'Dangerous precedent': CT lawmakers urged to undo law that exempts major project from safety review
Brianna
Gurciullo, Joseph
Villanova
Lawmakers passed a bill past year they hoped would lead to
the creation
of a vibrant area in East Hartford. It was a key move to push forward an
$840 million mixed-use overhaul of struggling office buildings, bringing
vibrancy to the area.
In an effort to fast track the development, language was
included in the law that would exempt the development from a safety review
process that applies to major traffic expected to generate significant traffic.
State Department of Transportation officials, however, are requesting that
exemption language be repealed.
As a potential “major traffic generator,” Port Eastside
should go through a review
and approval process by DOT’s Office of the State Traffic
Administration, the state agency said.
The large
mixed-used development, located near an on-ramp and an off-ramp for Route
2, “contains significant potential to generate traffic that can back up the
state limited access highways,” DOT said. “This situation increases the risk of
a high-speed collision.”
But last year’s bill, which Gov. Ned Lamont signed into law
in June, “takes the extreme step of removing jurisdiction over this development
away from the agency of cognizance, at a time when road safety is a core focus
of CTDOT and the Lamont administration,”
the agency said. “This would set a dangerous precedent that every future
developer will seek to duplicate.”
House Majority Leader Jason Rojas, D-East Hartford, said he
expects lawmakers will follow that request during the legislative session, a
13-week period that kicked off Feb. 4. Rojas said lawmakers didn’t get pushback
on the provision from DOT when they were developing the bill. The record
for the legislation doesn’t show any testimony submitted by the
agency.
“I think it just got kind of missed in the crush of the
legislature when we were originally considering it,” he said. “I have since met
with (DOT Commissioner Garrett Eucalitto), and I know that the commissioner has
also been in conversation with the project developers as well too. So I think
what’s being proposed is actually being done as sort of an agreement, and it’s
not a contentious issue.”
Rojas said the goal of providing the exemption, which the
developers requested, was to put the project on a faster track, but it
“certainly wasn’t the intent to kind of skirt any safety concerns or anything
like that.”
“It was just one of those things that got missed in the
course of the debate,” Rojas said.
If the provision stays in place, DOT said, the project won’t
be subject to:
A process to make sure signage and markings meet
federal requirements;
A review related to interactions between cars and cyclists
or pedestrians;
“Complete Streets” policies prioritizing the safety of
non-drivers; and
Policies to ensure data drives decisions around traffic
control.
The law also eliminates the developers’ responsibility to
make infrastructure improvements to mitigate the project’s traffic impacts and
affects DOT’s ability to plan for transit services, the agency said.
Representatives for Port Eastside did not return a request
for comment.
Richard Kehoe, who chairs East Hartford's Town Council, said
the town was not directly involved in the matter, to his knowledge, but that he
would be surprised if the developers took issue with DOT's proposal.
"The state has been really supportive of them
throughout the project," Kehoe said.
An $840 million project announced in 2023, Port Eastside
would revamp roughly 30 acres of land on and surrounding Founders Plaza with
800 to 1,000 residential units and various retail uses, including storefronts
and restaurants. The developers have billed Port Eastside as a way to bring
vitality back to an underutilized commercial area with more than 2,100 feet of
riverfront property. A key component of the legislation is that it creates
a special
taxing district for the area.
Former Mayor Mike Walsh identified redevelopment of Founders
Plaza as a priority for East Hartford early into his only term in 2021. He
announced in July 2023 that he would not seek re-election to instead serve as a
"champion" for Port Eastside, stating at the time that "nine
mayors, including me, over 50 years have had no success developing Founders
Plaza."
Existing structures within the project area include a
parking garage and 19-story office building at 110 Founders Plaza with some
existing tenants, a former Bank of America at 99 Founders Plaza and an empty
office building at 300 East River Drive. Developers have said the earliest
stages of Port Eastside would retrofit 111 Founders plaza with 240 to 250
residential units and build a new parking garage with ground-floor retail
space.
As for when that could begin, representatives for Port
Eastside have described it as a decade-long project and timing would largely
depend on when an interlocal agreement for the Tax Increment Financing district
is finalized but previously predicted occupancy could begin in late 2027.
Kehoe said that conversations regarding the interlocal
agreement have not yet begun, but he would expect more activity within
"maybe another nine months" after construction has ramped up.
The developers announced last week that demolition had begun
on the old Bank of America and the parking garage, with partner Bruce Simons
saying in a prepared statement that it marked the kickoff of a "multi-year
transformation" of Founders Plaza.
"There is a great deal of work that needs to be done to
prepare the site and build the infrastructure that will support the residences,
businesses, and features here, and we are energized to take the first steps
forward," Simons said.
Kehoe said Monday that although he has always been skeptical
of large projects like Port Eastside, he was encouraged to see the beginning of
demolition after the developers put forward some $20 million to buy all the
properties.
"Hopefully we'll see a lot more action come this
spring," Kehoe said.
Massive 200-acre solar farm in Plainfield and Sterling faces local resistance
Alison Cross
Plainfield — A Lamont-administration-endorsed
proposal for a massive, 202-acre solar farm on the Plainfield-Sterling town
line is facing pushback from some residents.
Representatives from the renewable energy development firm Verogy met with the Board
of Selectmen on Monday to share new details on the proposed 50-megawatt Husky Solar project, which would
generate enough electricity to power 6,690 homes a year.
Once complete, Husky Solar would occupy 125 acres in
Plainfield and 75 acres in Sterling across 517 acres of land near the
intersection of Sterling Road and Sterling Hill Road.
In December, Gov. Ned Lamont and the State Department of
Energy and Environmental Protection announced that Husky Solar had been
selected for a multi-state
clean energy sharing program that leverages federal tax credits to carry
out power purchase agreements between Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine and
Vermont.
Lamont and DEEP Commissioner Katie Dykes said the project
would create a cleaner, more reliable and affordable energy grid for
Connecticut ratepayers.
While the project essentially received the Lamont
administration’s blessing, it still requires final approval from the
Connecticut Siting Council and other regulatory agencies.
Civil Engineering Project Manager Ian Gottheim said Verogy
will submit an application to the Siting Council next week. If all permits are
approved, Verogy said, construction could start in November and wrap up by
December 2028.
Selectman Tom Sinkewicz said that the proposal comes at an
“interesting” time when proposed developments are cropping up around town.
While Sinkewicz said he is “not against solar panels” and
can “certainly see the benefits of” the project, he said he has “spoken to a
number of residents already about this project and some are not for it.”
“We have a lot of people in our town who just want this
(town) to literally be plain fields,” Selectman Tom Sinkewicz said. “They do
not want row by row of warehouses and solar panel fields and trucks.”
“Not everybody is necessarily going to look at the benefit
of the solar panels,” Sinkewicz added. “They’re going to look at the fact that
this is just another development taking away from the natural environment.”
In addition to the sprawling solar modules, the project
would include a 34.5-kilovolt to 115-kilovolt substation at 166 Sterling Road
in Sterling at the site of an existing gravel pit. A proposed switchyard would
also be built at 0 Sugar Brook Road in Plainfield.
Brad Parsons, Verogy’s director of design and permitting,
said the solar farm would operate under a 20-year lease. Parsons said Verogy is
required to put up a full decommission bond to fund the full removal of the
project at the end of the lease and “return that land back to its natural
state.”
Parsons said the project is expected to create up to 200
local construction jobs with wages totaling $13 million.
The solar farm would also generate more than $355,000 in
annual taxes for Plainfield and $252,000 a year for Sterling, according to
Verogy’s estimates. Permitting costs and other fees are expected to total
$550,000 in upfront payments to Plainfield and $350,000 for Sterling.
The Husky Solar would not be the first solar farm in town,
but it would be the largest by far.
In November, the Planning and Zoning commission approved
a zone change that would allow Vineyard
Sky Farms Corp. to build a 4-acre solar farm on two landlocked parcels at 0
Norwich Road and 0 Plainfield Pike Road. That company currently operates two
solar generation facilities near Plainfield Pike Road of approximately 4.2
and 4.8 acres.
Last week, the Siting
Council also approved Verogy’s Plainfield Solar One
project — a 25-acre, 4-megawatt solar farm on Black Hill Road, east of the
intersection with Exley Road, that will produce enough energy to power 1,000
homes annually. Construction is expected to start in the spring.
190-unit apartment building planned for parking lot on New Haven’s Orange St.
A developer is proposing a new, seven-story apartment
building on New Haven’s Orange Street, providing 190 units and retail space.
The downtown site at 7 Orange St., on the corner of George
Street, is currently a surface parking lot owned by the city.
The applicant, Max Ritchie of L&M Development Partners
in Larchmont, New York, has outlined plans for a 152,920-square-foot building
that would provide a mix of affordable and market rate housing.
Fifty-seven of the units would be rented to residents making
less than 50% of the area median income.
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The design includes more than 100 studio apartments, 40
one-bedroom units, 26 two-bedroom and 10 three-bedroom apartments.
A retail or commercial space of 3,433 square feet would
anchor the corner of the property with frontage on both Orange and George
streets.
The developer proposes to start work at the site in early
2027, and projects that the building would take two years to complete.
The City Plan Commission will hear more details at its next
meeting on Feb. 25.