Massive ship delivers key wind turbine components to New London
Lee Howard
New London ― The massive UHL Fierce cargo ship arrived
Tuesday morning at Adm. Harold E. Shear State Pier with the first shipment of
blades and gear boxes known as nacelles to be assembled here starting later
this month as part of the South Fork Wind project .
Ulysses Hammond, interim executive director of the
Connecticut Port Authority, said the offloading process would start Wednesday
morning, conducted by 20 to 30 mostly local longshoremen. He expected the
Portugal-registered, nearly 500-foot heavy load carrier that seemed to dwarf
every other ship in the harbor to be fully offloaded within six days, and the
first turbine assembly would start later this month.
“It is truly hard to describe what this moment means to our
project, to southeastern Connecticut and our nation,” Hammond said in a phone
interview Tuesday.
He called the arrival of some of the most critical
components in the wind turbine assembly process a “tremendous milestone” in the
nation’s attempt to “advance the fight against climate change.” He noted that
State Pier will play a critical role in the construction of offshore wind farms
that will be an “immediate benefit” to Connecticut, Rhode Island and New York,
helping to create new jobs, drive local investment and advance the state and
nation closer to clean energy goals.
Hammond said the blades and nacelles manufactured by the
Danish firm Siemens Gamesa are destined for Ørsted and Eversource Energy’s
South Fork Wind project, being constructed 35 miles east of Montauk Point. The
business is technically still a partnership, though Eversource is in the
process of selling its interest.
The project, expected to power 70,000 homes in Long Island,
N.Y., is currently on schedule, Hammond said.
“We ... have not experienced delays for components, except
there is an electrical panel board that will not arrive until November that was
ordered in the spring of this year,” he said in an email. “It will not delay
anything due to Siemen's work-around of using on-site generators to power up
the nacelles until the panel board arrives.”
The UHL Fierce, which came to New London via Germany and
Denmark, is operated by United Heavy Lift. Its cargo included the massive wind
turbine blades that are each as long as a football field and, at 656 feet in
diameter, twice as wide.
Once installed, the 11-megawatt turbines will measure nearly
800 feet tall, five times taller than the Gold Star Memorial Bridge and 200
feet taller than the Travelers Tower in Hartford, said Justin May, an Ørsted
spokesman, in emailed responses to questions.
In June, the first wind components were offloaded from the
Claude A. Desgagnes cargo ship; since then, several other ships have arrived at
State Pier with wind components, including 200-ton tower sections that now sit
at the pier waiting for the assembly process to begin. One more shipment of
tower sections is expected this month, and in the fall there will be two more
shipments of nacelles and blades, May said.
Last week, South Fork Wind announced the completion of 13
foundations to support the project’s offshore wind substation and 12 wind
turbines. The foundations were transported by an offshore installation vessel
called Boskalis's Bokalift 2.
“Meanwhile, work continues on connecting the wind farm's
export cable and array cables to the offshore substation, and installing
advanced foundation components,” according to a South Fork Wind press release.
“A fleet of American vessels at the project site ... including construction and
transport barges, tugboats, crew vessels, and protected special observer
monitoring vessels, continue to support South Fork Wind's construction.”
Workers involved in the project’s ongoing work include
vessel and crane operators, boat captains and crew, engineers, welders,
scientists and protected species observers, according to the release.
New York local union members involved in the work include a
number of ironworkers, pile drivers, divers, operating engineers, electricians,
laborers, and members of the region's building trades.
The installation of South Fork Wind turbine generators is
expected to start later this summer and run through the fall.
“Ørsted and Eversource's South Fork Wind remains on-track to
become America's first utility-scale offshore wind farm to be completed in
federal waters when it begins full operations by the end of this year,” the
release said.
Wilton seeks $500K CT grant to offset cost of new, $16.4M police headquarters
Shantel Guzman
WILTON — The town is applying to the state for a
$500,000 grant from the Small Town
Economic Assistance Program to offset part of the construction
cost of the new
police headquarters, First Selectwoman Lynne Vanderslice said.
The town is still reviewing bids for the construction of the
station, and Wilton has been applying for multiple state grants in an effort to
lower the financial burden for taxpayers, Vanderslice said. The Board of
Selectmen approved $16.4 million for the project, which was also approved
by voters last year.
“We’re pretty hopeful that we’ll receive the grant,”
Vanderslice said. “The state grant program was suspended for a couple of years.
Last year there were a number of towns that received grants, so I’m hoping that
this year is less competitive and we will receive the award.”
The Small Town Economic Assistance Program funds economic
development, community conservation and quality-of-life capital projects for
localities that are ineligible to receive Urban Action bonds from the state.
The project will nearly double the size of the outdated
existing station to almost 19,000 square feet and will be constructed on an
11.17-acre site at 238-240 Danbury Road.
Construction was at one point expected to begin in spring
2023 and take up to 20 months, but the town is still reviewing bids for a
general contractor. Vanderslice said she expects bids will be presented at the
Sept. 6 Board of Selectmen meeting and anticipates a contract will be approved
no later than October.
The parking bay is a priority for the state grant because
emergency vehicles need covered parking when the weather is
bad, Vanderslice said. The town has also applied unsuccessfully for two
years in a row for federal grants, she said.
“We don’t have a contract yet, but one of the things that we
questioned is whether or not funding would cover the response team’s (parking)
bay, so we wanted to look for a source of those funds,” Vanderslice said.
The state grant could be used for a wide variety of
things, Vanderslice said, but the town is set on using the funds toward the
police station.
“I sent an email out to the department heads asking if they
had any ideas for the grant,” Vanderslice said. “I threw this out and no
one else came up with another proposal … we all thought the same so it made
sense.”
The application deadline for towns to apply for the grant is
Aug. 18, and decisions will be released in late September.
Why a new Wilton police station is needed
The current police station at 240 Danbury Road hasn't been
upgrade since it was built in 1974 for about 24 male officers. Today it
serves 48 employees — 45 officers and three civilian staff — including eight
women. The station contains only four small cells and a tinier, temporary
holding cell to process inmates, according to previous reports.
The lack of renovation prevents the department from abiding
by state regulations to process juveniles and adults in separate parts of the
building, town officials have said. The current conditions also make it
difficult for officers to separate men and women.
The new building is expected to have new features, such as
improved locker rooms and address the issues with detention.
The Wilton Plan of Conservation and Development from
2019 found that the current
station had “several major deficiencies that need to be addressed,” including
inadequate infrastructure and insufficient space.
At a Planning and Zoning Commission meeting in February,
Police Chief Thomas Conlan said he has seen the need for a new station
increase over the years since he first joined the department.
“The new building will be almost twice the size of the old
one and will bring the department up to current policing and building code
standards,” he said. “A new police facility will have a tremendous benefit to
the department, as well as the town.”
Greenwich's Glenville section scheduled for long-delayed road redesign in spring 2024
GREENWICH — Major road redesign work in Glenville is now
expected to start next year, more than three years after it got the greenlight
from the Board of Selectmen.
The work will stretch from Glenville Street, at the entrance
of the former
home of Stop & Shop, past the Glenville Fire Station and Glenville
Pizza, to the intersection of Glenville Road and Weaver Street, according to
the Department of Public Works’ project
website.
Crews will upgrade the traffic signals, add a new signal at
the intersection of Pemberwick Road and Glenville Road, widen some lanes, add
sidewalks and more.
First Selectman Fred Camillo said during an Aug. 14 community
forum on Glenville that the road work would start in spring 2024.
The project was approved by the Board of Selectmen in November
2020, but Camillo said it was delayed over local concerns and cost
increases.
“It got stopped by some residents in this community that
were concerned about trees, so we put it off for a year,” he said. “Then what
happened was in the pandemic, the prices went up, tripled and quadrupled. So we
waited again, we applied for more state grant funding for that and we just
heard this week we received it.”
The town had previously been working off the assumption that
it would receive a $2 million grant to fund the work, but this past week the
grant funding was bumped up to about $4 million, thanks to DPW's
coordination with the state Department of Transportation.
The town's 2021-22 fiscal year budget previously allocated
$3 million for this Glenville corridor work.
The grant money will
come from a federal program — the U.S. Department of Transportation's
Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement Program — which is
administered locally by the Connecticut DOT.
The project started going
through the Planning and Zoning process last year.
Camillo said the town will go out to bid this fall and start
work early next year. DPW expects it will take one year to complete the project
once work begins.
More information about the redesign is available on the
town’s website at greenwichct.gov/1493/Glenville-RdSt-Corridor-Traffic-Improvem.
49-unit apartment development proposed at site of shuttered West Hartford synagogue
An affiliate of the West Hartford Housing Authority is
proposing to demolish most of a shuttered synagogue to make room for a 49-unit
multifamily building.
Trout Brook Realty Advisors, the no-profit development arm
of the West Hartford Housing Authority, plans to retain the front façade,
including stained glass, of the existing 1969-vintage Agudas Achim Synagogue at
1244 North Main St., attaching it to a new 20,750-square-foot building on the
1.8-acre property.
Tentative plans for the development will go before West
Hartford’s Design Review Advisory Committee at its Thursday meeting. This is a
chance for city staff and commission members to hear the proposal and make
suggestions prior to a formal submission.
Jill Corrado, CEO of Trout Brook Realty Advisors and
executive director of the housing authority, said her group has two options to
present. Both have identicle square footage and unit counts but vary in the
design of the exterior building envelope. Both would incorporate the front
facade of the existing synagogue.
"We are really excited about it," Corrado said.
"It's a cool adaptive reuse of an existing structure. We wanted to pay
tribute to it by not demolishing the entire structure. It has some cool
features we want to preserve."
Corrado said Trout Brook has a purchase-and-sale agreement
in place for the property. Trout Brook will apply for funding early in the coming
year, which could make for a late 2024 groundbreaking, Corrado said.
Economic Development Coordinator Kristen Gorski anticipates
a special development district will eventually be sought through the Town
Council to accommodate the proposal. The Design Review Advisory Committee can
help address any potential concerns prior to a formal submission, she noted.
“I think they will look to the committee to get an
impression of which direction they should go in,” Gorski said. She also
complemented Trout Brook’s efforts to work a portion of the existing building
into the new development.
Trout Brook “is looking to preserve some of the
architectural features of the existing building and really bring back energy to
a site that’s been vacant for quite some time,” Gorski said.
The Agudas Achim Synagogue ceased operations as a house of
worship several years prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Rabbi Chagie
Rubin, who previously led the congregation. Attendance had been dwindling for
some time, he said.
The Design Review Advisory Committee, on Thursday, will also
continue review of a proposal by West Hartford-based Hexagon Group to build a
70-unit, four-story apartment building at 579 New Park Ave. That proposal was
first aired in May. The developer is returning to the committee with a new
architect and design concept.
The 1.2-acre property Hexagon proposes to develop currently
hosts a 7,626-square-foot truck storage garage built in 1947.