CT DOT planning hundreds of roadway projects with $5B price tag. Here’s a look
The
Connecticut Department of Transportation has nearly 400 projects on
tap for the next four years to repair or replace parts of the most heavily
traveled roadways in the state — Interstates 84, 91 and 95 — and bridges all
over Connecticut.
The draft agenda is laid out in the recently released Statewide
Transportation Improvement Plan for 2027–2030.
The plan includes 380 projects statewide with a total cost
of $5.5 billion. The CTDOT is programming $4.5 billion in federal funds matched
by approximately $932 million in state funds and approximately $45 million from
municipalities.
Federal Highway
Administration and Federal
Transit Administration funding will include $13.8 million for public
transportation operating assistance, $3.4 billion for highway and bridge
capital programs and $1.1 billion for transit capital and operating costs.
“It’s an important roadmap for hundreds of projects and
billions of dollars’ worth of work,” Connecticut Department of Transportation
spokesperson Josh Morgan said.
Morgan said STIP is a federally required document that is
frequently updated to outline a four-year spending commitment that shows where
federal highway and federal transit administration money is going to go.
“It has a lot of projects in there which are in the current
STIP document like the Walk Bridge
project in Norwalk, or the 691/91/Route 15 project in
Meriden. The dollar amounts change. Think of project funding like a bell
curve. That first or second year, you’re not spending as much, but then in
those third and fourth years, when you’re really in the part of the project,
you’re going to end up spending more because there’s more work happening,”
Morgan said.
Morgan said the STIP projects reach across all four corners
of the state. Among the biggest projects are the Interstate-84 Pavement
Rehabilitation and Reconstruction in Danbury from the New York State line;
Interstate-91/I-691/CT 15 Interchange Improvements in Meriden & Middletown
and I-95 Gold Star Bridge Pedestrian Improvements in New London & Groton.
Other high-profile projects include the I-95 Northbound Gold
Star Bridge Rehabilitation (Phases 1B & 2) in New London, I-95 Baldwin
Bridge Rehabilitation in Old Saybrook, I-95 Auxiliary Lane Construction and
Bridge Replacements in West Haven, Connecticut 2A Rehabilitation over Thames
River, Northeast Corridor Railroad and P&W Railroad in Montville &
Preston and CT 15 Interchange 46/Route 69 Improvements in New Haven &
Woodbridge.
“It’s not just looking in the Greater Hartford region or the
Greater Bridgeport area. There are projects and investments happening all over
Connecticut,” Morgan said.
Morgan said the CTDOT wishes to hear from the public and
explain how their tax dollars are being used.
“People have every right to ask questions about billions of
dollars and how it is being spent,” Morgan said. “If you live in Old Saybrook,
you can ask what is going on with the Baldwin Bridge or if you are in
Greenwich, you can ask about what’s going on with Route 1 or Interstate-95.
People can ask what’s going on in their community.”
“There’s so much in the document,” Morgan said. “We’re
trying to make sure our infrastructure is safe, that it’s reliable and no
matter how people travel, they can get to their destination safely. There’s
lots of different stakeholders, lots of different needs, happening throughout
the state, and we definitely invite the public to review the plans, go on the
website, but also attend one or both of the meetings.”
He mentioned some projects that may not be starting this
year but that are in the works like the traffic signal removal on Route 9 in
Middletown.
“Gold
Star Memorial Bridge Project (New London) is scheduled to break ground
in five or six weeks and that’s going to be an $800 million project in eastern
Connecticut,” Morgan said. “A lot of projects are coming online and will be
continuing for the next few years. On Route 15 we are doing a rehabilitation
to the Heroes Tunnel (New Haven). It’s the only tunnel we have in
Connecticut. We’re going to make sure that that is safe and reliable.”
The two public informational meetings regarding STIP will be
held on June 3 at the Connecticut Department of Transportation headquarters,
2800 Berlin Turnpike in Newington. One session will be 1 p.m. and the other
will be 7 p.m. Both are available on Zoom but registration is required for both
the 1
p.m. and the 7
p.m. sessions.
CTDOT staff will be available for discussion and a Q&A
period after both presentations.
Morgan said for the public to review the document and have
questions prepared for the sessions.
“It’s going to be a great opportunity to have conversations
with our subject matter experts, get your questions answered, and give us a
comment about what you like or maybe some things that you’d like to see changed
in the future,” Morgan said.
The public comment submission period runs May 13 through June 12. Comments can be submitted at 860-594-2020 or emailed to DOT.STIPComments@ct.gov.
Recycling plant turns glass to cement that supports Yale construction
3.5 million glass bottles on the wall. 3.5 million glass
bottles. Take one down, pass it around, and it might end up as cement in Yale’s
Physical Sciences and Engineering Building under construction.
Yale’s ongoing construction on
upper Science Hill will feature 600,000 gross square feet for the School of
Engineering and Applied Science and more. In accordance with Yale’s promise to
achieve net-zero carbon
emissions on campus by 2035 and zero actual carbon emissions by 2050, the
development will include a thermal
utilities plant that will produce energy for the facilities.
But even if operations are sustained by on-site energy
production, creating a building from raw materials is quite carbon-intensive.
Instead, some of Yale’s building materials will use Pozzotive, an industrial
filler made from recycled glass such as drink bottles — the equivalent of 3.5
million of them, to be precise, according to a slideshow used during a recent
tour of the glass recycling facility.
At the tour last month, organized by several students at
Yale’s School of the Environment, a group of Yale affiliates explored Urban
Mining Industries’s facility in Beacon Falls, Connecticut, where recycled glass
is processed and turned into a powdery building material known as pozzolan.
Concrete is an essential building material for modern-day
structures. Standard concrete consists of aggregate like pebbles or gravel,
sand, water and cement — the powdered binding agent, often confused with
concrete, that gives concrete its integrity.
“This isn’t chemistry that we’re inventing,” Chris Cotulio,
a material sustainability specialist at O&G Industries — a construction
company that has worked
with Urban Mining Industries — said during the tour. “The ancient
Romans and Greeks used volcanic ash as a pozzolan in their structures over
2,000 years ago, and a lot of them are still standing because it makes more
durable concrete. So this is just a modern twist, using a post-consumer
recyclable as a vehicle for that silicon dioxide.”
During the tour, Cotulio and Urban Mining Industries CEO
Louis Grasso Jr., who invented Pozzotive, walked Yale members through the
process of creating the finished product.
The facility receives post-consumer glass from nearby
material recovery facilities that collect refuse from ordinary recycling bins.
Upon arrival, the material is put outside in foul-smelling mounds of muddy
grit. Given the imperfect recycling systems, contamination from organic matter,
plastics and metals isn’t uncommon.
The raw recycled glass is cleaned mechanically in a tumbler
that Grasso called a “dryer” — which he said differs from most plants’
chemically intensive cleaning processes.
“Everything is really done correctly and transparently, so
no chemicals or water goes through the dryer,” Grasso told the News. “The dryer
tumbles the glass on itself, and it breaks off the paper labels, and it breaks
off the dried organics as it goes through the tumbler or dryer.”
Grasso founded the company over two decades ago and has
since taken on large projects like the more-than-$3 billion JPMorgan Chase
high-rise in Manhattan, which used 52,000 cubic yards of pozzolan-substituted
concrete to build floors, according to the
Pozzotive website.
This project and more were covered in a tour led by Cotulio
and Grasso. In the factory control room, Cotulio showed the visitors the
systems and operations screen, where a schematic of the factory's operations is
constantly monitored for changes in operations and efficiency.
“What we’re seeing is an example of where the sustainable
option is the better option,” Ayushi Khan ENV ’24, a postgraduate associate at
the Yale Center for Industrial Ecology, said. “So this is a great, amazing
example of why recycling can be so lucrative sometimes, and the better option
sometimes. And this is easy to scale.”
Natural forces like motion, gravity and density are utilized
by the plant to process this raw material. Harmful batteries are then removed
by giant magnets. Powerful fans blow out the lightweight plastics while leaving
the denser glass pieces behind.
Mechanical grinding, akin to a geode tumbler, breaks down
the glass pieces into the plant’s final product: pozzolan.
Pozzolan can be substituted for new cement at rates of 15 to
50 percent, according to Cotulio, though Grasso has experimented with blends
containing up to 70 percent substitution. Due to the chemical composition of
cement, a baseline proportion of cement is required to mix with water and make
concrete, so full replacement with pozzolan is not possible.
The remainder of the cement is usually supplemented with fly
ash, which is a coal-burning byproduct, or slag, a remnant of iron smelting.
However, a partial replacement of traditional cement already significantly
reduces carbon emissions, Cotulio said.
Recycling a ton of glass back into glass bottles saves
roughly 166 kilograms of carbon dioxide, Cotulio said in his tour presentation.
By comparison, recycling glass into concrete saves 980 kilograms — nearly a ton
of carbon emissions.
According to Cotulio, benefits of Pozzotive’s cement include
increased resistance to chloride — useful for when sidewalks are salted in the
winter — and that it shrinks less due to temperature fluctuations compared to
traditional concrete, which can lead to structural cracks.
“It was also pretty amazing that the product itself is cost
parity with regular cement, which means it’s the same cost,” Alfonso Panis SOM
’26, who was also on the tour, said. “It’s really just the supply chain, at
least to my mind, that's the bottleneck, like the raw material sourcing.”
The Urban Mining Industries facility is located at 105
Breault Road in Beacon Falls.
Enfield MassMutual campus redevelopment plan progresses with new subdivision application
ENFIELD —
A new application has been filed for the
residential redevelopment of the former MassMutual campus.
Branford-based
MB Financial Group plans to reuse the
office campus at 85 and 100 Bright Meadow Blvd., formerly home to insurance
company MassMutual, as a 464-unit housing project with apartments,
condominiums, amenities, and 12,000-square-feet of commercial space.
In addition to retrofitting the existing three office
buildings with 178 rental units, the project would build 157 condos on the
large parking lots and provide for the construction of a new five-story
apartment building with 129 units. The daycare and parking garage would remain,
both intended to later support the residential development.
MassMutual closed its Enfield offices and relocated to
Springfield, Mass., in 2021. A previous developer proposed the
"All Sports Village" sports and entertainment complex in
2023 and earned
some approvals for the project in 2024, but it never came to fruition.
Last year, MB Financial Group bought the properties for $4
million, submitted a zone change application in September, and earned a
unanimous approval from the Planning and Zoning Commission later
that month.
The zone change moves the parcels to the recently
established Special Development District, designed for projects like the new
housing planned for the MassMutual campus and the pending Enfield
Square Mall redevelopment.
MB Financial Group's new application requests a subdivision
of 85 and 100 Bright Meadow Blvd. related to its planned residential and
commercial development, splitting the two parcels into eight lots sized between
2.7 acres and 16.6 acres. If approved, the existing MassMutual buildings
would be located within separate lots.
The PZC will formally receive the subdivision application at
an upcoming meeting scheduled for Wednesday night, after which the commission
will be required to open a public hearing by late May and close it by early
July. Under that timeline, the PZC must decide on the application this year.
Torrington wants $94M in federal aid to clean up former Nidec Corp., buy American-made drone, more
Sloan Brewster
TORRINGTON — The city is seeking $94 million in federal
appropriations funding to cover six projects.
The Fiscal Year 27 Community Project Funding Requests are
for priority projects that align with congressional funding initiatives,
Director of Economic Development William Wallach said. In addition, they are
“timely, and would be major wins for the city and Rep. (Jahana) Hayes’ 5th
District.”
With the city split between the 1st and 5th Districts, some
of the requests were sent to Hayes and some to Rep. John Larson. And some went
to both.
Wallach said he does not anticipate approvals for all the
requests and said each house member is allowed a maximum of 20.
“Congresswoman Hayes reached out to us and said this
is a lot,” he said. “The six (projects) that we requested is a ridiculous
number, considering she can only request 20. I honestly would be overwhelmed if
we got two of these.”
Wallach, as of last week, said the city had not yet heard
from Larson.
Wallach said the city would be submitting the same requests
and some additional ones to U.S. Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy by April
6.
100 Franklin Drive housing
A $4.3 million request would fill a funding gap in
a brownfield remediation and redevelopment project planned for the site of
the former
Nidec Corporation, which sits behind the Riverfront apartment complex that
was completed in 2022, Wallach said. The city is working with Riverfront
developer Pennrose for Riverfront Phase 2, a plan to build 120 more low-income
apartments.
Nidec, in its day, manufactured car engine parts, Wallach
said. The company vacated the contaminated
property 20 years ago.
Due to the contamination, there have been no opportunities
for redevelopment, he noted.
Since Pennrose can’t come up with all the money to
clean and redevelop the site, the city is looking to fill the gap with federal
dollars, Wallach said. The alternative is a tax abatement, so an approval would
be to the city’s benefit.
“This is a very important project,” he said.
It’s also his top pick if he had to choose only one request
for a yes for the funding, he said, noting it would help fill state, federal
and Litchfield County low-income housing needs.
Demolition of Stone-Hendy property
Wallach’s No. 2 pick is a $2.5 million request to cover the
cost of razing the Stone-Hendey building at 200 Litchfield St., which was
destroyed by fire in September of last year.
Last month, the city was awarded foreclosure of the property
and is scheduled to get the title on March 31. Once it is in city officials’
hands, the property has to be cleaned up.
“And it’s not in a good state,” Wallach said. “There’s
going to be millions of dollars of cleanup.”
Taking down the buildings will create a pathway to clean up
the site, he said.
Drone replacement program
A $500,000 request to pay for an American-made drone for the
police department was submitted to Hayes and Larson, Wallach said.
The project is a response to a clause in President Donald
Trump’s Big Beautiful Bull prohibiting police and municipal departments from
owning Chinese-manufactured drones for public use. Torrington’s drone is
Chinese-made.
“We have to recommission our drone and buy an American-made
drone,” Wallach said, noting that the city is not alone in the issue.
Stormwater management
The biggest ask on the list is a $54 million request to
upgrade the storm sewer systems, a response to federal Environmental Protection
Agency and state Department
of Energy and Environmental Protection requirements for protecting
freshwater basins, Wallach said.
The city would utilize some state funding for the
project, Wallach said. However, that state funding will only cover a
fraction of the expenses.
“This… is a big deal to the city and the Naugatuck watershed
area,” Wallach said. “Torrington is looking to be a leader in this storm water
management area.”
The city’s approximately 4,000 catch basins and 2,700 sump
pumps need to be upgraded. The upgrades will allow them to catch more runoff
and particulates to keep sand, oil and such out of the down-flow stream.
The upgrades will run about $49 million, including new
vacuum trucks and street sweepers to keep them clean.
The project was already on the city’s to-do
list, Wallach said.
The funding would also pay for an anticipated spring visit
to the city by the Army Corps of Engineers to do levy and river well assessment
for an estimated $5 million in repairs, Wallach said.
Traffic light upgrades
The second biggest ask is a $30 million request to pay for
repairs and upgrades to local traffic lights.
Most of the 40 traffic light intersections in the city are
in a state of disrepair and need technological upgrades and improvements for
vehicular and pedestrian safety and to improve traffic flow.
The price is so high because a certain level of work
triggers Americans with Disabilities Act compliance upgrades, Wallach said.
Veteran’s Service Office
A $220,000 request would pay for heating, ventilation and
air conditioning upgrades for a degraded boiler system at the Veteran’s Service
Office at Fussenich Park.
In a letter to Mayor Molly Spino and City Council
Members, Wallach and Public Works Director Jamie Sykora noted the project
aligns with federal priorities as it has a clear economic development benefit
for the community.