I-95 blasting engineer turns over detonator to next generation in East Lyme
Elizabeth Regan
East Lyme – Explosives engineer Mike Rodriguez was in a
bright orange sweatshirt and a hard hat as he led a group of 14 aspiring
engineers through the blasting site on the northbound side of Interstate 95 that
has eroded 800 feet of ledge over the past three months.
The site is part of a four-and-a-half year highway reconstruction project being
pitched Wednesday to the East Lyme High School engineering class as a $148
million project generating more than $30 million annually. It’s overseen by
Plainville-based general contractor Manafort Brothers of Plainville and
engineering firm GM2 of Glastonbury.
“Look well ahead,” Rodriguez said. “Watch where you’re
stepping. Keep your heads on a swivel, guys. Always be aware of your
surroundings.”
At the blasting site near the Exit 74 on-ramp, tires from
heavy equipment had etched grooves into the mud where construction workers were
hauling away dislodged rock and preparing the site for more detonations.
Resident Engineer Robert Obey, of GM2, said as many as 60
contractors and subcontractors work daily in multiple areas across the 1.3-mile
project span from Exit 73 to just south of Exit 75. Inspection staff account
for another 15 jobs.
Obey said the initial blasting project, estimated at six-to-eight weeks when it began on Aug.
1, took down a looming wall of ledge to make room for a wider highway. Now, he
anticipates at least five more weeks of blasting so crews can attack an
underground expanse of ledge getting in the way of plans to level the highway.
Described by project officials as the biggest safety
improvement in the project, crews will raise the highway on the south side of
the Route 161 overpass by 14 feet while lowering it on the north side by 10
feet.
During a presentation inside the project headquarters at
Latimer Brook Commons, Obey cited a diverse array of civil engineering
specialties involved in the project, including traffic, highway design, soil,
bridge, geotechnical, hydraulic, and environmental engineering.
The project is bringing more well-paying jobs to a region
already bolstered by the manufacturing industry, according to Obey.
“In southeast Connecticut, we have a lot of engineering
communities that need people. Whether you’re building a submarine or whether
you’re building this, it takes a ton of engineers to do,” he said.
Rodriguez, the one who typically presses the button to set
off the blast, passed the igniter to high school senior Alicia Haynes on
Wednesday. The device was attached to a thin, yellow lead line traveling a safe
distance to the blasting area covered with multiple 12,000-pound blasting mats
to contain the debris.
“Before this presentation, I had no idea what this project
was,” she said. “And now, being here and being able to see it and press the
button to make things go boom, is so exciting.”
Haynes credited her parents with her interest in engineering
honed from a young age. She said she’d watch her father, a fire protection
engineer, build projects at home before she was old enough to work on her own
kits.
She recalled a hydraulic lift she built when she was 7 years
old that was similar to the one she made in her engineering class this year.
Haynes, whose mother works at Pfizer with a background in
chemical and bioengineering, acknowledged a current push to increase the number
of women in science, technology, engineering and math.
The high school senior cited clubs focused on women in
engineering that she learned about when she visited Worcester Polytechnic
Institute in Massachusetts. She has applied to the University of Connecticut
and is looking at Lehigh University and Bucknell University, both in
Pennsylvania.
“I know girls are the minority in engineering right now,”
she said. “But I think there’d just be more guys around, and I’m not afraid of
that. I’m more than willing to work with a team of guys.”
She said she was the only female in her high school computer
aided design class and one of three in her engineering class.
Haynes said her parents were always careful not to pressure
her into following in their footsteps. Instead, they gave her the opportunity
to see where her interests took her.
“They’ve always said I can do whatever I want,” she said of
her parents. “My dad’s always worked with me on projects, whether I’m a girl or
not. I don’t have a brother. Me and my sister both do it all the time, and
we’re always excited to.”
Before setting off the day’s blast, Haynes donned a hard hat
and a fluorescent vest with engineering teacher Frederic Clark and the rest of
his students. She made a turn on the packed mud like it was a runway.
“Do you think I get to keep this?” she asked. “It’s
fashionable.”
Greenway Commons project in Southington could start this year
Jesse Buchanan ,
SOUTHINGTON — The long-awaited residential and commercial
development of the former Ideal Forging site in downtown Southington may break
ground on the first building in the next month or two.
Property owners of the industrial site have approval to
build the foundation of a 55-unit residential building and are working to get a
multifamily construction permit.
The project, Greenway Commons, includes hundreds of
residential units as well as commercial space. Contamination from the forging
site was cleaned up but the project stalled due to financing and other
challenges.
Meridian Development Partners, a New York firm, sold the
property last year to 195 Center Street Associates, a Branford company. Michael
Massimino of GR Realty, one of the owners, couldn’t be reached for comment
Tuesday.
Lou Perillo, the town’s economic development coordinator,
said he’s “cautiously optimistic” that the first building could start going up
this year. The last he’d heard from the company was that construction would
start in the next 30 to 60 days.
“We’re trying to confirm he’s still on track to start in the
fourth quarter of this year,” Perillo said.
He and other town officials have been working to encourage
the redevelopment of the Ideal Forging site for nearly two decades.
“Obviously they’re anxious to move forward as well,” Perillo
said of company owners.
Back taxes
195 Center Street Associates applied for a foundation permit
in August. At the time property taxes due Aug. 1 hadn’t been paid. Without a
waiver, a property owner can’t get permits if back taxes are owed.
Town Manager Mark Sciota said he granted the waiver
requested by the company since the taxes were only a few weeks overdue.
Currently the company has a balance of more than $12,000 in property taxes and
is looking to get a construction permit.
The company would have to request a waiver or pay the taxes
to move forward, Sciota said. Even with a waiver, taxes are still due.
“The taxes are still owed and they’re still being charged
18% interest,” Sciota said.
Phased construction
Perillo said the first residential building will go up on
the west side of the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail. The site will contain
residential buildings with mixed-use buildings going up last.
It’s unclear if construction will continue through the
winter. Perillo said excavation equipment will be onsite and that the company’s
preference is for it to be used immediately but he wasn’t sure about the
schedule.
State loans and local tax abatements have gone towards the
costs of remediation. Massimino estimated those costs to be between $10 million
and $13 million last year.
Hotel, apartments, restaurant, retail envisioned on Eugene O’Neill Drive
Lee Howard
New London ― No plans have been formally submitted, but
conceptual drawings first unveiled to the public last week show the developers
of a block on Eugene O’Neill Drive that includes The Day building and the
former Citizens Bank are envisioning the site for a new 120-room hotel and
restaurant along with apartments and retail.
The drawings, shown off at the bank building Oct. 26 after a
Chamber of Commerce of Eastern Connecticut event, featured a gathering space on
the main floor of the marble-faced space that could be a restaurant, cafe
and/or bar, said Dash Davidson, one of the principals of High Tide Capital LLC
of Bangor, Maine.
He added that it is too early in the process to say whether
the hotel will be a branded property and emphasized that this is the very
earliest stage of planning that will likely result in changes to the plan as
the developers consult with city planners and historic-preservation groups like
the National Park Service, which will be a key to obtaining tax credits.
“We feel New London could use a great downtown hotel,”
Davidson said in a phone interview Wednesday. “I’m very excited about that
vision. ... We want to see tourism downtown.”
Davidson added that he and partner Max Patinkin are aware of
several successful bank conversions into hotels in cities like Providence and
St. Louis.
“That’s something we can learn from and replicate,” he said.
“We believe the market could support this project.”
Mayor Michael Passero said Tuesday in a phone interview that
he and Director of Development and Planning Felix Reyes have seen the
conceptual drawings, though no formal plans have been submitted to City Hall.
“It’s pretty amazing,” Passero said. “It’s sort of like you
have to pinch yourself to believe it’s real.”
High Tide Capital in September bought the former Citizens
Bank at 63 Eugene O’Neill Drive and an adjoining property for $1.75 million and
has an agreement to acquire The Day property at 47 Eugene
O’Neill Drive for $1.875 million that has not yet been finalized.
High
Tide Capital is the same development company that has been restoring
three buildings on Bank Street as part of the so-called Riverbank project. It
also completed a project last year at the Manwaring building on State Street
that now serves as overflow dorm space for Connecticut College.
Davidson said he expects to have formal plans ready to
submit to the city in a couple of months. He added that the hotel part of the
project would be largely contained within the old bank building, along with the
restaurant. That would leave an unknown number of apartments and retail spaces
to be contained largely in The Day building, which the drawings show would be
opened up to allow a freer flow of pedestrian traffic from Eugene O’Neill Drive
to Atlantic Street in back of the property.
“We’re starting now with the whole outreach phase of the
project,” Davidson said, adding that reaction to the conceptual plans last week
was very positive.
“People are eager to get these buildings into the next phase
of life,” he said.
Davidson didn’t yet have specifics on the project, other
than to say The Day building and the bank building would be connected. He
couldn’t yet say whether the restaurant would be upscale, or what the mix of
apartments would be between market-rate and workforce housing. He added that
the restaurant would have to support the hotel and be available throughout the
day.
“We’re in the very early days,” he said, “trying to see what
works, what we can afford.”
Passero said the company’s track record so far has been
outstanding as it has developed several challenging sites in the city and
appears to be on the cusp of starting its most ambitious project yet.
“High Tide Capital has been a real boon to the city,”
Passero said. “What a great vision.”
There’s a recommended redevelopment plan for a CT airport. See how it stacks up with alternatives.
HARTFORD — Closing Hartford-Brainard
Airport for either industrial or mixed-use redevelopment is possible,
but it could cost tens of millions of dollars to rid the 200-acre airfield of
contamination and it could take years to fully reap property tax and economic
development potential, a new study concludes.
Instead, as expected, the Brainard
Airport Property Study recommends keeping the airport open and extending
one of its runways. But this alternative — one of four outlined in a final
report — calls for the closing of a lesser-used runway and redeveloping the
area primarily for warehouse and industrial uses. That would build on what
already exists in and around the airport in the city’s South End, according to
the study.
“The closure of the Hartford-Brainard Airport is definitely
feasible, but it introduces a complex element that could significantly affect
the investment returns in any situation, given the state wouldn’t achieve any
potential advantages for several years due to the indeterminate time required
for the airport shutdown,” the report said.
The report — the culmination of a $1.5 million, state-funded
study by BFJ Planning of New York over eight months — was a bit anti-climactic
because its conclusion was contained in a draft
report whose recommendation surfaced earlier in October.
State Sen. John Fonfara, a proponent of the study and of
mixed-used redevelopment on the airfield, said Tuesday he was “seriously
disappointed” with the report. The report did not delve deeply enough into what
the economic spin-off of Brainard is today and what redevelopment could produce
in the future, Fonfara, a Hartford Democrat, said.
“They spend how much time on, ‘Oh, there could be vertical
lift airplanes at some point down the road,’ ” Fonfara said. “They talk about
that, but don’t talk about the potential of this property and what it could
mean five, 10 years from now. You’ve got at least five towns around Hartford
and south of Hartford that are talking about developing on the river. They see
potential there.”
Fonfara said he intends to hold hearings on the study in the
next legislative session and question the authors of the study closely.
Those who have pushed to keep Brainard open and see its
potential for growth also expressed displeasure with the study’s recommendation
— for different reasons.
Michael Teiger, president of the Hartford Brainard Airport Association, said
the closing the runway hobbles the airport and opportunities for future growth.
“I think death by a thousand cuts fits this perfectly,”
Teiger, a recreational pilot with a plane at Brainard, said. “You take away the
property and you make it so it’s unable to grow and bring business in. It’s
just going to be a place where guys like me fly in and out. And it can’t
survive.”
The report said the recommended option would dovetail with
the industrial nature of the area surrounding Brainard Airport, which includes
a wastewater treatment plant. The alternative also could be achieved swiftly,
potentially in one phase, the report said.
The proposed structures under the recommended option include
a 100,000-square-foot building split equally between flex industrial and
advanced manufacturing spaces; another 100,000-square-foot structure dedicated
to industrial or manufacturing purposes, and a 20,000-square-foot retail area.
The three other options are:
♦ Keeping the airport open with
limited development with a runway extension, new air traffic control tower,
hangars and 94,000 square feet of aviation-related space.
♦Closing the airport and
pursuing the addition of 2.6 million square feet of industrial space, 140,000
square feet of office space and 100,000 square feet of “accessory retail.”
♦Closing Brainard for a massive,
mixed-use redevelopment that could have 2,700 units of rental housing,
105,000-square feet of retail, 262,000 square feet of industrial space and
255,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor recreation venues.
According to BFJ, Total development costs range from $46
million for the recommended option to $1.4 billion for the mixed-use
alternative. These numbers do not include the use of public subsidies in the
calculations. Typically in the Hartford region, projects such as these receive
subsidies of at least 20% of the total project cost in order to be financed due
to market conditions and cost of construction, BFJ said.
In months of public meetings, the issue of contamination was
prominent in discussions. In addition to any soil contamination from the
century-old airport, there was the concern about coal tar, a by-product of coal
gasification plants that once provided light and heat to cities like Hartford.
The report says the options calling for closing Brainard and
redeveloping it would require $45 million for razing buildings and cleaning up
contamination.
Last year, state lawmakers approved the funding for the
study. But Brainard’s future has been debated for decades, stretching back to
the 1950s when a large portion of the airport was taken to develop the city’s
South Meadows area.
The latest push to close and redevelop — led by Hartford
Mayor Luke Bronin and Fonfara with the support the city council — is built on
the argument that redevelopment would foster economic development that would
add to Hartford’s tax base, sorely needed by the city.
“I view the recommendation to close the east-west runway as
incremental progress,” Bronin, who is not running for a third term, said
Tuesday. “Although I continue to believe the entire site covering hundreds of
acres of riverfront land at the intersection of two major highways is vastly
underutilized today.”
The recent push to redevelop spawned the formation of the
airport association, whose members include local pilots, Brainard tenants and
others. They have pushed back against the airport being cast as a “playground
for rich folks” with single- and twin-engine planes. The association also
argues that Brainard is crucial for its pilot training schools and should be
invested in as an asset to promote economic development in the region.
The association also believes the findings will be no
different than a legislative study conducted in 2016 that recommended Brainard
stay open. That study never came to a vote, dismissed by those who support
redevelopment, including Fonfara.
State legislators are expected to use the report in the 2024
session of the General Assembly to decide whether the state-owned airport
should remain open or be closed. The Federal Aviation Administration would then
have to approve the closing of Brainard if that option were chosen.