Officials break ground on new Moriarty Elementary School in Norwich
Daniel Drainville
Norwich — State, local and school officials gathered at the
site of the current Moriarty Elementary School on Monday afternoon to break
ground on the school's replacement, which will be constructed adjacent to the
current building.
"I'm excited for what the families, the students and
the staff here will get to experience in the next of construction here, which I
call phase two," state Rep. Derell Wilson, D-46th District, said.
Among the nearly 60 people who attended the ceremony were
School Building Committee Chairman Mark Bettencourt and other committee
members, Moriarty Principal Ashley Favello, Superintendent of Schools Susan
Lessard, Mayor Swarnjit Singh and members of the Board of Education and City
Council.
Moriarty is the fourth elementary school to break ground as
part of the $386 million school project, which calls for the construction of
four new elementary schools and one new middle school, with another building to
be renovated into central offices and an adult learning center. Last Friday, a
groundbreaking was held for the new Uncas Elementary School at at 280 Elizabeth
St. Ext.
Plans call for the new Moriarty and Uncas schools to open
for the start of the 2027-28 school year.
Meanwhile the first two new schools, John B. Stanton and
Greeneville, are under construction, with Stanton expected to be completed late
this summer and Greeneville next spring.
Joining the officials at the Monday groundbreaking ceremony
were personnel from Construction Solutions Group, which the city hired as the
project manager for the entire schools' project, and from O&G Industries,
the Torrington-based contractor for the Uncas and Moriarty projects.
State Rep. Doug Dubitsky, R-47th District, called the city's
project to build five new schools in such a short span "virtually
unprecedented."
"It only comes because of the cooperation,"
Dubitsky said. "That's literally hundreds of millions of dollars. Building
a new school is not cheap. A lot of that money is coming from the state. Some
of it is coming from the city too. But it all comes based on cooperation."
The state has committed to reimburse Norwich for 80% of the
cost of the first four schools.
Singh thanked Bettencourt and other School Building
Committee members for their work.
"Leading the school building committee is not easy. And
all the members, that's a lot of hours that they spend," he said.
"Mark has to make a lot of calls, as well, and listen to a lot of people
who are not happy with construction. But the same time, what we are doing is
not just for ourselves. It's for generations to come. And we will reap that
through."
"Now, let's take Norwich to the next level," he
said. "We have a lot of things to accomplish here."
Wilson recalled that it was on the Moriarty school site that
he used to play in the Taftville Little League, and where he had his first
summer job.
"The theme of many of these groundbreakings are, you
see a neighborhood that has built itself around a school," Wilson said.
"So it will be exciting to continue to see a new school built in this
neighborhood, which this neighborhood can continue to rally around."
State Sen. Cathy Osten, D-19th District, noted that much of
the work being done on the schools is being done by young people who have
entered the building trades.
Stamford Health unveils $275M plan for new cancer center, behavioral health expansion
Stamford
Health is looking to expand access and capacity with plans to build a
dedicated cancer center and a behavioral health facility as part of a multiyear
construction project aimed at addressing
the increasing demand for those services in Fairfield County.
Construction is expected to begin in 2027, though officials
said planning and other preliminary work are already underway. The project is
estimated to cost $275 million.
“This
is really a transformation of the Bennett Cancer Center to meet some of the
most important future healthcare needs in Stamford and Fairfield County,” said
Kathleen Silard, president and CEO of Stamford Health. “It is our
aspirational goal, our vision, to be the most trusted healthcare partner for
the communities that we serve, and I think to that end, this is just another
example of ways in which we're delivering on that promise.”
Cancer diagnoses continue to rise nationwide, particularly among younger patients, as screening and testing improve. At the same time, advances in treatment are helping patients live longer and manage the disease more effectively, Silard said.
Although Stamford Health’s Bennett Cancer Center has
undergone several renovations over the years, Silard said the facility has
effectively outgrown its space as demand for treatment continues to increase.
Stamford Health provided more than 13,000 medical infusion treatments and 7,500
radiation treatment to patients in fiscal year 2025, which officials say
represents overall growth in demand for services.
The new 73,000-square-foot cancer center would be located on
the southwest corner of the campus and operated in collaboration with
Dana-Farber Brigham Cancer Center.
The goal is to create a centralized destination for cancer
care. The facility would bring together physician offices, radiation and
infusion therapies, and a range of support services under one roof. Silard said
the design is also intended to improve the patient experience through features
such as convenient and accessible parking and dedicated patient drop-off and
pick-up areas.
“This
new facility is going to allow us to expand capacity, but it's also going to incorporate
the latest technologies,” Silard said. “Things like immunotherapy and CAR-T, which
are really cutting-edge targeted genetic therapies that we are able to provide
to patients, are really revolutionary and allow patients to live longer with
less side effects from the treatments.”
Behavioral health services have also emerged as one of the
region’s most pressing healthcare needs. According to Stamford Health’s
community health needs assessment, about one in four children in Stamford and
Darien reported feeling anxious in 2025, while one in five experienced symptoms
of depression. Alcohol use and vaping among young adults were also increasing.
For fiscal year 2026, for example, Stamford Health
outpatient behavioral health saw over 4,200 patient visits, marking a 38% from
the previous year.
Over the past several years, Stamford Health has invested in
its ambulatory adult mental health services and developed specialized programs.
However, Silard said a dedicated facility will allow the organization to
increase inpatient capacity and expand treatment options.
Liz Longmore,
executive vice president and COO, said Stamford Health’s existing inpatient
behavioral health and rehabilitation units are housed in one of the older
buildings on the campus.
Under the plan, the existing Bennett Cancer Center would be
converted into a two-floor behavioral health facility. The building would also
house a partial hospitalization program for adults, offering structured
treatment that bridges the gap between inpatient and outpatient care.
“Some
patients need additional support in order to make that transition successfully,
and to coordinate any care that they need after being hospitalized,” Longmore
said. “So it's an important part of the care continuum, and to be able to offer
that, in addition to the outpatient behavioral health program that we started a
couple of years ago, it's a bridge in between the two.”
Plans also call for relocating the Van Munching inpatient
rehabilitation unit to Stamford Hospital to better meet growing demand The unit
provides care to patients who suffered from serious medical conditions, like
stroke and traumatic injuries, to improve physical function. Officials said
there's been an 11% increase in rehab discharges in fiscal year 2026, compared
to the previous period.
The upgraded fourth-floor unit in the hospital tower would
feature 20 private rooms, specialized spaces for brain injury care, and
advanced physical therapy and rehabilitation equipment.
As part of the broader campus improvements, Stamford Health is also evaluating ways to increase parking capacity.
“We are
seeing growth in cancer and behavioral health, and it's a good/bad thing,”
Longmore said. “People are accessing the resources that we have, but we know
that it is a need that's going to continue to demonstrate demand.”
FuelCell plans up to $275M Torrington expansion as data center demand grows
Danbury-based FuelCell Energy announced it has increased the
planned scale of its Torrington manufacturing expansion as it pursues growing
demand from data center developers seeking on-site power generation.
The company, which makes fuel cell power systems, said
Monday it now aims to expand the facility to 500 megawatts of annualized
production capacity, up
from a previously announced target of 350 megawatts. The change comes as
its pipeline of potential data center projects grew to 4 gigawatts during the
second quarter, up from about 1.5 gigawatts earlier this year, the company
said.
The expanded project is expected to cost between $200
million and $275 million and take about 24 months to complete, according to an
earnings release filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
FuelCell said it has already begun work at the Torrington
plant, including installation of a high-volume tape caster and commissioning of
a new conditioning room.
The announcement accompanied second-quarter financial
results that showed higher losses and lower revenue compared with a year ago.
FuelCell reported revenue of $35.6 million, down about 5%, and a net loss of
$77.6 million. The loss included a $42.6 million noncash impairment charge tied
to planned equipment upgrades at the company’s 7.4-megawatt fuel cell
installation at the U.S. Navy Submarine Base in Groton.
FuelCell Energy began pivoting its business toward data
centers earlier this year, with CEO Jason Few telling the Hartford Business
Journal in March that more than 80% of the company’s proposal pipeline — then
totaling roughly 1.5 gigawatts — came from data center customers.
By the end of the second quarter, which closed April 30, the
pipeline had grown to 4 gigawatts, a 267% increase from the first quarter.
The Torrington facility was producing about 41 megawatts of
power systems annually as of earlier this year, well below its existing
100-megawatt capacity. The original expansion plan, which FuelCell outlined in
March, called for scaling within the existing footprint to 350 megawatts.
The company said Monday it has since raised that target in
response to increased product demand and growing interest in its new
standardized 12.5-megawatt fuel cell block, which it unveiled this past quarter
as an off-the-shelf power solution for data center developers.
Former Bridgeport munitions testing site redeveloped as urban forest
John Moritz and Reginald David
On Valentine’s Day in 2024, a small group of activists
trudged through the snow to a high chain-link fence surrounding hundreds of
acres of woods in Bridgeport. In their arms, they carried thousands of
handwritten cards pasted onto large paper hearts: love letters to the forest
that for decades had been cordoned off from the rest of the city.
One of the activists, Jhoni Ada, said she remembered first
catching a glimpse of the woods while passing by on the school bus. Throughout
high school, she said, the trip became a daily respite, the sight of the
greenery soothing. Later, she became an organizer with the Sierra Club’s local
chapter.
“My eyes would be glued to the trees as they were whizzing
by,” Ada said. “I remember just thinking: this is definitely not for public
access, because I never really saw anyone walking around.”
The property, Remington Woods, was used for decades as a
testing ground for munitions developed by the Union Metallic Cartridge Company
and, later, Remington Arms. After Remington closed its last manufacturing
facility in Bridgeport in 1986, the property underwent a decades-long cleanup
effort overseen by a successor to Remington’s former parent company, DuPont.
That effort, now nearing its end, is giving way to plans to
preserve large portions of Remington Woods for public use — which advocates are
hailing as one of the largest such conservation efforts along the heavily
urbanized East Coast in nearly a century.
The outcome is one that appeared unlikely to some advocates
as recently as a few years ago.
When the activists delivered their Valentine’s Day
messages in 2024, developers were already seeking to turn portions of the
420-acre property into
an office park, with some of the lands also set aside as open space.
That idea met with pushback from local residents and
environmental groups, who wanted to see the Remington Woods’ owners, Sporting
Goods Properties, alter their plans to preserve as much of the property as
possible.
In October 2024, eight months after the Valentine’s Day
demonstration, SPG announced a new proposal to set aside the majority of the
property, up to 368 acres, as open space free from major development. The rest
of the space would be leased to build Lake Success Energy Park, a solar and
battery-storage facility that would be one of the largest of its kind in the
region.
“There are not a lot of organizations that are willing to do
this kind of pivot,” Ada said. “I want to applaud them for that. It’s
definitely not an easy decision to decide conservation over development, but I
do think that they made a very worthwhile decision.”
Tom Stilley, SPG’s vice president for environmental affairs,
said the pivot toward a more conservation-focused development plan was
ultimately a business decision.
“It was the best and highest use of the property,” Stilley
said. “We continually look at all of the factors that come into play,
infrastructure costs, community involvement, what the real estate market wants
and demands and is looking for in any given location, and that’s how we evolved
our thinking.” (SGP is a subsidiary of Corteva Agriscience, a company that
was spun
off as part of the 2019 split between DuPont and Dow Chemical.)
Thousands of bullets on the ground
But before the property could be made accessible to the
public, it had to be cleared of leftover munitions. Some areas of soil were
contaminated with lead and arsenic, which also had to be cleaned and capped.
During the cleanup effort, Stilley said workers removed of
nearly 5,000 pieces of ammunition from Lake Success, a 23-acre body of water at
the center of the property that was once used as a dumping ground for its
owners. Some of the unexploded ordnance — ranging from bullet casings to mortar
shells — was intentionally detonated on the property, in a hollowed-out section
of hillside set aside for that purpose.
“We found shells that go back to the Russian Czar, because
there were Russian letters on the shells,” Stilley said.
Since taking over the property in the late 1980s, Stilley
said SPG has spent roughly $100 million on clean up, maintenance and security.
Work is scheduled to be completed later this year on the last sections of soil
remediation, he said, and some monitoring of groundwater for additional
pollutants will continue for the next several years. The cleanup effort was
subject to consent orders with both the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
and the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, but Stilley
said no public money was used in the cleanup.
Once the cleanup effort is complete, Stilley said that SPG
intends to sell the property to an environmental stewardship organization that
will maintain it and keep some sections open to the public through walking
trails and nature-based activities. Other sections of the property will remain
off limits to the public and allowed to remain wild.
The leases for the energy park will also be turned over to
whatever organization takes ownership, giving them revenue to maintain the rest
of the property, Stilley said.
State Rep. Joseph Gresko, D-Stratford, the deputy speaker of
the Connecticut House, described Remington Woods as one of the state’s most
significant conservation opportunities. The property offers a rare chance to
preserve a large tract of forest while creating a public resource for
residents, he said.
“I would die a happy person if this is somehow preserved,”
Gresko said. “It’s an opportunity to preserve 400-plus acres of upland forest.”
Gresko said the preserve could become another “crown jewel”
for Bridgeport and Stratford, giving residents access to nature just minutes
from Connecticut’s largest city centers.
“People can go and experience getting out into the woods,
and you would never know you’re five minutes from Main Street in the biggest
city in the state,” he said.
The current inhabitants of the park include rabbits,
turkeys, coyotes and a herd of deer that are managed and fed by private
contractors hired by SPG. The woods, surrounded by residential development,
also serves as an important waystation for thousands of migrating songbirds
during the spring and fall.
Among the species that have been spotted in the park are
blue-winged warblers, scarlet tanagers, rose-breasted grosbeaks and bald
eagles.
“It’s impossible to overemphasize the ecological importance
of this site,” said Milan Bull, the senior director of science and conservation
at the Connecticut Audubon Society. “This is the largest piece of open space —
urban open space — that’s left between, let’s say, Central Park and beyond
Boston.”
be topped with solar panels within the grounds of
Bridgeport’s Remington Woods in May 2026.
A new energy source
Having community support for the project has also eased the
regulatory pathway for the development of the energy park, which is being led
by two Connecticut-based companies: Kinsley Group and TRIAD Advanced Energy
Development.
David Kinsley, the chief executive for the Kinsley Group,
said he and other representatives of the development group attended community
meetings and spoke with neighbors to introduce them to the project and touted
its benefits to region.
The solar portion of the project will be connected to the
local grid and provide up to 4 megawatts of carbon-free electricity. The
battery energy storage system, or BESS, will consist of an additional 250
megawatts of stored electricity that can dispatched onto the grid in four-hour
increments.
On Tuesday, the developers announced that the solar portion
of the project had been selected by United Illuminating through the state’s
latest round of procurements for renewable energy projects, providing the
project with a guaranteed customer for the next two decades. Seperately, the
developers also reached at agreement paying the city of Bridgeport to serve as
the “virtual offtaker,” for the solar power, offsetting the energy needed to
power municipal buildings.
Kinsley said the developers are waiting until the Department
of Energy and Environmental Protection solicits its next round of bids for
battery-storage projects before submiting the project for formal site
approval. He said battery portion of the project is expected to cost
upwards of $600 million and could be completed by around 2030.
If approved, the BESS facility would be the largest of its
kind in Connecticut, and one of the largest in New England. Kinsley said the
site also has space to build a second, 250-megawatt system depending on the
results of an ongoing engineering study.
In order to mitigate disruptions during the ongoing
remediation of Remington Woods, workers cleaned and buried contaminated soil on
the property, limiting the need for diesel trucks to cart the soil off through
surrounding neighborhoods. That landfill is now the proposed location for one
of the site’s solar arrays.
“Site approval is generally one of the biggest challenges in
siting these projects,” Kinsley said. “Given this location, it’s like, perfect
because it’s basically a brownfield, I think it’s 1,000 feet from the closest
house… It’s brilliant, the whole project is brilliant.”
During one of the community listening sessions, Ada said she
spoke with a group of local middle schoolers who proposed the addition of
nature-based classrooms within the park. That proposal is now under
consideration as part of the the long-term conservation plan, Stilley said. In
the meantime, SPG has already hosted several groups of students from Brideport
and Stratford for tours of the property.
But even from beyond perimeter fence surrounding the
property, Ada said students are already learning about nature through Remington
Woods.
“I remember visiting a school once, and they had this
billboard that their wildlife club had worked on, and they detailed all of the
different species that have been in Remington Woods, and they were thinking
through some of the animal tracks and some of the animal droppings that they
were seeing around the fence line” she said. “That sort of being able to
connect those students with with wildlife, it was very touching.”
So far, SPG has yet to settle on a name for the park, which
is expected to open to the public once work is completed on the energy
facilities. But Bull, of the Audubon Society, has at least one idea.
“They should call it Nirvana,” he said.