Old Greenwich School renovation will cost $1.5M more because of town funding delays, committee told
GREENWICH — The
Old Greenwich School renovation project did
not get construction funding last year, so the building committee is trying
again — with a more expensive project estimated to cost $44.3 million to build.
Originally,
the OGS renovation project's construction cost was estimated to be around $42.7
million, but the delay in approvals has resulted in a nearly $1.5 million
increase in the project's construction because materials now cost more. The new
recommended estimate is around $44.3 million, which does not include the $2.086
million in architectural and engineering funding the Board of
Estimate and Taxation has approved in past years for the project.
Jeff Anderson from Downes Construction Company, the
project's construction manager, told the Board of Education at its special
Thursday night meeting that his team told them last year that there would be a
cost escalation of the project was postponed another year.
At that time, his team predicted about a $2.9 million cost
increase. Over the past six weeks, Anderson said his team went through
"every detail that we can on this design development set of drawings to
ensure, again no stone was left unturned."
Anderson and Ryan Patrick, also from Downes Construction
Company, presented three different cost estimates on Thursday.
The full scope version is the most expensive and would cost
$49.2 million to build. It would include items not added in the project's
educational specifications, including replacing all of the windows and the
roof. The items will need to completed eventually, as part of the building's
maintenance, but they were never included in the project's ed specs, said James
Waters, the building committee chair.
Another version, the cost management option, and would be
less expensive than the recommended version at $43.5 million. However, it would
not include all of what the recommended version would pay for, including
replacing the school's playground.
The last version — the recommended option at $44.3 million —
is the one the building committee unanimously voted for during its Tuesday
evening meeting.
"I went around and asked every individual member of the
building committee on Tuesday, 'Do you have any changes from the recommended
scope?'" Waters said. "The answer I got to that question from every
single member was, 'No.'"
The BOE followed the building committee's recommendation and
voted 7-0 in favor of the recommended cost estimate version with one member
abstaining.
During the presentation, Patrick gave more detail on the
costs, saying primary drivers include replacing the playground and having a
hygienist be on the construction site, since there will be abatement activity
taking place, to take air samples during the work.
"We seriously want to have somebody on site 24/7. ...
The No. 1 priority is kids' safety and this is just showing our commitment to
it," Waters said.
The team also found ways to decrease the cost by
reducing plantings and finding alternate solutions for window treatments,
Waters said.
"All these numbers and words on the page here, this was
a lot of real work," Waters said. He added that the building committee and
the professionals took the time to "really dive in and say, 'Do we really
need this? Is there a better way to do that?'"
The school board also approved changes to the educational
specifications for the project 7-0 with one abstention.
David Stein, from Silver Petrucelli and Associates, the
project's architects, told the BOE that the changes focused on deleting overly
specific language, fixing typos and making sure that everything in the ed specs
were aligned with the project scope, cost and other requirements when the
building committee applies for state reimbursement.
The committee still needs construction funding approval
from the BOE, the finance board and the Representative Town Meeting to be
able to meet the state's June 30 deadline to get on the 2025 priority list for
reimbursement.
If the project gets approved by the BET and RTM,
construction is scheduled to begin the summer of 2025. If the project does not
get approval from the BET and RTM, Waters said "the project will be
delayed another year."
"We had hoped
last year to be able to start (construction) this coming summer,"
Waters said. "Unfortunately, without construction funding, that is no
longer possible."
Lyman Allyn museum grounds ready for $4.5M facelift
John Penney
New London ― When Sam Quigley was named director of the
Lyman Allyn Art Museum 10 years ago, he arrived with some ambitious plans for
the Williams Street property, particularly the sprawling acres of green space
extending out past the main museum building.
“It was clear to me that gorgeous surrounding area was
underutilized,” he said on Thursday. “In her 1926 bequest, our founder, Harriet
Allyn, requested a park and museum be created using her estate’s money – in
that order.”
A new piece of state funding in the form of a $1.6 million
Community Investment Fund award announced this month, which requires final
approval by the state Bond Commission, will enable the museum to fully realize
Allyn’s wishes by transforming 12 acres of grounds into an “urban art park,”
Quigley said.
The park will feature a pedestrian path, pollinator meadow,
eco-friendly waterfall and filtration pond, along with a restored entrance lawn
and new parking area.
“We want this museum to be a welcoming, healthy, free place
for visitors,” Quigley said. “Our guiding light has been to serve our
community, and we’re doing that by investing in this park.”
An initial property upgrade plan was discussed in 2016 with
the project gaining steam in 2022 when the Kent + Frost architectural firm was
contracted to draw up plans for the work.
The $4.5 million first phase will be funded with $3.2
million in state monies and $1.3 million in private donations, Quigley said,
praising legislators, including state Sen. Martha Marx, D-New London, and state
Rep. Anthony Nolan, D-New London, and state Rep. Christine Conley, D-Groton,
for championing the funding requests.
“This project is about broadening the museum’s reach in our
community ― including to our Black and brown residents ― and letting it offer
more performance and educational opportunities,” Nolan said on Friday. “I’ve
already heard from some local churches interested in using the grounds for
services. This project is such great thing and will give the museum more
exposure.”
The upgrade work includes the creation of a meandering
walking and biking path running from the southwestern section of the property
near Williams Street to the museum. The “Vitale Walkway,” in honor of landscape
architect Ferruccio Vitale, will pass a new “lightly landscaped” pollinator
meadow Quigley said that will be filled with wildflowers and butterflies.
He said a “boggy mire” on the grounds will be transformed
into a filtration pond fed from an upstream waterfall. The current main parking
lot will be reclaimed into a “great lawn” leading to the museum doors, work
that will not impact the property’s popular sledding hill. A new parking area
will be built at the facility's rear.
“I’ve been going to the museum since I was about 3 and
remember it as a special place ― anyone who grew up around here has been on
that sledding hill ― and this work is going to unite the city,” Marx said.
“It’s going to be gorgeous.”
Quigley said upgrade work is slated to begin in May or June
and be finished by next summer. The museum will remain open during
construction. Other master plan improvements, including the construction of
250-seat open-air amphitheater, and a refurbished 9/11 memorial garden, will be
tackled later.
“We want people to feel this is their park,” Quigley said.
With new Sherman St. bridge nearly complete, Norwich plans NL Turnpike bridge replacement
Claire Bessette
Norwich ― Reconstruction of the Sherman Street bridge is
expected to be completed by August, and Norwich Public Works has its eye on
replacing another key local bridge over the Yantic River on New London
Turnpike.
The bridge is located near the side entrance to the
Norwichtown Commons shopping plaza, a short distance from the West Town Street
intersection.
U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D- Conn, recently announced
that the Senate passed a funding bill with $106 million for projects across the
state including $800,000 for the state Department of Transportation to fund
design work for the bridge replacement. The grant requires a 20% local match,
and Norwich has placed $200,000 in its current budget for the match.
Norwich Public Works Director Patrick McLaughlin said the
design work will take about two years, and it is too early to say whether the
bridge would have to be closed to traffic during the reconstruction, as has
been the case on Sherman Street. Both locations are key connector routes
between the Norwichtown area and the East Great Plain area.
McLaughlin said he hopes the work can entail single lane
crossings during construction rather than total road closures, but that would
add to the cost of the project.
“It would be difficult to close that bridge,” he said.
The Sherman Street bridge has been closed since July 2022 for a $10.3 million project to
replace the double-span bridge over the Yantic River and a narrow former mill
canal. Sherman Street connects Asylum Street, which becomes Lafayette Street
and then connects to Washington Street and the Backus Hospital.
The project is about 80% completed, with a portion left to
reconstruct Asylum Street, raising the roadway 18 inches to meet the higher
bridge over the river.
McLaughlin said the Sherman Street bridge project is on
schedule and should be completed by late July or early August of this year, in
time for the new school year in late August.
With Fort Trumbull development planned out, what happens to the RCDA?
John Penney
New London ― Last September, attorney Bill Sweeney stood in
front of the city’s Planning and Zoning Commission to praise a development deal
that would transform three long-vacant Fort Trumbull parcels into two apartment
complexes and a six-story parking garage.
“This is a day a lot of us have been waiting for,” he said,
calling the proposals brokered by the Renaissance City Development
Association ― the city’s development arm ― and his client, New Haven-based RJ
Development + Advisors, another step toward reinventing the peninsula into a
“place of new vibrancy” that would complete the redevelopment of the area.
The Fort Trumbull area in the late 1990s was cleared of
homes and businesses as part of a plan developed by the city and the New London
Development Corp., the predecessor of the RCDA, to help jump-start economic
development in association with the construction of Pfizer’s research
headquarters.
Except for construction of the Pfizer facility, now occupied
by Electric Boat, and Fort Trumbull State Park, the rest of the peninsula
remained undeveloped for years, with the area becoming overgrown and devoid of
activity.
But with all Fort Trumbull properties now obligated for use
― but not yet developed ― the RCDA has only one major new project on its plate:
the redevelopment of a pair of commercial fishing piers at the northern end of
the peninsula.
RCDA notes on its website that its overarching mission, to
work with developers on projects that will “complement and support the ongoing
redevelopment and revitalization of the Fort Trumbull” area ― as well as nearby
downtown ― is “nearly completed.”
RCDA Executive Director Peter Davis on Tuesday said the
group’s board of directors has been “wrestling internally with the larger
question” of what’s next for the association.
“I know there’s been rumors the RCDA might just fold up, but
that’s not true,” he said. “But I don’t know where we’ll be in five or 10
years. Before he was re-elected in November, I asked (Mayor Michael Passero)
that question. We want to decide before the end of June where this organization
is going.”
Passero said he knows exactly where the RCDA is going:
nowhere soon.
“There’s still a lot of work to be done at (Fort Trumbull)
in shepherding the development projects already designated,” he said on
Wednesday. “That’s going to take years of work and there’s nothing in the
ground yet. Their work is far from over.”
A pink cottage, 600 apartments and an expanded mission
Fort Trumbull’s recent history includes a bitter fight in
which a handful of property owners refusing to sell their land led to the
landmark 2005 U.S. Supreme Court case Kelo v. New London. The court ruled in
favor of New London and its use of eminent domain to seize the properties for
private development.
The pink cottage owned by Susette Kelo, lead plaintiff in
the case, was on East Street, the same road where a new $40 million community
center is being built and is scheduled for completion this year.
In response to the backlash against the Supreme Court ruling
and the NLDC’s role in the eminent domain controversy, former Mayor Daryl
Finizio in January 2012 renamed the group the RCDA and ordered a reorganization
of its leadership and policies. Finizio further ordered that the power of
eminent domain rest solely with the city.
Passero said one part of his campaign platform ahead of his
2016 inaugural election involved providing an expanded role to the RCDA.
Felix Reyes, the city’s director of economic planning and
development, said it’s unfair and inaccurate to compare the RCDA and its
predecessor group.
“It’s different leaders and a different mission,” he said.
“We need a core agency like the RCDA. They’re vital to assisting us with our
redevelopment goals. They’re typically the first boots on the ground providing
guidance on next steps, like funding development opportunities and best uses of
a property. They create the strategies that the city then either decides to use
or not use.”
Talks with developers interested in Fort Trumbull land have
moved in fits and starts in the years after the ruling but only gained real
momentum in 2022 with the purchase of 4 acres by the Optimus Construction
Management company, which plans to build 104 apartments and a hotel with
extended-stay suites on the site.
That project has not yet broken ground, though. Davis said
the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent supply-chain issues interrupted the
construction schedule.
“They are still trying, though there’s been discussion about
another developer taking over the project,” said Davis, who called the project
“in progress” as of earlier this month.
The latest and last project approved involves the
construction by RJ Development of 500 apartments in two buildings and a
1,200-space parking garage on three parcels bracketed by Chelsea, Walbach and
East streets.
Reyes noted the Optimus and R.J. Development projects were
the result of years of behind-the-scenes lobbying and site coordination by the
RCDA.
“Just because the homes there were demolished and the
property separated into parcels didn’t mean you just start building,” he said.
“The RCDA had to do a tremendous amount of investigating into geo-technical and
site coordination issues that involved meeting with state and federal
officials. If you built without that due diligence, it’d be like having a shoe
without a sole, a major support piece missing.”
Passero said the RCDA was instrumental in helping forge
a modified flood management certificate between the city
and the state in 2022 allowing more multi-unit housing to be built on the
peninsula.
The scope of redevelopment, though, has since expanded past
the peninsula.
Davis, who was interviewed for the RCDA’s top post 11 year
after the Supreme Court ruling, said he initially declined the part-time
position mainly due to the narrow scope of the group’s responsibilities.
“The only mission was Fort Trumbull, which wasn’t enough of
a workload or challenge for me,” he said. “I wanted them to come up with other
projects, like those related to downtown. That was done and the council
approved $100,000 in operating expenses. Then, I was in.”
Downtown projects
In 2016 the City Council directed RCDA to assess three
city-owned properties: the Richard R. Martin Center at 120 Broad St.; the
Little Red Schoolhouse at 96 Hawthorne Drive; and Parcel J, a vacant plot of
land at Bank and Howard streets.
The Martin Center, owned by the city until 2020, had been an
unofficial recreation center with a gymnasium, auditorium and offices that
housed the Recreation Department. The building was given to Tauche Capital by
the city in 2020 at no cost in exchange for its redevelopment into senior
apartments.
The property was sold by Tauche to 120 Broad Street
Associates LLC for $7.4 million in 2022, according to city property records.
The schoolhouse on Hawthorne Drive was sold to the Leigh
Property Management group for $125,000 in 2022 and is now home to the String
Theory School of Music.
Parcel J, off Bank Steet, is now a 137-unit apartment
complex called The Docks.
Passero also lauded the work the RCDA did in coordinating
the remediation and demolition of the former Thames River Apartments complex on
Crystal Avenue amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
“There’s only so much capacity our city staff has to tackle
those kinds of redevelopment projects,” he said. “Peter Davis has done an
amazing job reinventing the RCDA and, in this era of getting things done in the
city I can’t imagine that continuing without the RCDA.”
Pier project on horizon
Davis said his group will next be focusing on planned
infrastructure upgrades to the Fort Trumbull piers courtesy of a $3 million
commitment made years ago by Ørsted, the Danish renewable energy company.
Ørsted and Eversource are partners in major wind farm development projects
being staged from New London’s State Pier.
Davis said the RCDA will aid the city in crafting bid
packages, as well as take part in the interviewing and issuing contract awards
for the pier work. The project will focus first on repairing – or replacing –
the smaller of the two fishing piers that extend out past the state park’s
riverwalk area.
Davis said that although a preliminary assessment of the
docks, leased to a commercial fishing business, was done, a more extensive
overview is required by a marine engineer before work bids can be solicited.
“It’ll be some months down the road before we get to that
point,” he said, noting the City Council has not yet approved a budget
associated with the Ørsted grant. “And we’re looking at 18 months to two years
for completion of the job.”
And though there are no concrete plans for future projects
the RCDA might be involved with ― the group has not formally met since October
― Davis said there are plenty of possibilities.
“For instance, if there’s ever money that comes down from
the state to increase affordable housing, we’re in a position to go out and
secure properties for the city,” he said. “Or we could be put to work assessing
blighted or non-performing properties in the city.”
Davis, who said his tenure with the RCDA is finite, noted
quasi-public agencies like his, with their bond-issuing authority and ability
to leverage federal funding not available to municipalities, are more than just
“real estate brokers.”
“We’ll wait and see what the next four years brings,” he
said.
Massive tunnel under CT city for sewer waste is behind schedule. It could cost tens of millions more
A 4-mile tunnel carved out of bedrock under Hartford’s South
End — the city’s very own Big Dig — is now nearly complete and will be a
crucial component for eliminating sewer waste that overflows and pollutes Wethersfield Cove,
the Connecticut River and other streams especially when there are heavy
rainstorms.
The Metropolitan District Commission project would seem to come at the right time: Experts say climate change is bringing on more wild and intense swings in weather.
But the $279 million tunnel and its pumping system, designed
to serve Hartford’s southside, West Hartford, Newington and Wethersfield, won’t
go into service until late 2026. That’s three years later than initially
forecast when the MDC, the regional water and sewer authority, broke ground on
the project in 2016.
The tunnel, which winds its way from Talcott Road in West
Hartford to Brainard Road in Hartford, took two years longer to build than
expected. That pushed back the construction of a $115 million pumping station
now underway on Brainard Road near the MDC’s water treatment plant.
“It was successful, though,” said Susan Negrelli, MDC’s
director of engineering. “The tunnel-boring machine got through. It just went a
lot slower than we anticipated.”
According to the MDC, the contractor hired to carve out the
tunnel argues it took longer to construct the tunnel structure because the
original designs did not reflect the actual conditions encountered underground.
Chief among those was the volume of groundwater.
And now, the contractor has taken the MDC to court seeking
tens of millions in additional payments, which has the potential to
significantly increase the cost of the tunnel. In turn, the MDC is seeking
millions of dollars to compensate for the delay.
Environmental advocates say they are frustrated by the
shifting timetable for this MDC project and others mandated by revisions to the
federal Clean
Water Act two decades ago.
The tunnel project is particularly critical for Hartford
where a century-old system combines storm and wastewater management. In recent
years, the systems have become overwhelmed causing widespread flooding and
sewage back-ups in homes and businesses, especially
in Hartford’s North End. The tunnel is not part of a separate plan to ease
problems in Hartford’s northside neighborhoods.
Engineering feat
The tunnel is an engineering feat that involved burrowing
through rock 200 feet below homes and businesses to create a passageway that is
18 feet in diameter and can store 42 million gallons of combined storm and
wastewater. The holding capacity will ease flooding and largely eliminate sewer
overflows into waterways that eventually lead to Long Island Sound.
What’s held in the tunnel — the largest capital improvement
ever attempted by the MDC — will be pumped to the MDC’s treatment plant before
it gradually is released into the Connecticut River.
On a recent tour at Brainard Road, the circular shafts where
pumping equipment will draw water from the tunnel are starting to take shape,
the MDC treatment plant visible at a distance.
The cost of all this is high.
The tunnel is the centerpiece of a project with a half dozen
components, including the pumping system, that is expected to cost $500
million. Financing is a combination of taxpayer-funded grants and monthly
charges on the bills of customers who receive MDC sewer service.
For the tunnel, the largest component, funding includes $125
million in state and federal grants, plus another $154 million in state and
federal loans.
The loans are paid back by the customer charge on a monthly
bill. The charge is based on water usage but on a typical bill of $92, the
charge is $35, about a third of the bill and its largest component, according
to the MDC.
The charge is paying not only for the tunnel project but
others in MDC’s region needed to meet the requirements of the Clean Water Act.
If there are any additional costs for the tunnel, they would
not be shouldered by MDC sewer customers, according to Christopher Stone,
district counsel for the MDC.
Those, Stone said, would come out of a “contingency” reserve
that is typically set aside on most construction projects for cost overruns and
unforeseen expenses.
The tunneling contractor hired by the MDC — a joint venture
of Kenny Construction Co. of
Illinois and Obayashi Corp.,
one of Japan’s largest construction firms — is seeking between $36 million and
$100 million in court to cover the cost of the tunnel construction delays,
Stone said.
Stone would not say what the contingency is for the tunnel
because the matter is in court.
The MDC is seeking $20 million-plus, Stone said.
‘Fouled by Sewage’
Environmental advocates say they are frustrated by the pace
of solving the problem of pollutants entering waterways in the Hartford area.
The tunnel project is part of a larger plan for more than $2 billion in
improvements to protect waterways.
“So the problem that the tunnel is supposed to address —
Wethersfield Cove — is going to be put off a few years,” Roger Reynolds, senior
legal director at New Haven-based Save
the Sound, an environment advocacy group, said. “But the whole (larger)
project is going to be even more indefinite and out there. That’s really
discouraging and a really bad sign for environmental justice and sewage tainted
waters in and around Hartford.”
Reynolds said there are myriad human health and ecological
impacts from the discharge of untreated or undertreated wastewater into
waterways.
The pump station shaft in under construction at The
Metropolitan District’s water treatment plant in Hartford. (Aaron
Flaum/Hartford Courant)
“Environmental justice is chief among these because people
should really have the right to live next to water that’s not fouled by
sewage,” Reynolds said.
In West Hartford, town officials are anxiously awaiting the
activation of the tunnel. The system will help better protect waterways along
the Hartford-West Hartford line.
Town Manager Rick Ledwith said the tunnel will, in
particular, provide relief for property owners in the area of Piper Brook,
where there is wastewater discharge in heavier rainstorms.
“So this will alleviate that problem for that neighborhood
and a couple of others as well,” Ledwith said. “So, we are looking forward to
it.”
Torrington Co. campus being razed
SLOAN BREWSTER
TORRINGTON – Buildings on the campus of the Torrington
Company are coming down piece by piece to preserve historic elements for reuse.
As of last Thursday, 21 of the 29 structures on the 14-acre
property have been slowly razed. To keep the site contained, crews work inside
a shell of walls and roadside edifices.
Once a top manufacturer of ball bearings, the plant, which
was shuttered in 2007, is being leveled to make room for a new development,
Gary Greenstein and Justin Lichter, of IRG Realty Advisors, said in October, at
the start of demolition.
In its heyday, the company, which included two divisions –
Excelsior Needle and Standard Spoke Nipple – that were combined into the
Torrington Company, comprised one of the most important industries in
Torrington in terms of employment, gross revenue, taxes paid, factories in
Torrington as well as factories nationwide and worldwide, according to Mark
McEachern, executive director of the Torrington Historical Society.
Excelsior Needle Company was incorporated on Feb 24, 1866.
The company, which used a water-powered swaging machine to make needles,
initially worked out of the former Ashborn Guitar Factory. In 1870, the company
was moved to a three-story wood building in Railroad Square. Then in 1890
operations were relocated to Field Street.
Before the project began, a wide space beyond the Field
Street gate contained about 18 buildings, said Glenn Carbone, operations
manager for IRG. Pointing to a multifamily house above the site on North Elm
Street, Carbone noted how the neighborhood was changing as demo continues and
light- filled spaces open where eyesores once stood.
“Can you imagine their view out their front window? It just
drastically changed. They’ve never had this view” he said. “It changes the
landscape forever.”
As the sun shone over the demolition, Tim Fleming, of
Manafort Brothers Inc. Construction of Plainville, operated a grappler. Using
the clawlike attachment fixed to the end of the arm of an excavator, he dragged
the teeth down into piles of debris, dropping his catch into the back of a
waiting truck.
Using a grappler is the number one rule for razing a
building with the intent to salvage material, Carbone said. Crushing everything
is not the way to go.
“These guys are number one,” Carbone said, pointing to where
Fleming worked the grappler. “He’s so meticulous. It’s so careful.”
Pointing to piles of beams stacked on the ground, Carbone
said while Fleming was moving material with the tool, it is also used to
disassemble buildings in pieces “a little bit of facade at a time.” He noted
the beams had been removed so meticulously there is little evidence, such as
bits of cracking “here and there,” suggesting they were ripped down.
Certain areas of the buildings, including top floors near
other buildings, have to be hand-wreaked, meaning the crew will take pieces off
individually by hand.
Throughout the site, materials were sorted into piles to be
taken by salvagers. Lumber will go to a wood-salvage company that IRG is in the
process of contracting. It will be repurposed for such things as flooring and
siding. The hard yellow pine is more than 100 years old and came from South
Carolina, Carbone said. He noted the beams are dated at least to 1912, pointing
out the year etched into a cornerstone from the site that was saved from
demolition and sat on the ground near the gate.
“If you open this, what you’ll smell is turpentine,” he
said, indicating one of the thick beams. “They used to make turpentine out of
this wood.”
While folks have stopped by and asked if they could get some
of the lumber, Carbone has said no as it’s already committed to the salvage
company.
Bricks, after they are organized on pallets and sealed in
plastic wrap, are shipped to brick salvagers to be sold to people looking to
use repurposed bricks for buildings such as barns, he said. “We’ve shipped over
240,000 (bricks) so far out of approximately 1.5 million.”
Piles of granite that once graced windowsills and floors
were also promised new life.
Steel, on the other hand, is headed to the scrap yard and
concrete will be taken to a recycling yard where it will be crushed and reused.
Roofing on the site contains non-friable asbestos, Carbone
said. Unlike friable asbestos, which can become airborne, it can be removed
safely because it’s encapsulated in the asphalt and the tar in the roof. Still,
as crews remove it they use a sprayer to wet the material in case any toxins
get out. Carbone pointed to a large spritz of water raining over a pile of
rubble in the area where Fleming was working.
“It’s got to be hosed down but there (is) zero danger to the
public,” he said. “It’s just a total precaution.”
Carbone estimates the demolition, which is slightly ahead of
schedule, will be done sometime in July, he said. Next week, area homeowners
will be notified as crews will be taking a wall near the edge of the site down
and will be easing into a building behind it, so people will have to park on
the other side of the street.
One of the buildings that will stay is a small brick
building housing a soil vapor extractor that pumps air into the soil to remove
contaminants that come to the surface. There is not a brownfield there, though,
the mitigation effort is a precaution, Carbone said. Behind another building is
a unit that pumps groundwater for remediation purposes.
“It’s a pretty clean site,” he said.
Looking around at the organized piles of debris and salvaged
materials, Carbone took some pride in the work that has been done.
“I’ll challenge anybody in this state, show me a more
organized demolition site,” he said, pointing to the nearly level ground. “Show
me one; you could almost eat off this. For real.”
Anyone interested in bricks from the site can contact
Carbone at gcarbone@Irgra.com.
Borough addressing Rubber Avenue project
ANDREAS YILMA
NAUGATUCK – The borough has been awarded three grants
totaling just over $8 million.
They include more than $5.7 million in a Community
Investment Fund grant to improve a section of Rubber Avenue, a $650,000 state
Department of Transportation grant for a pedestrian bridge downtown and a $1.6
million federal grant for Naugatuck Senior Center.
The CIF grant will be used for Scott Street and Nettleton
Avenue area to address storm water issues and enhance the development of the
Risdon property, a 12-acre former manufacturing site at 0 Andrew Ave.
The funds will also supplement the borough’s Rubber Avenue
project that is underway. That project calls for reconstruction of two-thirds
of a mile of Rubber Avenue, from the intersection of Melbourne and Hoadley
streets to Elm Street. It will include drainage improvements, new sidewalks,
landscaping along the road and a new roundabout at the four-way intersection of
Rubber Avenue and Meadow and Cherry streets.
“Their pipes are older and undersized,” said Mayor N. Warren
“Pete” Hess. “There’s a lot of problems. On a townwide basis, we’re working in
many areas but when we get money from the state, it really helps expedite the
process,”
He added, “It’s going to help improve quality of life in
those neighborhoods. It’s an older part of Naugatuck and it needs attention and
this will really help.”
THE “RUBBER AVENUE CORRIDOR REVITALIZATION” will transform
the Rubber Avenue Corridor by investing in infrastructure to promote private
investment while enabling connectivity and increasing resiliency through storm
water/storm-water drainage upgrades, according to the press release.
“Project funds will be directed toward fixing the drainage
near the Rubber Avenue corridor and installing sidewalks, which will improve
safety in the area,” said Rep. Seth Bronko in a news release announcing the
funding. “Naugatuck High School is on Rubber Avenue, which is why it was so
important that sidewalks be a part of this project, giving our students and
residents a path to safely get to school and back.”
“Not only will this help students, residents living in the
area and local businesses, but we anticipate this funding will help connect the
area to ongoing projects, spurring economic growth,” he added.
AN IMPORTANT CONNECTION between the east and west side of
the borough is another goal to boost economic development downtown through the
DOT grant to design a pedestrian bridge from the southern side of Parcel B
between the new proposed train station and the Naugatuck Event Center across
the Naugatuck River to the eastern side of the borough. DOT will be relocating
the train station from near the Station Restaurant at 195 Water St. to a
portion of Parcel B.
“People coming off Route 8 will be able to park and walk
across the river to the train station without having to drive and fight for a
parking spot in downtown Naugatuck,” Hess said. “It will really enhance the use
of the Waterbury Branch Line and it will bring more people into downtown
Naugatuck to visit our stores and our restaurants and the downtown area.”
The proposed crossing will be the second pedestrian bridge
in the borough and similar to the bridge at Linden Park. The proposed bridge
will allow for people to ride their bikes. DOT is encouraging the borough to
make the connection across the river, Hess said.
“All connections are beneficial to economic development.
This connection is even more beneficial because Route 8 and the river and the
train tracks have historically divided Naugatuck into two parts, the east side
and the west side,” Hess said. “So this will actually connect the two sides,
bring everyone together and make it much easier for people to get from one side
to the other.”
BOROUGH OFFICIALS will also be working with the federal
government to upgrade the Naugatuck Senior Center at 300 Meadow St. Although
they won’t start with the project right away, funds have been secured, Hess
said.
The initial proposed project includes connecting the garage
to the building, expanding the building by putting in additional space in the
garage with a connecting hallway and upgrading the interior and exterior of the
building.
Hess praised U.S. Sens. Christopher S. Murphy and Richard
Blumenthal as well as U.S. Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro who were instrumental for the
senior center funding.
The grants are extremely helpful and the borough being
awarded all three grants over a weekend period is exciting and signifies hard
work done by borough grant writer Danielle Goeway, the entire development team
as well as from the state and federal delegations, Hess said.
“All of these projects require not only competence but
teamwork and I’m very excited to be working on these new plans,” Hess said. “We
have a good team, a strong team.”