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CT prosecutors seek 12 years for ex-school construction chief as he asks for no prison time
Recommending a long term behind bars, federal prosecutors described Connecticut’s former top school construction official Konstantinos “Kosta” Diamantis as a calculating betrayer of the public trust. Diamantis, however, is requesting a much lighter sentence that includes no prison time. Convicted of taking bribes and other crimes after a trial last year, Diamantis bullied school contractors into handing him bundles of cash and hiring his daughter for “a low-show job at inflated rates,” prosecutors wrote in a memo seeking to lock up the disgraced former state legislator for up to 12 years and 7 months. “For his greed, corruption and abject lack of integrity, Diamantis is deserving of a sentence with the advisory guidelines range of 121 to 151 months of imprisonment,” prosecutors wrote. Diamantis, 70, a lawyer who resigned from the state bar in February, is to be sentenced on Thursday. A jury last October found him guilty of 21 counts of bribery, extortion, conspiracy and making false statements to federal investigators.
https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/kosta-diamantis-ct-sentencing-22429323.php
Connecticut DOT says UI’s monopole plan in Fairfield, Bridgeport would be ‘beneficial’ to railroad
In advance of today’s Connecticut Siting Council meeting to reconsider UI’s plan to install monopoles throughout Fairfield and Bridgeport, the state Department of Transportation has issued a letter saying it would be beneficial to the railroad for the transmission lines to be removed from the catenaries. In the letter to the Siting Council, DOT Commissioner Garrett Eucalitto wrote that the agency’s position remains unchanged on the utility’s plan to remove the transmission lines from CTDOT railroad catenaries and rebuild them on steel monopoles along the Metro-North Railroad corridor from Fairfield to Bridgeport. Specifically, Eucalitto wrote: “The design UI put forth in its application aligns with CTDOT’s vision and objective on efficiently improving transportation infrastructure. “CTDOT also indicated that other alternatives, such as the underground alternative within the railroad ROW supported by many of the intervenors, would not be feasible for the Department. … [It] would add time, cost, and significant adverse impact to railroad operations, in addition to unnecessary and substantial risk to the rail infrastructure.”
Two designs remain for Connecticut’s future Mixmaster. Here’s what happens next
Two concepts have advanced to the environmental review stage, but only one will emerge as the best option for reconstructing the nearly 60-year-old interchange where Interstate 84 and Route 8 intersect in Waterbury. The state Department of Transportation recently issued an email update about the “New Mix,” a long-term program to modernize the collection of stacked highway bridges known as the Mixmaster. The agency said a federal and state process has begun to assess how an overhaul of the interchange could affect the environment. Through a years-long study completed in 2025, DOT has already narrowed down the many ways the Mixmaster could be replaced to two options. One alternative, the “Modern Crossover Interchange,” calls for part of Route 8 to be reconstructed on the east side of the Naugatuck River. The other alternative, the “Naugatuck River Shift,” would move the river eastward, allowing Route 8 to be unstacked on the west riverbank. Now, the two options “will be studied in greater detail,” DOT said in its email update. “This work will help identify a preferred alternative that best meets transportation needs while considering environmental, community, and economic impacts.”
CT town issues resounding vote against trash plant. Concern is ‘impacts to air quality and water quality’
After deciding in a landslide vote to spend $250,000 for attorneys, Plainfield taxpayers are preparing to tell state regulators why they vehemently oppose allowing a massive trash-to-energy plant in their town. Roughly 90% of voters at a referendum endorsed the town hiring a legal team to fight Smart Technology System’s proposed 81-acre facility. Just a year earlier, the town voted about the same way in an advisory referendum on Smart Technology’s proposal: 1,148 opposed the project and just 125 supported it. At Thursday’s referendum, residents agreed to back that opinion with money, voting 770-90 hire lawyers to fight the proposal when it goes to a regulatory hearing — and then possibly in court if the company wins a permit to build. State Sen. Heather Somers, who has opposed the trash plant idea since it arose two years ago, is urging residents to address their concerns to the Connecticut Siting Council immediately. The council for several weeks advertised a deadline of this Sunday for written public comment, but this week it voted to conduct a public hearing sometime in the fall.
New London celebrates a downtown development boom years in the making
New London — For weeks, the sounds of muffled explosions and rock-splintering work have reverberated from a busy construction site at the corner of State and Unions streets, shaking nearby City Hall windows and startling passersby. But the cacophony is music to the ears of Felix Reyes, the city’s director of economic development and planning. “I’m so happy,” Reyes said Tuesday as excavators dug deep into a former church property at 66 Union St. in preparation for construction of a 46-unit apartment complex. That project is one of several similar developments either underway or planned for the downtown area that primarily encompasses Bank and State streets. Reyes, at a recent City Council meeting, said there were more than eight major development projects in active construction, most of them related to housing. “There’s trucks, there’s cranes, there’s bulldozers all over,” Reyes said. “The last time we saw this much activity was probably when they were demolishing buildings in the ’40s and ’50s and into the ’60s.” And that housing expansion is extending beyond downtown and into Fort Trumbull, where a 250-unit complex just broke ground — the first of two such projects planned for the peninsula.
Connecticut still has parkway entrance ramps with stop signs. Here’s what could change
When entering a highway from a complete stop, good judgment is key. Ron Parrs, who has been an instructor with The Next Street driving schools since 2018, said new drivers must develop that skill. They need to learn how to determine whether they have enough time and space to speed up and match the rest of traffic without forcing cars on the highway to brake. “Can this be nerve-wracking? Absolutely,” Parrs said. “Will ‘experienced’ drivers behind them blow their horns or act aggressively? Yes.” Still, entering a highway from a stop is a skill Connecticut drivers must learn to drive on some highways. On the Wilbur Cross Parkway, which is part of Route 15, there are eight interchanges with at least one entrance ramp controlled by a stop sign. The Connecticut Department of Transportation has projects in the design stages that would include removing stop signs and adding acceleration lanes at some of those interchanges to reduce crashes. At one entrance ramp, located at Interchange 51 in Hamden, there were more than 400 crashes over a five-year period.
$30 million project would bring 125 apartments, modern retail to CT suburb
The site of a deteriorating, outdated South Windsor shopping plaza could be transformed into 125 apartments with 60,000 square feet of modern retail space under a developer’s proposal. Farmington-based REESG Properties is proposing a full-scale makeover of the empty Sullivan Plaza on Sullivan Avenue, a project estimated at $30 million. Years of decay had the roughly 60-year-old strip center teetering for most of the past decade, with the vacancy rate of small stores rising as traffic dropped off and the building facades and parking lot fell into disrepair. The final loss was the anchor tenant, Geissler’s; the supermarket chain had been the star attraction at the plaza since opening in 1988, but shut down the location last summer. Homeowners and small business owners nearby have been eager to see the nearly 20-acre plaza property revitalized in some way; it’s been fenced off from the street and derelict since Geissler’s departed. “The proposed development will have a significant positive impact on the surrounding neighborhood and the entire town of South Windsor,” the town’s Economic Development Commission predicted on its website. REESG’s proposal is to renovate 60,740 square feet of commercial space.
Preston looks to prohibit data centers and large shipping centers
Preston — Planning and Zoning Commission members agreed unanimously Tuesday night to have Town Planner Kathy Warzecha draft regulations to prohibit or limit the size of data centers and large shipping centers. The regulations would include definitions of what qualifies as a “large shipping center,” and data center, and specify what the town doesn’t want, Warzecha said. Locally and nationwide, elected officials have seen pushback against AI data centers — including an unsuccessful proposal in 2023 by developer NE Edge to build one in Waterford on the Millstone Power Station property. Locally, there has been opposition to shipping centers as well, as Killingly residents are fighting Amazon’s plan to build a 1.3-million square foot warehouse there. Commissioner Victoria Schulz opened the discussion by saying many communities close to Preston have seen proposals for large shipping centers and data centers and specifically mentioned the Killingly project. “I feel like they’ve seen that with Killingly, where they pushed back against a few things, and they’ve gotten sued, because they didn’t have regulations for things,” she said. “I feel like we have a lot of farmland in Preston, and while we don’t necessarily have the infrastructure right now, it’s not that it’s not possible and not coming. So I think it’s best to have some at least basic regulations around them to at least get us started when they do potentially approach us.”
https://theday.com/news/920023/preston-looks-to-prohibit-data-centers-and-large-shipping-centers/
New exit and ramp from Route 15 north to I-91 north to open at Meriden interchange
Another change is coming to the Interstate 91, I-691 and Route 15 interchange in Meriden that may take some time to show up on drivers’ navigation systems. A new ramp, marked Exit 64A, is set to open Wednesday that will connect Route 15 northbound to I-91 northbound. An existing ramp between the two highways — Exit 65A — will stay open. The new ramp is part of a more than $712 million overhaul of the interchange that started in 2023 and is expected to be finished by 2030. A notice posted to the project’s website describes the opening of the ramp as “an important milestone,” while also warning that “it may take a while for the GPS guidance systems to reflect the new alignment,” so drivers should follow posted signs and lane markings. The new exit is on the left, while the existing exit is a little past it on the right. The state Department of Transportation has said that a speed camera will operate on each side of I-91 when nighttime construction work is taking place. The owner of a vehicle detected traveling 10 mph or more over the 55-mph speed limit faces a written warning or $75 fine.
Stamford Hospital Advances $275 Million Plan for New Cancer Center, Behavioral Health Expansion
STAMFORD — Stamford Hospital’s plans for a new cancer center, expanded behavioral health facility, and a new multilevel parking garage have taken a major step forward following the Planning Board’s approval of a zoning change and special permit tied to the hospital’s proposed redevelopment. The $275 million project will substantially reshape the hospital’s Bennett Medical Center campus to include construction of a new 73,000-square-foot cancer center — more than double the size of the hospital’s existing cancer center — and an accompanying 355-space parking structure. Both will be built on the southwest corner of the hospital grounds near West Broad Street and Stillwater Avenue. The hospital’s behavioral health services, in turn, will be relocated to the existing cancer center adjacent to the primary hospital structure once the new cancer center is complete. The additional parking will be offset slightly by the elimination of some other existing spaces that will give way to the new construction. Still, the combined work will result in a net increase of available spaces from the current 1,400 spaces to approximately 1,700 once the project is complete.
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If you believe you have been the victim of wage theft on a public works construction project, please feel free to contact our office. You can also visit the Connecticut Department of Labor’s Wage & Workplace Division’s website to file a complaint here.