industry news
Stay updated with the latest developments and insights from across the industry
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.
‘There was an oversight’: Why a $2.5M CT bridge needs a $3.4M fix a few years after it was built
OLD SAYBROOK — Eight and a half inches may not sound like much. But raising a roadway by that amount and completing other work to jack up a bridge over a creek here is expected to cost the state about $3.4 million. A team of Connecticut Department of Transportation engineers came to Old Saybrook Town Hall on Thursday to explain why the agency plans to raise the bridge that carries Route 154 over Plum Bank Creek. The project, expected to take place in 2028, will force drivers to take a 4-mile detour for multiple weeks. Residents are familiar with the detour route. It’s the same one they used when the bridge was built five years ago at a cost of about $2.5 million. DOT engineers told a group of about 15 people who attended the public meeting in person at Town Hall and others online that the problem is the underside of the new bridge is lower than the old one — a difference that wasn’t flagged until after construction. Now, DOT needs to raise the structure to “restore navigational and recreational access” to the creek, or else it will be running afoul of state statute, according to the team’s presentation. “There was an oversight as far as this being navigable water,” said project manager Jonathan Kempf. “That was just missed… After it was constructed, it was brought up to us that this one was lower than existing. Then we went back, we looked at it and we saw, yes, this is lower than it should be.”
https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/ct-bridge-old-saybrook-oversight-22408304.php
Proposed CT gas line project roils new debate. It’s amid politics over role of natural gas in energy
The town of Brookfield is leading another challenge to a tentative state decision approving a natural gas expansion project that would increase the volume of gas flowing through Connecticut to the New York metropolitan area. The town’s opposition — along with that of its backers in the environmental movement — is directed at an application by pipeline operator Iroquois Gas Transmission System to install two additional compressors at an existing station in Brookfield in order to increase gas flow by something less than 10 percent without having to expand the size of the pipeline. Brookfield’s concern — there has been local opposition of some sort since the compressor station was built two decades ago — is whether the operation of the new, gas-fired compressors will produce emissions with unhealthy levels of airborne pollutants such as greenhouse gases and contributors to higher ozone levels. The local fight is taking place amid a wider and increasingly political debate over what role — if any — natural gas has in the New England scheme of energy generation, where demand is forecast to increase and electric rates continue to rise. Gas advocates argue it is a relatively clean, plentiful and inexpensive fuel and pipeline access to New England should be expanded. Critics have written it off as an unhealthy, climate-damaging fossil fuel.
CT town asks residents whether to spend tax money. It’s to fight a trash plant proposal.
In a key decision affecting their campaign against a proposed trash-to-energy plant, Plainfield residents next week will vote whether to put up $250,000 to wage a court fight against it. Facing a possible legal battle against one of Connecticut’s biggest construction companies represented by a powerful and prominent Bridgeport law firm, Plainfield voters will be asked at a Sept. 3 referendum whether to hire specialized lawyers of their own. Selectmen are proposing the move because they anticipate a complex campaign to persuade state regulators to scrap the Smart Technology Systems’ plan. If that doesn’t work, the town could consider suing. Public sentiment so far has been profoundly lopsided against the trash plant, but it’s not clear yet whether taxpayers will agree to put money behind their opposition. First Selectmen Kevin Cunningham is proposing to take $250,000 from municipal reserves to hire outside lawyers. But many residents anticipate that could be just the first phase of costs if protracted litigation is needed, especially given the resources of the opposition. Smart Technology is a partnership of Advanced Waste Technologies and Torrington-based O&G Industries, a major player in Connecticut’s construction industry that does $850 million a year in business nationally. Smart is represented by Bridgeport-based Pullman & Comley, one of Connecticut’s 10 biggest law firms.
Connect with us
Contact us
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.