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Developer wants more housing in Enfield MassMutual redevelopment as part of first site plan
ENFIELD — The developer behind a planned revamp of the MassMutual site is seeking 23 more housing units in its “phase one” site plan. Branford-based MB Financial Group wants to redevelop the office campus at 85 and 100 Bright Meadow Blvd., a 65-acre site formerly home to insurance company MassMutual, into a mixed-use complex with as many as 487 apartments and condominiums and some 12,000 square feet of commercial space. The developer filed a site plan application, formally received by the town last week, for “phase one” of the planned development. A project narrative included with the application states that the approved master plan included a total of 157 new construction townhouse units, but the developer is now seeking to build 180. With 178 apartments to be built in the three vacant office buildings, the total count would be 358 housing units, representing a 14.5% increase in the overall site density. The remaining housing included in the approved master plan is a potential new construction apartment building that would have five stories and 129 units.
Killingly Amazon warehouse developer again reduces size of facility
Killingly — The developer of a proposed 1.3 million-square-foot Amazon distribution center on Westcott Road presented a new application to the Inland Wetlands and Watercourses Commission Monday night that included a reduction of the building size and parking area, as well as advanced wetlands mitigation. Ryan Companies Project Engineer Tim Onderko said the size of the building has been reduced by 58,000 square feet in addition to an 87,000-square-foot reduction in an earlier revision. The new application said the building will be 1.288 million square feet with 290 acres of the 555-acre site designated for permanent conservation and protected space. Onderko said the developer has also reduced the parking area by 230 spaces, further reducing impervious area on the property. “Great care and concern have been put forth in this project …” Onderko said. “This package alone I think sets a new precedent for preservation and conservation here in Killingly.” This action comes after commission members voted 3-2 to deny the initial permit without prejudice on July 6, meaning the developer could change and resubmit the plan, which it did on July 15.
https://theday.com/news/923431/killingly-amazon-warehouse-developer-again-reduces-size-of-facility/
Enfield voters to decide on $511 million school renovation project in November
ENFIELD — Voters in Enfield will decide in a Nov. 3 referendum whether to approve a $511 million school renovation and expansion project involving four elementary schools and the conversion of Eli Whitney Elementary School into Eagle Academy Therapeutic Day School. The renovation and expansion project would include work at Hazardville Memorial, Prudence Crandall, Edgar H. Parkman and Henry Barnard elementary schools. District officials say it is driven by aging facilities, changing educational needs and enrollment growth. The Enfield Town Council unanimously approved the referendum date during its Sept. 2 meeting. Schools Superintendent Steven Moccio said the pre-referendum committee investigated the various options and sought to minimize the number of school transitions for families. “Right now, our families go to a pre-K school, then transition to a kindergarten-through-second-grade school and then to a third-through-fifth-grade school,” he said. “This plan would allow students to have one home base from pre-K through fifth grade.”
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.
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