State DOT proposes $50 million bus facility in Preston
Daniel Drainville
Preston — The state Department of Transportation has
proposed building a new $50 million headquarters for the Southeastern Area
Transit District that would replace the bus provider's existing one at 21 Route
12.
SEAT General Manager Michael Carroll said Wednesday the
current 38,000-square-foot headquarters, which occupies the same site where the
new one would be built, is used by SEAT to house its 22 diesel buses, two
hybrid buses and 12 gasoline vans. But he said the building, which is more than
40 years old, is "desperately in need of work," and "not
adequate" to serve the current fleet.
Besides that, Carroll said SEAT, which supplies bus services
to towns in the region, has to comply with state mandates on vehicle
electrification.
DOT Spokesperson Josh Morgan said the state has committed to
having all buses in the state transition to zero emissions by 2035, which means
retiring diesel buses in favor of electric ones.
"Essentially, what they're saying is as you replace
buses, you have to replace them with electric buses," Carroll said.
"The primary purpose of this project is to address that
need," Carroll said. "The (proposed) facility is basically a garage
to accommodate the current and expanded fleet."
Carroll said most of the current fleet was purchased between
2018 and 2020. And with about a 10-year life span, those buses will be replaced
with electric ones, he said.
DOT officials, at a virtual public information meeting
Monday, presented the new headquarters, which is in the early stages of design.
The project calls for a 55,000-square-foot building on 29.3
acres of state-owned land set back 100 to 200 yards from Route 12. Morgan said
the state will pay for 20% of the project with the federal government funding
the rest.
Morgan said the DOT indicated the new building will not only
be larger but have the infrastructure for charging the electric bus fleet. It
will also include a new administration and operations wing. The DOT expects
construction to begin in 2027 and be completed in 2029.
"Which is about the time we'll have to replace all of
our diesel fleet with electric," he said.
DOT awards $3.2B to 180 projects
The U.S. Department of Transportation awarded
$3.2 billion in grants to fund 180 projects last week.
Grants went to programs administered directly by the DOT as
well as several operating administrations, with the Federal Highway
Administration receiving over $1.4 billion, or about 44% of the total.
The Transportation Department said in a press release it had
inherited 3,200 unobligated grants previously announced by the Biden
administration and has so far approved 329 of those grants.
Dive Insight:
President Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order,
“Unleashing American Energy,” directed all federal agencies to stop
disbursing funds pending review
of each grant appropriated through the Infrastructure Investment and
Jobs Act or the Inflation Reduction Act. Subsequently, Transportation Secretary
Sean Duffy said in a memo that the department would prioritize
grants for “communities with marriage and birth rates higher than the
national average.”
Duffy further warned
grant recipients in an April 24 letter that grantees must cooperate
with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal
officials and avoid diversity, equity and inclusion practices to qualify for
federal funding.
“The last administration liked to grab the headlines but
didn’t want to do the hard work of building,” Duffy said in a statement. “They
also tied road construction up with red tape and leftist social requirements –
adding millions in costs and months of delay – all while our outdated
infrastructure sat in disrepair.”
The Federal Transit Administration will administer $497
million of the latest grants, most of which come under the Low
or No Emission bus grant program. Among the grants were those to the
Connecticut Department of Transportation, the Central Florida Regional
Transportation Authority and King County Metro Transit in Washington state.
Amtrak will receive $30 million for a bridge replacement
program in Maryland on the Northeast Corridor. The Massachusetts Department of
Transportation gets $3.6 million toward the Boston-Albany, New York, rail
corridor, and the Illinois Department of Transportation will receive $500,000
for a program to extend rail service to the Quad Cities of Illinois and Iowa.
The FHWA will administer $1.4 billion over 17 grants for
bridge repair and improvements. These include projects in Alabama, Minnesota,
San Diego and Washington, D.C.
A full list of grant awards is available on the transportation
department website.
After four years knitting together a complex package of
funding sources, developers and government officials on Tuesday marked the
imminent launch of a $52.8 million redevelopment of two vacant, century-old
former state office buildings just off Bushnell Park at one corner of downtown
Hartford.
“We look forward to bringing back to life these historic
buildings in a new use for fixed-income housing and commercial activity and to
be a part of making the vision of Bushnell South a reality, enhancing this
neighborhood into a greater part of our beloved city,” said Sanford “Sandy”
Cloud Jr., chairman and CEO of Hartford-based developer The Cloud Co.
The project, which is expected to launch within weeks, will
transform the two buildings at 18-20 Trinity St. and 30 Trinity St. – right
across from the state Capitol – into 104 apartments.
Cloud is teamed up on the project with its frequent partner,
Philadelphia-based multifamily developer Pennrose.
Twenty-one units will be set aside for households earning
50% to 60% of the area median income. The project is expected to be completed
in early 2027.
During a ceremony held Tuesday to commemorate the start of
the project, speaker after speaker noted the complexity of the funding package
needed to pull the development off.
According to a summary from the Capital Region Development
Authority, funding sources include a:
$9.5 million loan through KeyBank
$8.2 million in federal historic tax credits
$10.6 million in state historic tax credits
$6.5 million CRDA loan
$3.7 million in federal low-income housing tax credits
through the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority
$6 million from a state Urban Act grant
$850,000 from the Federal Home Loan Bank
$987,000 state brownfield grant
$4 million in equity and developer fee deferrals
$2.5 million loan from the Connecticut Department of Housing
“These projects are so complicated,” Gov. Ned Lamont said.
“The number of alphabet-soup of layered cake that goes into making this happen.
We have more building permits out there than we have had in a decade or so. A
lot of our cities are coming back to life. We have to turn that back into
housing. That takes the skill set you see right here.”
Hartford Mayor Arunan Arulampalam said the Trinity Street
project was emblematic of the city’s broader apartment development push.
The city, with the help of private developers, federal and
state funding and the CRDA, has added thousands of new market-rate apartments
over the past decade.
That includes ground-up apartment construction around the
Dunkin’ Park minor league baseball stadium to the north of downtown. There is
also a push to redevelop underused buildings and vacant lots around Bushnell
Park. The state office conversions on Trinity Street are part of the broader
Bushnell South redevelopment plan.
Officials hope to see these projects and others revitalize
the city and better connect the downtown with outlying neighborhoods.
“We are building one seamless city,” Arulampalam said. “You
see it happening with the development in Downtown North and right here as we
put the first bricks in Bushnell South. Brick by brick, development by
development, this city is becoming one larger city in which every neighborhood
feels a part of where we are going.”
Bridgeport school board backs plan to build new $125M school, $75M special education center
BRIDGEPORT — The city school board voted Monday to
endorse plans
to replace a handful of dilapidated buildings with a $125 million
pre-K-8 school and a $75 million center for special education.
The future of the construction projects hinge on the
availability of state funding, and the nine-member panel voted to direct
district staff members to apply for grants to help cover much of the
costs.
The proposed elementary school would be built at the site of
the old Harding High School and serve students who currently attend Beardsley,
Edison and Hall schools, three decades-old neighborhood schools that officials
have said are in states of disrepair.
The special education center, meanwhile, would replace the
soon-to-be-vacant Skane School in the North End and allow the district to
educate some students who are currently sent out of the district, saving
millions in tuition costs.
“We need to start making decisions,” Jorge Garcia, the
district’s chief operations officer, told board members prior to the vote.
“Everyday we wait is another day that a child in the Bridgeport school district
is not getting a proper education.”
The two proposed schools were among the recommendations
included in a
recent facilities study that urged the district to shutter seven
school buildings, construct four new ones and perform major renovations on
eight others.
The study found the district’s aging infrastructure needs
more than $700
million in repairs and other upgrades, but that the school system may
be able to save money by replacing several run-down buildings with new
state-of-the-art facilities.
Interim Superintendent Royce Avery, however, has said
the cash-strapped school
system must
first secure the funding for new buildings before it formally signs
off on a proposal to shutter any existing facilities.
Ed Arum, a member of the four-person technical assistance
team that the state assigned to the school system earlier this year to help
guide district leaders, told board members the deadline to apply for a school
construction grant is June 30.
Arum said state officials will review the applications and
come up with a list of recommended projects that will be submitted to the
governor and the General Assembly by the end of the fiscal year. Lawmakers will
then vote to approve the projects next spring or summer.
The old Harding High, built in 1924, has been vacant since
2018, when students and staff moved from that Central Avenue campus into a
state-of-the-art facility on Bond Street. The city had considered
selling the 8-acre property to Bridgeport Hospital, but the deal
ultimately failed to materialize.
Garcia has said the state generally covers about 68% of the
cost of building a new school, but that the proposed East End school could
receive a reimbursement rate closer to 90% since it would have extra space for
preschool classes and be energy efficient.
Garcia said the district could receive an even higher
reimbursement rate of about 95% for the special education center due to the
specialized programming planned for the building.
The district proposes building the center where the old
Skane School is located on Madison Avenue. The district is in the process
of merging
Skane with the nearby John Winthrop School as part of an $80 million
renovation, freeing up the site for future construction.
“It's a tremendous deal for the taxpayers, the students, the
teachers — everyone,” Garcia said. “It's just exciting.”
District officials also hope the center will help cut
ballooning special education costs. The school system spent $51 million this
year sending more than 300 special education students to private facilities
instead of providing their education in-house.
The school board voted unanimously to approve the
educational specifications for the special education center and apply for the
state grant money, but the panel found themselves split over the East End
proposal.
The East End project was supported by Board Chair Jennifer
Perez, Secretary Albert Benejan Grajales, Akisha L. Cassermere, Maritza
Estremera-Jimenez, Robert Traber and Andre Woodson.
Vice Chair Joseph Sokolovic and Christine Baptiste-Perez
both voted against the plan, while Willie Medina abstained from the decision.
The three all said they had outstanding questions about the project they
believed could be answered before next month's deadline.
Sokolovic said he was not opposed to constructing a new
school, but suggested he was concerned closing three schools could raise class
sizes and increase transportation costs. He also noted the board has not yet
finalized a 10-year master plan for the school system.
“I would be a lot more comfortable with this if the
facilities master plan was thoroughly debated, amended and changed because
right now as it stands it seems the plan is to just redistrict that area, and I
don't want to lock us into anything,” he said.
Before the school board can permanently close a school,
officials must first notify parents and guardians of the proposal and conduct a
“comprehensive closing study” that includes community input. The board must
also hold a public hearing prior to the decision.
Garcia said it will likely take between four and five
years to build the newly proposed schools and that the board will have “plenty
of time” to complete the steps necessary to close a school.
Board member Robert Traber, who lives in the East End and
whose two grandchildren would likely attend the elementary school, said the
district has not done an adequate job of reaching the public about the
possibility of a new building.
He urged district officials to schedule community forums in
the area to gauge public interest and argued the board could withdraw the
application for state grant money if there is widespread opposition to the
project, though he suggested that was not likely.
“I have yet to talk to anybody in my neighborhood who is
opposed to building a new pre-K-8 school in our neighborhood,” Traber, a former
teacher, said. “In fact they're excited, the ones that I've talked to.”