnation cites
Warnaco's "potential to be included in the National Register of Historic
Places." In
May state historic officials indicated to Hearst Connecticut Media that
the old manufacturing structure is a potential candidate for preservation but
as of that time there were no records of anyone, including the property owner,
initiating a formal effort to place the abandoned factory on either the state's
or the national historic registers.
City Council member Jorge Cruz, who represents the South End
applauded the economic development department's effort to take control of
Warnaco.
"Hallelujah. About time," Cruz said. "I want
them to take it quickly as possible, knock the place down and bring a developer
with a mixed-use (plan) and workforce and affordable housing, with some stores
on the bottom. That building has been an eyesore for so many years."
City Council member Tyler Mack, who also represents the
South End, said it seems like the resolution forwarded to the council is
"a backup plan" should the city not prevail in court over the
condemnation appeal. Liskov on Monday said he had not been made aware of the
resolution and it is a separate matter from the condemnation.
"We need to weigh all options because that area and
particular building has been an eyesore and hasn't done much for the South End
in a long time," Mack said.
But, he cautioned, any plans must also factor in
the new high school, Bassick, being built nearby and the impact any
additional traffic from redeveloping 330 Myrtle Ave. will have on the students
and faculty there.
Fairfield gets $3M grant to develop vacant lot next to Fairfield Metro station
Jarrod Wardwell
FAIRFIELD — The town recently received a $3 million state
grant to furnish a multi-use development with residential and retail space at a
vacant lot on Black Rock Turnpike.
The grant will renovate a 4.9-acre lot at 81 Black Rock
Turnpike, which has sat empty for about a decade next to the Fairfield Metro
Station, First Selectwoman Brenda Kupchick said in a recent town update.
The development will feature affordable housing, retail, co-working space and
public amenities.
Post Road Residential, the real estate company that developed The
Anchorage in downtown Fairfield, requested a
non-binding preview of its planned five-story development at the Black Rock
Turnpike lot from the Town Plan and Zoning Commission in November. TPZ Chair
Thomas Noonan had expressed
interest in working with the Post Road Residential developers at the
time.
TPZ commissioners amended
the developers' proposal at a meeting last month, including adding the
co-working space and bicycle parking and increasing the amount
of affordable housing from 10 to 12 percent of the total residential
units.
The state grant is part of a $23.8 million cash infusion to
15 towns and cities that Gov. Ned Lamont approved late
June for projects set to remediate a total of 480 acres of land.
The Fairfield development will feature 240 residential
units, 20 percent of which will be considered affordable at 80 percent of the
area median income, according to a release from Lamont's office.
"It makes no sense to have old, polluted, blighted
properties sitting vacant for decades when we could be using this land to grow
new businesses and create new housing," Lamont said in the release.
"This state program enables us to partner with municipalities and
developers to bring these lifeless properties back from the dead."
The release states the grants — which span 22 properties and
come from the state's Brownfield Remediation and Development Program —
should generate about $862 million in private funding, 915 jobs and 811
residential units, 223 of which will be affordable housing.
Plans to develop the space surrounding the Fairfield Metro
Station have been in the works for nearly two decades leading up to last year,
when town leaders and developers broke
ground in September on a project to build a hotel, commercial space
and hundreds of apartments off Ash Creek Boulevard. The Elicit Brewing Company
is also set
to open a second location near the metro station at 111 Black Rock
Turnpike.
"The combined impact of these three projects will
result in a mixed-use development, creating a vibrant and walkable
community," Kupchick said in her email.
Mark Barnhart, the director of Fairfield's Office of
Community and Economic Development, said the entire development will cost about
$100 million, including $4 million for cleanup alone. Barnhart said the grant
is "largely focused" on cleaning up environmental contamination on
the site where Bullard Machine Tool Company operated a casting facility decades
ago. He said the contamination comes as the byproduct of residual sand
that workers would dump into wet areas from the casts they would use to make
machine tools.
He said about 10,000 employees worked at the Fairfield
manufacturing plant around the mid-20th century until the company shut
down the location in the mid-1980s.
Barnhart said the sand dumping, though common practice at
the time, amounts to "regulated solid waste" in Connecticut and must
be cleaned under state guidelines for Post Road Residential to build a complex
there. Barnhart said the contamination is not hazardous or a "human
health" concern.
"Is there some risk that they might encounter something
unforeseen?" he said, "Yeah, that's the nature of the development
business. There's always some risk, but I think they've done a decent job in
trying to understand the site and mitigate the risk associated with
development."
He said several tenants occupied
the former Bullard building until its demolition in 2014, and since
then, the environmental issue has "impeded" other developments on the
lot because of cleanup costs and potential risk factors.
He added the town has had to clean up other manufacturing
contaminants in the area in the past, including "polychlorinated
biphenyl," a carcinogenic industrial chemical that the United States banned in
1979, at the Metro station. PCB cleanup at the Fairfield Metro site cost
about $2 million during the construction of the train station in 2011.
Barnhart said he hopes the construction and cleanup can
start by 2024, but the timeline is contingent on the permitting process.
Norwalk River Valley Trail earns $4.5M federal RAISE grant for 30-mile trail from Norwalk to Danbury
The Norwalk River
Valley Trail, which when completed will be longest trail in Fairfield
County, has received a big boost with $4.528 million in federal funding from
the U.S. Department of Transportation.
The funds will be used for continued planning for the trail,
which will cover over 30 miles, connecting Calf Pasture Beach in Norwalk
to Rogers Park in Danbury, while passing through Wilton, Ridgefield, and
Redding along the way, according to Andrea
Gartner, executive director of the Friends of the Norwalk River Valley Trail.
"The goal of the grant is to create 'shovel ready'
projects that will aid in getting capital/construction grant awards to fund
building more," Gartner said. The 10-foot-wide, handicapped
accessible, multiuse trail can be used by walkers, runners and bicyclists.
Nearly 12 miles of the trail have been completed so far, in Norwalk, Wilton and
Redding, thanks to state and donor funds, she said.
"We are so grateful to the U.S. Department of
Transportation for recognizing the transformative nature of this project and
providing 80 percent of the funding for the final design," Gartner said.
"The possibilities of a fully completed Norwalk River Valley Trail are
awesomely inspiring: bike to Danbury and train back to Norwalk; run a full
marathon and have dinner in Ridgefield; explore the beauty of the Connecticut
hills, the river and placid points all along the NRVT; leave your car behind
and commute to work. With this award, we are on our way to realizing that
vision."
The Friends of the Norwalk River Valley Trail maintains the
trail and 10 feet of land on each side of it, with Gartner calling it “a
30-foot ribbon, if you will,” through the region.
“I’m overjoyed that I was able to support WestCOG and
the Friends of the Norwalk River Valley Trail in securing $4.5 million in
federal funding so that they can complete work on what will be the longest
bicycle and pedestrian trail in Fairfield County,” U.S. Rep. Jim Himes,
D-Conn., said Friday in a statement announcing the grant.
“More than 30 miles running through the heart of Southwest
Connecticut, this trail provides a path for families to walk along the Norwalk
River, hikers the chance to climb Connecticut hills, and commuters a way to
bike to work safely and conveniently. This project will not only connect our
cities and towns, but also encourage the good physical and mental health
benefits that come with spending time in nature,” Himes said.
The grant, from the Rebuilding American Infrastructure with
Sustainability and Equity, or RAISE, program, will help improve quality of life
and provide greater access to bike and pedestrian infrastructure in Southwest
Connecticut, while promoting tourism and spurring economic development in the
region, Himes said.
According to Gartner, since 2012, the NRVT, in partnership
with the five municipalities along the trail, has applied for multiple grants
to build more of the trail. In October 2022, the NRVT received the Connecticut
Department of Transportation's funding letters for the Ridgefield Ramble and
the continuation of the Wilton Loop North projects. When the current
Ridgefield and Wilton lengths are finished, the total length completed of the
NRVT will reach the halfway mark at 15 miles.
The demand for outdoor recreation has increased dramatically since the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, according to the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. Annual visits to locations in the Connecticut State Parks and Forests system reached 17 million in 2022 — a 75 percent increase from visitation levels of between 9 million and 10 million in 2019.