Submarine manufacturer Electric Boat breaks ground on 'magnificent' warehouse in North Stonington
NORTH STONINGTON — Every day, thousands of drivers on
Interstate 95 see General Dynamics Electric Boat’s shipyard in Groton as they
take the Gold Star Memorial Bridge across the Thames River. Soon, the submarine
manufacturer will have another landmark just off the highway, about 15
miles east.
Electric Boat executives and local officials held a
groundbreaking ceremony on Wednesday for the warehouse that the company is
building off I-95, in North Stonington. The approximately
480,000-square-foot facility will store a massive amount of parts — freeing up
space, reducing congestion and accelerating production at Electric Boat’s
shipyards in Groton and Quonset Point, Rhode Island, during a period of
striking growth for the business.
“This magnificent warehouse represents far more than added
capacity,” said Ken Jeanos, Electric Boat’s vice president of materials
and chief supply chain officer. “It’s a critical element of our logistics
strategy, giving us the scale, efficiency and flexibility we need, as the
demands of our programs continue to grow. As our production tempo increases and
our materials needs expand, our ability to move the right parts to the right
place, at the right time, becomes even more essential.”
The 55-acre site at 45 Frontage Road, which Electric
Boat acquired
last year for $5.5 million from a real-estate affiliate of
the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, is being prepared for the
structural work. On Wednesday, bulldozers, excavators and dump trucks were
digging and moving around materials, against a backdrop of towering mounds of
earth. The building will take shape this summer, and it is expected to be
completed in the summer of 2027, according to officials at Whiting-Turner, the
project’s construction manager. About 30 to 50 people are expected to initially
work at the hub, according to Electric Boat officials.
Electric Boat already has a total of 17 warehouses at the
shipyard in Groton and neighboring sites, but it needs even more storage to
maximize its shipbuilding space. The USS
Idaho, the 14th Virginia-class, fast-attack submarine that the company has
delivered to the U.S. Navy, will be commissioned Saturday at the Navy’s
submarine base in Groton. Electric Boat aims to, respectively, deliver another
two Virginia-class ships, the future USS Utah and the future USS Arizona, by
the end of this year and in 2028. At the same time, it is building the first
group of the next generation of Columbia-class, ballistic-missile
submarines.
Company officials estimate that the new warehouse, which they call Building 828, will store at least hundreds of thousands of parts, and possibly millions of components, for its submarines. Those pieces will be of various sizes and for numerous purposes.
“It’s not just about storage of material,” said Lucas
Marland, Electric Boat’s senior manager of logistics. “It’s also about making
the shipyards safer to work in. This is going to reduce the vehicle traffic at
the yard (in Groton) by upwards of 80%.”
Electric Boat’s “decompression plan” for its shipyards also
includes the acquisition
last year of Crystal Mall in Waterford, a property that it will
convert into a company facility with offices, laboratories and training space.
It plans to open the new complex in mid-2027 at the earliest.
“This is part of the same strategy to move support
operations off the main campus, so that every inch of the waterfront can be
dedicated to building submarines. In the case of this warehouse, not only are
we removing the footprint, but we are removing all the congestion that goes
around with it,” said Beth Rafferty, Electric Boat’s vice president of
facilities and real estate.
For small towns such as North Stonington — whose
population totaled about 5,200 in 2024, according to the most-recent state data
— large development projects can fuel worries among residents about congestion
and environmental damage. But officials at Electric Boat, Whiting-Turner and
the Town of North Stonington said that the warehouse is a sustainable project.
It is being built on about half of the Frontage Road site's 55 acres, which was
largely undeveloped, aside from a small garage facility that had been unused
for a number of years, they said.
“A few years ago, North Stonington actually put into
place what’s called the Economic Development District, which is right here,
along the higher-capacity roads in town, not in the middle of any private
farmland,” said Susan Cullen, North Stonington’s planning, development and
zoning official. “None of the traffic impacts the rural parts of our town, but
it still brings jobs to our town, it still brings commerce to the town.”
Electric Boat has long ranked as one of the largest
private-sector employers in New England, with a total of more than 26,000
employees, including about 16,000 in Connecticut. It is doubling down on
recruitment, with the goal of hiring 8,000 people this year.
“There’s never been a social-service program that equates to
a decent job. And that’s what you folks are doing here today,” said Tony
Sheridan, CEO of the Chamber of Commerce of Eastern Connecticut. “The people
who work at Electric Boat… build the best machine in the world. There’s nothing
like it.”
514 apartments, office building coming to Milford's Wheelers Farm Road, just off parkway
MILFORD — What for 40 years or so has been one of Milford's
largest office complexes on Wheelers Farm Road will
soon undergo big changes, as developers demolish three of the five office
buildings and replace them with two types of apartments and a host of
amenities.
The new complex will include 514 apartments, including a
150-unit "age targeted" section for people 55 and up and 364
multi-family apartments in seven buildings, along with 160,000 square feet of
office space. The offices will be in two remodeled existing buildings,
representatives of the developers said.
It will have 1,535 parking spaces.
It also will have a central "town green" and
various amenities, including a pool, an 8,750-square-foot clubhouse,
restaurant, fitness area, yoga studio, outdoor pavilion, co-working spaces, a
cinema, game room, golf simulator, outdoor fire tables, bocci courts, cornhole,
badminton courts and a walking trail, according to a presentation this week.
The change was prompted in part by a
significant drop in demand for office space which developed during the
COVID-19 pandemic, an attorney for the developers told the Planning and Zoning
Board Tuesday night.
Under a revised plan the PZB approved Tuesday, a joint
venture of affiliates of Avery Capital, Greenview Equities and Continental
Properties will convert the existing 47-acre office complex at 470-488 Wheelers
Farm Road into a multi-use development with an "affordable housing"
component.
The site is just off the Wilbur Cross Parkway and Milford
Parkway connector.
The site, which overlooks a pond, is just south of the
Wilbur Cross Parkway and east of the Milford Parkway. Its neighbor to the south
is the Muse apartment development, also developed and owned by Continental
Properties.
The plan presented Tuesday was
similar to a preliminary plan approved in July 2024, when the board
approved a zone change to a new Adaptive Reuse Design District to accommodate
the changes requested by Wheelers Farm Partners LLC and Greenview Equities LLC.
One major difference is that the seven proposed multi-family apartment buildings
have been changed from five stories to four stories and made slightly longer,
speakers said.
The age-targeted apartments will be in a two-story building,
according to the plan.
In both the age-targeted apartments and the multi-family
apartments, 15 percent of the units will be available at reduced,
"affordable" rents for people or families who earn up to 80 percent
of the Area Median Income, said Andrea Gomes, an attorney for the
Hartford-based Hinckley Allen law firm.
The application was filed under the state's 8-30g affordable
housing statute.
Wheelers Farms Developers LLC, a subsidiary of Continental,
will develop and own the multi-family apartments at the western half of the
development and Wheelers Farms Partners and Greenview will develop and own the
two office buildings and the age-targeted apartments, according to the plan.
The application was approved by a 6-1 vote, with PZB members
Joseph Alling, Bryan Anderson, Scott Firmender, John Mortimer, Marc Zahariades
and Vice Chairman C. Robert Satti voting in favor and member John Agnese voting
against it.
Gomes introduced the application. She was joined by five
colleagues who presented aspects of it, including Patrick O'Leary, professional
engineer and vice president-development for Continental Properties; engineer
Derek Overton of SLR Consulting; landscape architect Jason Williams of SLR
Consulting, and architect Michael Stein of Stein|Troost Architecture.
"We're very excited about it and we hope the community
is equally excited about it," said O'Leary. "...We believe this plan
is very consistent with the original plan."
At Anderson's suggestion, a condition was added to the
approval that the developer must file a specific "affordability plan"
to specify exactly how many units would be in the "affordable"
component. O'Leary said the developer planned to but generally wouldn't do it
until later in the process when numbers are clearer.
Gomes said such a filing is required under 8-30g.
The office park was built in the early 1980s, but
"during the pandemic, office use significantly declined," Gomes said.
"As of 2024, the property was distressed and severely underutilized,"
and new owners bought it with the idea to redevelop it, she said.
The plan previously was approved by the Inland Wetlands
Agency, Sewer Commission, Fire Marshal's Office and Police Department. A review
by the Office of State Traffic Authority is in process.
Rejected: Large industrial, retail and hotel plan near I-84 in central CT
A
prominent Connecticut developer who proposed building a 114-room
hotel, big-box retail store and 100,000-square-foot industrial building in a
Southington woodlands lost his bid for a zone change on Tuesday.
Domenic Carpionato’s Southington 2 LLC told the town that in
conjunction with an already-approved 283,000-square-foot warehouse and other
buildings, the
project could bring $2.1 million a year in new tax revenue to the town
while creating 360 jobs.
But neighboring
homeowners were skeptical about any upside for the town, and hammered
away at two public hearings on their concerns of worsened traffic and noise
coupled with new demands on Southington’s public works and police departments.
Opponents also said it would be a mistake to lose dozens of acres of space
intended for industrial development in favor of adding more retail.
The Planning and Zoning Commission agreed, voting down the
zone change after the last hearing late Tuesday night.
Engineer Kevin Solli spoke on behalf of Southington 2 LLC,
saying the developer would bring nearly $15 million of infrastructure
improvements to the sprawling parcel that’s just west of I-84 near Exit 31.
The company wanted to subdivide the sprawling tract of more
than 100 acres into six parcels, even though most would not be part of the
immediate development plan.
Solli called the project “the catalyst for something that
could create considerable economic investment and be the impetus for any of
these parcels to be developed.”
Carpionato is well-acquainted with large-scale construction
work: He recently won approval to build 266 apartments in Newington, and is a
partner in the Heritage Park mega-development at the former UConn campus in
West Hartford.
His Southington 2 LLC had arranged purchase agreements for a
large tract of the woodland between I-84 and Route 229. The property is
currently zoned industrial, but the company told commissioners that elevation
drops, wetlands, absence of utilities and extremely limited road frontage make
purely industrial development impractical.
“Development will require significant infrastructure
improvements, including construction of a new access roadway and extension of
utility services. The cost associated with these improvements is substantial
and cannot be reasonably supported by industrial uses alone,” the company said
in its application.
Preliminary plans showed a 114-room hotel, a
170,000-square-foot retail center with nearly 700 parking spaces, and a
100,000-square-foot industrial building with 225 parking spaces and just four
loading docks. Additionally, there was a provision for a 20-pump gas station.
But homeowners from nearby Curtiss Street have been
objecting since the proposal became public, and some residents from other parts
of town also opposed the zone change.
“The West Street corridor simply cannot handle the traffic
impact of this proposal. Currently the exit ramps at peak hours take two to
four light cycles to gain access off of I-84 onto West Street,” wrote Amy
Cooper, a Brothers Way resident. “Impatient and frustrated drivers frequently
run red lights several seconds after the light is red.”
One Curtiss Road resident said he supported the zone change
because of the prospect for new tax revenue to help hold down taxes. And Kurt
Holyst of Saw Mill Lane cautioned that voting down the Southington 2 proposal
would be a risk.
“We have a bird in the hand. What could come in an I-2 zone
could be much more impactful, it could be much worse,” he told the commission.
“If this is denied you may see a plan that impacts these people who complain
much more.”
Juniper Road homeowner Cody Fongemie disagreed that making
improvements at the Curtiss Street intersection with Route 229 would be a net
gain.
“I fail to see how adding several small improvements while
adding a throughway, a shopping center and warehouses is going to improve the
traffic,” he said.
Lamont needs to resolve museum bridge issue
The Day Editorial Board
We understand the public’s frustration. There is much to be
disappointed about when it comes to the construction of the National Coast
Guard Museum. It is many years behind schedule. Original plans called for the
project to be largely funded by private donations. Instead, the federal
government is the primary funder.
Yet completion is now, literally, in sight. Construction of
the 89,000-square-foot, six-story museum is well underway on the New London
waterfront. As a major tourist destination, the museum will be transformative
for the city and its downtown. Most importantly, it will duly honor and
recognize the heroic service of the men and women of the U.S. Coast Guard.
But the plan to build a pedestrian bridge to ensure visitors
travel to and from the museum safely and efficiently is stalled.
Back in 2014, during the administration of Gov. Dannel P.
Malloy, the state set aside $20 million to build a 400-foot, glass-enclosed
bridge to carry pedestrians from the Water Street parking garage, over the
street and railroad tracks, to the museum. Unsurprisingly, a dozen years later
that expenditure will not cover the cost. In October, only one company
submitted a bid for the project, and it exceeded the available budget.
Federal aid for the project includes $80 million for exhibit
development, $20 million to renovate and expand the Water Street Garage, and
nearly $7 million to homeport the Coast Guard barque Eagle adjacent to the
museum. Another $58 million has been raised in private donations.
Now Connecticut needs to honor its commitment to be a
partner in completing this important project. That means the administration of
Gov. Ned Lamont must either commit to providing additional funding to build the
bridge as planned — which would be subject to a new round of competitive
bidding — or to suggest an alternative way of getting visitors to the site.
Frustration is growing that the governor’s office is
displaying no sense of urgency in getting the issue resolved. Other elected
leaders have grown frustrated that their behind-the-scenes efforts to get
Lamont to take a position have failed. Last week they went public with their
annoyance, holding a virtual press conference to turn up the pressure on the
governor.
“We cannot take no for an answer — everyone else has met
their obligations,” said Sen. Chris Murphy. Also in attendance was Sen. Richard
Blumenthal, who used a more diplomatic tone, calling for the need “to present a
consensus to the governor.”
Also in attendance for the virtual presentation were several
local state legislators, New London Mayor Michael Passero and National Coast
Guard Museum Association President Wes Pulver.
Whether this intraparty squabble will speed up or delay a
resolution is unclear. Lamont and the senators are all Democrats, as is the
mayor. But placing politics and personalities aside, funding the pedestrian
bridge construction — even if it costs significantly more than originally
estimated — makes a lot of sense.
The bridge would serve more than museum visitors. It would
also provide a safer way for passengers to come and go from the Cross Sound
Ferry terminal and the Union Station train terminal. The best state investments
help increase commerce. The pedestrian bridge project would do so by improving
convenience and boosting activity as visitors converge at what promises to
become a bustling waterfront.
We placed a call to the governor’s office to ask about the
passenger bridge issue and were told to put questions in writing. We received
no response to our emailed questions.
Silence is not leadership. Governor, do you want the state
and your administration to be a partner in getting this important project
completed? If so, then please explain how. We agree with Sen. Murphy that no is
an unacceptable answer. Not at this late stage.