Trinity and Johnson Memorial Hospital officials made their case to convert its surgery center in Enfield to a freestanding outpatient facility partially owned by physicians during a public hearing before the state Office of Health Strategy on Wednesday. A request for a certificate of need through OHS calls for a $17.8 million facility at Johnson Memorial Hospital’s Enfield campus that would establish a joint venture dubbed “Enfield Surgery Center,” and to cease surgeries at the hospital in Stafford. “The current operating rooms are undersized and outdated,” said Deborah Bitsoli, Springfield market president of Trinity Health of New England, adding that some surgical towers don’t fit in the Johnson Memorial operating rooms due to limited space and low ceilings. Therefore, a replacement ambulatory surgery center is being built and placed next to the existing surgery center site at 148 Hazard Ave.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/journalinquirer/article/ct-johnson-memorial-hospital-trinity-enfield-19471868.php

Local leaders applauded the new funding for the high school, as well as $1.9 million to replace the roof at Ellsworth Avenue Elementary School and $10.43 million to renovate the Danbury High School science labs. Lawmakers also touted a $7.54 million increase in the city’s share of state Education Cost Sharing grant monies. Now, the city will earn 80 percent reimbursement on up to $179.5 million of eligible costs, a $25.5 million increase from what the city initially anticipated, officials said. The estimated cost when Danbury voters approved the project in 2022 was $164 million. The project is still on track to open for the 2025-26 school year, Iadarola said. He said he does not anticipate the total project cost will exceed the $179.5 million level that was set for state reimbursement.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/local/article/danbury-career-academy-ct-reimbursement-19459913.php

The new $1.3 million state-funded dock allows the Norwalk Seaport Association and Maritime Aquarium’s vessels to continue operating on the Norwalk River amid the $1 billion project to replace the 127-year-old Walk Bridge, according to Walk Bridge project manager Gus Melo. The bridge has failed dozens of times in the last decade to close properly over the waterway, halting marine and rail traffic. The floating concrete dock is bordered by piles that hold it in place and allow it to rise with the tide, Toni said. With a large gap between piles in the middle of the dock, Toni said it will also allow Eversource to move transmission lines underground to make way for the Walk Bridge project. Mayor Harry Rilling said the new dock required collaboration between the association, aquarium, local and state government to allow for the Walk Bridge project and local business to continue.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/norwalk-river-dock-walk-bridge-aquarium-seaport-19468796.php

The City Council voted 7-5 to add $25 million into the city’s capital improvement plan this week to build a new senior center and health department on Cook Avenue. Mayor Kevin Scarpati introduced the resolution to include the $25 million in the capital improvement budget after vetoing the council’s approved spending plan two weeks ago. At that time, the council failed to garner enough votes to override Scarpati’s veto leading to Monday’s action. The $25 million approved Monday will pay for the cost of hiring an architect to bring several design and cost options before the council to approve or disapprove.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/recordjournal/article/city-council-25-million-capital-improvement-19469933.php

With buildings built in the 1950s and ’60s and a declining student population, town and school officials are currently looking into how to renovate or even reconfigure the town’s schools. In February, a facilities study done by the Construction Solutions Group determined that Broad Brook Elementary, East Windsor Middle School, and East Windsor High School are too large for their current enrollment sizes based on state construction standards and guidelines. The options range from renovating all three schools as new and “right sizing” the buildings; consolidating the middle and high schools by using either building and moving the fifth grade to the elementary school; constructing three brand-new schools; renovating all three schools with their current sizes; or doing the needed renovations without changing the size of the schools. The costs range from $94 million to consolidate the middle and high schools using the high school building, to $196 million to renovating all three existing schools as new with their current square footage. Each project would be partially funded by the state.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/journalinquirer/article/ct-east-windsor-public-schools-renovations-19454682.php

Original plans presented in November showed the town was ready to shift all street parking from angled parking to parallel parking, which would decrease the amount of street parking but mean more of the streetscape could be used for wider sidewalks, expanded outdoor dining, and other amenities like street furniture. Those plans also showed a buffered sidewalk-level bike lane on Farmington Avenue that has also since been removed from designs. Town Manager Rick Ledwith said on Wednesday morning at the Town Council’s Community Planning and Economic Development committee meeting that the town has heard feedback from residents preferring the original plan known as option A over the redesigns that were presented in April. Ledwith said it’s likely that more details about the plans will come at June’s committee meeting. The town is expected to finalize plans this year with the hope of starting construction in 2025.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/westhartford/article/west-hartford-ct-center-parking-bike-lanes-dining-19459469.php

The gravity of removing traffic lights that bring Route 9 traffic to a halt in downtown Middletown was evidenced during a state Department of Transportation informational hearing late last month. CTDOT Project Manager Stephen Hall delivered a presentation April 30 at Wesleyan University on the draft proposal to reconfigure exits in the often highly congested area near the Arrigoni Bridge and densely populated North End. The cost of the project aimed at easing the large number of crashes in the area is estimated at $143 million. Eighty percent of the project cost would be borne by the federal government and 20 percent by the state. Several downtown CTDOT projects have been completed or are underway, such as the pedestrian bump-outs on Main Street, reconfiguration of St. Johns Square, work on the Route 17 on-ramp to Route 9 North, and closing access to Route 9 at Miller Street, Hall said.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/route-9-middletown-traffic-lights-removal-19459235.php

CT Examiner joined a number of state and local officials, employees of Eversource and Ørsted, and union officials aboard the 143-foot Cecelia Ann for what was for most their first look in person at South Fork Wind. With a maximum generating capacity of 132 megawatts, South Fork is the only commercial-scale offshore wind farm operating in the United States, producing about 6% of the electricity currently generated by Connecticut’s only operating nuclear power plant, Millstone. South Fork, which went online in March, is the first offshore wind farm to be assembled and staged off the New London State Pier, a project that dates to 2022. Each tower extended out of the water 788 feet, about 56 stories or the height of the Woolworth Building in Manhattan – taller than any building in Connecticut, according to a voice over a speaker, with blades 319 feet long, longer than a football field. Spaced a mile apart to ease navigation, the turbines seemed closely spaced against an infinite empty blue plain. Also visible is a substation that raises the voltage for sending the electricity all the way to Southport, Long Island.

Local Officials Cheer as South Fork Wind Begins Churning Out Electricity

A one-third mile stretch of the creek, now clean, had held some of the contaminated soil that the since-defunct Raymark Industries had dumped across Stratford while manufacturing automotive brake products before shutting down in 1989. Since September 2020, an EPA-led project has removed about 95,000 cubic yards of the contaminated soil from the creek and 28 properties of commercial and open space, including roughly 9,000 in Ferry Creek, according to the agency. Blumenthal said Stratford could be an example of environmental cleanup efforts and that prevention was preferable to remediation. “We should take a lesson from Raymark, which has become synonymous with environmental catastrophe — Pay now or pay later. Prevent it or pay for it,” Blumenthal said. “And the costs are astronomical when we fail to respect the environment.” Despite the cleanup progress, EPA environmental engineer Jim DiLorenzo, who is managing the project, said at least 65,000 more cubic yards of Raymark contaminated soil are still in the ground. He said construction crews plan to finish another 5,000 cubic yards by June on the EPA’s Ferry Creek Boulevard headquarters, in addition to some wetlands and open space on Lockwood Avenue.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/stratford-raymark-contaminated-soil-remediation-19447104.php

Structural issues and the presence of asbestos at the middle school have raised questions about how and where students in grades 6 through 8 will attend school next year. Superintendent Mary Ann Butler said at a school board meeting Thursday that engineers who inspected the school found no immediate safety concerns. However, she said, they discovered a section of the second floor needs to be replaced and that a section of the first floor is sagging due to the weight of environmental systems and utilities. In addition, asbestos remediation is necessary, and foundation issues need further study. Butler said the town’s building inspector and fire chief and an engineer with civil engineering firm Fuss and O’Neill inspected the middle school on April 19, April 23 and last Wednesday.

https://www.theday.com/local-news/20240513/in-stonington-school-board-grappling-with-structural-problems-at-middle-school/