Harding High School sale to Bridgeport Hospital falls through
BRIDGEPORT — The proposed
sale of the shuttered Harding High School is off, and the 8-acre
Central Avenue property may instead become the location of a new structure for
pre-kindergarten through eighth grade students.
"It's something we really, really need to
consider," Jorge Garcia, the school district's director of facilities,
said Tuesday.
Thomas Gaudett, Mayor Joe Ganim's chief administrative
officer, said, "There aren’t a whole lot of places in Bridgeport to build
a new school, and the Harding site happens to be kind of in a centralized
location," referring to its placement where the East End, East Side
and Mill Hill neighborhoods meet. "It happens to be in the city’s control
already, so it's a great opportunity."
Built in 1924, Harding has been vacant since 2018, when
students and staff moved from that Central Avenue spot across Boston Avenue
into a state-of-the-art facility on Bond Street. In January 2023, the city's
economic development department began accepting proposals from prospective
buyers of the closed school, with neighbor Bridgeport Hospital emerging
as the front-runner with a $3 million offer.
Months passed with no news of the status of any
behind-the-scenes negotiations. Then, a few weeks ago, the school district
released a facilities assessment that envisions shuttering aged Beardsley,
Dunbar, Edison and Hall schools and replacing them with a new building at the
former Harding site for 750 pre-kindergarteners through eighth graders.
On Tuesday, the city's economic development director, Thomas
Gill, and the hospital each confirmed the latter would no longer buy the former
school for an expansion. The final decision was made over this past winter.
Gill said the proposed sale price was $3 million and the
city would have torn down the structure. The hospital would
have remediated any contaminated soil. He said the Bridgeport City Council
wanted the hospital to be on the hook for the demolition as well.
"That was not a deal (the hospital) wanted to do,"
Gill said.
Bridgeport Hospital in a brief statement said,
"Unfortunately, we were not able to come to an agreement by the city's
requested deadline and are unable to move forward with the purchase."
Council President Aidee Nieves confirmed, "I had an
issue with the sale" because the city's responsibilities before Bridgeport
Hospital took over the land would have eaten up the $3 million and likely cost
more.
"(It) was going to be net zero for us," she said,
noting that the hospital, as a nonprofit, also does not pay local real estate
taxes. "If it's for a nonprofit, I'd rather it be for a school."
"We have no problems with that," Gill said.
"The only concern ... I have is the timing of when that building would be
demolished." Gill said before that happens, plans for a new school would
need to be submitted to and approved by the state in order to receive the
necessary construction reimbursement from Connecticut. That amount is typically
80 percent.
"So it's a matter of waiting now,"
he concluded.
This time two years ago, the original Harding High's
abandoned status was a source of friction between city and school district
officials. Steve Ronin, who has a large social media following for
"documenting the world's abandoned places" on video, posted
footage of a half-hour visit he and his crew made to the building. The video
has 136,000 YouTube views.
Ronin revealed all of the furniture, equipment and supplies
left in the deteriorating building, leading to finger-pointing between the
school board and council over whether the school district or
the municipality was responsible for the potential waste.
A
year ago, there was a fire at the property.
On Tuesday, Garcia said he broached the concept of
reactivating the Harding land for educational purposes with the Ganim
administration over the last few months.
"While they were in conversations with the hospital, we
brought it to their attention that there aren’t any other parcels in that part
of town buildable for a school," Garcia recalled. "We wanted to make
sure they understood the needs in that area."
"Harding is a perfect site," he said.
However, Board of Education Vice Chairperson Joseph
Sokolovic emphasized that for now, the reuse of Harding is just a proposal in a
brand new report that is still being reviewed.
"My initial thoughts? A new school is a good
idea," Sokolovic said but added he is not eager to leave "three or
four empty buildings" — Beardsley, Dunbar, Edison and Hall — in exchange,
possibly harming those neighborhoods.
Nieves, who represents the East Side, agreed, noting
traffic could also be an issue. "They have a lot to do before they can
say, 'We're ready to build that school.'"
East End and Mill Hill community leaders Tuesday expressed
support for repurposing the Harding acreage for education.
"I would prefer a new school there," Councilwoman
Eneida Martinez said, arguing it is a good, centralized location. But she is
worried about the extent of the environmental cleanup required before
construction.
Councilman Ernie Newton said ideally housing would have been
built on the land.
"We need housing over there," he said. But,
Newton continued, given the state of some of Bridgeport's existing school
facilities, "it just makes good sense" to redevelop Harding for a
similar use.
"The hospital plan we saw we thought was a good
plan," said Ralph Ford, a prominent Democratic leader on the East End.
"If they can't work it out, providing better educational opportunities for
the city, for students in Bridgeport, is just as good. Might even be better.
They'll be able to close some of those outdated schools."
Nick Roussas runs the Mill Hill Neighborhood Revitalization
Zone, one of a group of NRZs around the city established to weigh in on
economic developments in their respective sections of Bridgeport. He lamented
that Harding is an eyesore.
“One way or another, we want something to get built on
there," Roussas said. "Anything that gets fixed up in our
neighborhood is better than nothing. ... Whether the hospital takes it or the
city and develops it into a school or apartments, something's got to go
there."
Destroyed in catastrophic CT August floods, Oxford's seventh and final bridge reopens
Steve Bigham
OXFORD — Town officials hailed the reopening of the Park
Road bridge Tuesday morning, the completion of the seventh and final bridge
replacement project here following the catastrophic
flooding that hit the area more than seven months ago.
Park Road has been closed since the historic
Aug. 18 flooding event when torrential rains wreaked havoc
on homes, roads, bridges, and culverts.
Oxford was among the hardest hit towns in the area. Two of its residents lost
their lives after being swept away along Route 67 when their cars became
trapped in water that rose as much as six feet above the banks of nearby Little
River.
Oxford
First Selectman George Temple gathered with dozens of town officials
for a ribbon-cutting ceremony yesterday while standing at the site of the new
bridge, a celebration of both Park Road’s reopening and the overall resilience
of the town.
“This is the culmination of a lot of blood sweat and tears
for the people of Oxford. It goes back to the devastation of that flood, and
this is the final stage of the recovery,” Temple said. “I think the town is
going to be able to withstand the storm. I guess that’s a metaphor for the real
storm that caused all this damage.”
Temple said he is confident the new bridge has been built to
effectively survive a similar flood in the future. He said the previous bridge
gave way during the flooding, and then later, in December, a Revolutionary
War-era stone archway — that was beneath the bridge — also collapsed.
Temple said the bridge replacement by Brennan
Construction took less than six months to complete, noting that similar
projects in the past, not connected to the storm, often took two years to
complete.
Oxford town officials say the total cost for reconstruction
of local roads will likely come in around $8 million, of which the town is
hoping to receive about 70 percent reimbursement from the federal
government’s FEMA program.
Southbury still recovering from the damage
Meanwhile, in neighboring Southbury, which was
also heavily
impacted by the flooding, Old Field Road is the only road yet to be
reopened.
First Selectman Jeffrey Manville said the bridge there was
one of dozens in town destroyed by the flooding. However, its reconstruction is
taking longer to complete because it had already been earmarked for replacement
and was in the design phase prior to the flooding, meaning it is
not eligible for FEMA reimbursement.
Southbury town officials say they are moving ahead with the
project just as they would have had there not been any flooding. The roadway is
expected to reopen in the spring.
Southbury had an estimated damage amount of about $10
million, slightly higher than Oxford, in part, because its losses included more
local roads, while, much of Oxford’s damage centered along Route 67, and those
repairs fell under the auspices of the Connecticut Department of
Transportation.
Southbury’s damage
also included the public library along Poverty Road where the
basement, and all of the building’s mechanicals, were destroyed by the raging
floodwaters.
Manville recently announced that the library is scheduled to
reopen by November, meaning it will have ended up being closed for some 15
months.
Manville said he has been disappointed that Southbury is not being provided the
level of funds to “built back better,” noting that most of the roads have
simply built back the way they were, no less susceptible to future floods.
Manville said he has also been disappointed
that Southbury has not received additional funding for the reconstruction
of the library.
“The state and federal government have come through with nothing and we were
told that we were going to get help,” Manville said. “The library in Hartford
received $1 million for water damage, but we have received nothing.”
The town recently established a temporary library in the
lobby of the Heritage Hotel.
Southbury is also looking to replace the three tennis courts
at Community House Park, which were all destroyed in the floods.
NYC developer buys Windsor land for $5.85M to construct industrial building
A New York City developer paid $5.85 million for a parcel of
land in Windsor near Bradley
International Airport, with plans to cobble together an industrial building
at the site using building "blocks" made elsewhere to reduce the cost
and construction time.
With construction to take place at 36 Hazelwood Road, the
PNK Group industrial building would total 218,000 square feet of space. That
stretch of Windsor is home to multiple warehouses and production facilities,
including for Dollar
Tree, Little Caesars, Tire Rack, Walgreens and
PepsiCo.
The Hartford area had 250,000 square feet of industrial
space under construction at the close of 2024, according to the latest
quarterly report by CBRE, a single project in Windsor Locks by the New
Jersey-based developer Silverman Group. The region's industrial property
vacancy rate is 5.5% and lease rates average $7.69 a square foot.
PNK Group uses factories in Pennsylvania and Georgia to
build "large-unit block" structure components, in its words, which it
then transports to sites for assembly into warehouses and other industrial
buildings. The company's projects include a 1.1 million square-foot project in
Georgia where mattress maker Purple Innovations is a tenant, with PNK
Group selling the facility to investment giant KKR in 2021 for
a reported $103 million.
The company did not state immediately whether it has any
commitments from distributors or manufacturers to lease space at the Windsor
site. A PNK Group partner could not be reached immediately Tuesday for
further information on the plans.
PNK Group completed the 22-acre land purchase on March 6
through a limited liability company called PNK CT1 LLC. The property had
been owned previously by UW Realty VII, a limited liability
company registered to real estate investors Bradford Wainman and Robert
Urso of Glastonbury, who paid $1.15 million for the land in 2022.
US infrastructure improved with Biden-era spending but there's a long way to go
TAMMY WEBBER and MICHAEL PHILLIS
A once-every-four-years report card on the upkeep of
America's infrastructure gave it a “C” grade on Tuesday, up slightly from
previous reports, largely due to investments made during former President Joe
Biden's administration.
The report from the American Society of Civil Engineers,
which examined everything from roads and dams to drinking water and railroads,
warns that federal funding must be sustained or increased to avoid further
deterioration and escalating costs.
“We have seen the investments start to pay off, but we still
have a lot of work to do out there,” said Darren Olson, chair of this year’s
report. He said decrepit infrastructure – from poor roads that damage cars to
delayed flights to power outages that spoil groceries — hurts people and the
economy.
“By investing in our infrastructure, we’re making our
economy more efficient, we’re making it stronger (and) we’re making ourselves
globally more competitive,” he said.
It’s especially critical that infrastructure can handle more
extreme weather due to climate change, said Olson, noting hurricanes that
devastated the East Coast and parts of Appalachia last year. The U.S. saw 27
weather disasters last year that cost at least $1 billion, second-most since
1980.
The 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act provided
$550 billion in new infrastructure investments, but is set to expire in 2026.
Another $30 billion came from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, including for
projects focused on clean energy and climate change, the engineering group
said.
President Donald Trump's administration has targeted some of
Biden’s green policies. Public parks improved to a C-minus from a D-plus, for
example, thanks in part to significant investments over several years.
Recently, however, the Trump administration moved to slash National Park
Service staffing.
In 2021, the U.S. earned a C-minus overall. The investments
made since then are just a fraction of the $9.1 trillion that the civil
engineers group estimates is needed to bring all of the nation’s current
infrastructure into a state of good repair.
Even if current federal infrastructure funding were
maintained, there still would be a $3.7 trillion gap over a decade, according
to the report.
The bill to upgrade and maintain the nation’s roughly 50,000
water utilities, for example, is $625 billion over the next two decades,
according to the federal government. The grade for drinking water was C-minus,
unchanged from four years ago.
Many communities already struggling to maintain old,
outdated drinking water systems also face new requirements to replace lead
service line s and reduce per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, collectively
known as PFAS.
The bipartisan infrastructure bill helped complete or start
“a lot of really important projects,” said Scott Berry, director of policy and
governmental affairs at the US Water Alliance. “But the gap has widened so much
over the last couple of decades that a lot, lot more investment is going to be
needed.”
The bill also provided billions to help the U.S. Army Corps
of Engineers upgrade inland waterways, which move roughly $150 billion in
commerce every year, improving the grade from a D-plus to a C-minus.
Barges on the Mississippi River, for example, carry enormous
amounts of coal, soybeans, corn and other raw materials to international
markets. But critical infrastructure like locks and dams — many built more than
a half-century ago and requiring regular maintenance and repair — is often
invisible to the public, making it easy to neglect, said Mike Steenhoek,
executive director of the Soy Transportation Coalition.
And when big projects are funded, it too often comes in
stages, he said. That forces projects to pause until more money is
appropriated, driving up costs for materials and labor.
“If we really want to make the taxpayer dollars stretch
further, you have got to be able to bring a greater degree of predictability
and reliability in how you fund these projects,” he said.
The report's focus on engineering and money misses the
importance of adopting policies that could improve how people use and pay for
infrastructure, according to Clifford Winston, a microeconomist in the
Brookings Institution’s economic studies program.
“You fail to make the most efficient use of what you have,”
said Winston. For example, he noted that congestion pricing like that recently
adopted by New York City — charging people to drive in crowded areas — places
the burden on frequent users and can pressure people to drive less, reducing
the need for new bridges, tunnels and repairs.
Roads remain in chronically poor shape, receiving a D-plus
compared to a D in the last report, despite $591 billion in investments since
2021.
Two categories, rail and energy, received lower grades.
Disasters like the derailment of a train carrying dangerous chemicals in East
Palestine, Ohio, in 2023 lowered rail’s previous B mark to a B-minus.
The energy sector, stressed by surging demand from data
centers and electric vehicles, got a D-plus, down from C-minus.
Engineers say problems in many sectors have festered for so
long that the nation must figure out how to address the shortcomings now or pay
for them when systems fail.
On Wednesday, a delegation of engineers will visit
Washington to talk to lawmakers about the funding impacts and “the importance
of continuing that investment,” said Olson, who said the needs are a bipartisan
issue.
“When we talk about it in ways of how better infrastructure
saves the American family money, how better infrastructure supports economic
growth, we’re really confident that ... there is strong support,” he said.