A study of noise along Connecticut’s roadways has recommended that the state Department of Transportation erect 38 new noise barriers along its interstate highways and state roads. However, according to a DOT spokeswoman, there is no federal or state money to pay for them at this point. The study was conducted to bring the state up to date with the Federal Highway Administration’s noise regulations. Half of the noise barriers recommended are located in Fairfield County, 12 along Interstate 95. The other seven in that county are along Route 7 in Norwalk, Route 8 in Shelton and Bridgeport and Interstate 84 in Danbury. At 6 p.m. May 23, the DOT will hold a virtual informational meeting about the report, where the public can ask the experts about their conclusions.

CT roads need 38 new and expensive noise barriers. Why there’s no money to pay for them.

The dilapidated Enfield Square mall is slated to be transformed — through a $250 million project — into a new mixed-use area, complete with retail, housing, two hotels, and recreation space. Woodsonia Acquisitions, based in Nebraska, has entered a purchase and sale agreement with New York-based Namdar Realty Group to buy the mall that was in danger of closing less than a year ago. The estimated $250 million project — dubbed Enfield Marketplace — is expected to include numerous retail and restaurant spaces, more than 450 residential units, two hotels, and walking and biking trails, according to a resolution the Town Council passed Monday night. The municipality is not assisting Woodsonia in purchasing the parcel and it will remain private property, Town Manager Christopher Bromson said.

http://www.nhregister.com/journalinquirer/article/ct-enfield-square-mall-namdar-woodsonia-19454664.php

Orange-based Avangrid, the corporate parent of The United Illuminating Co. as well as Southern Connecticut Gas and Connecticut Natural Gas, is looking to move ahead with $191.6 million in capital investments covering the operations of its utilities in the state. The ability to do that depends on both regulatory decisions and an ongoing legal appeal, company officials say. Sarah Fliotsos, Avangrid spokeswoman, said the company “looks forward to investing as much as we can in Connecticut.” The accounting of Avangrid’s capital investment in Connecticut across its three utilities comes a little over a week after Eversource Energy announced it would immediately halt nearly $100 million per year in investment spending for five years. A total of $152 million was budgeted by UI for capital expenditures on its distribution network in 2024. Because PURA’s ruling failed to fully fund that budget, UI officials cut the expenditure by about 50 percent, leaving about $78 million for infrastructure work in 2024.

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.ctinsider.com/business/article/ct-avangrid-ui-natural-gas-rates-investment-19450421.php&strip=0&vwsrc=0

Since 2016, when southeastern Connecticut learned of a plan by the Federal Railroad Administration to construct a high-speed rail bypass through several historic towns in the region between Old Saybrook and Charlestown, RI, town officials and members of the public have been paying closer attention to rail projects along the Northeast Corridor. Last Friday, CT Examiner talked by phone with Amtrak’s Jason Hoover, Assistant Vice President of Major Programs–Bridges, who is overseeing the replacement of the century-old Connecticut River Rail Bridge, and Joseph Barr, Director of Network Development in the East Coast, who is working on the New Haven to Providence Capacity Planning Study. Our overall goal nationally is to double ridership by 2040 as well as to get to net zero emissions by 2045. The NEC is our strongest ridership corridor to start with, so when we’re looking at doubling ridership on a national basis, obviously the NEC is a big part of that although I also want to make sure that we never downplay the importance of our long distance routes as well.

Amtrak Talks Connecticut River Bridge Replacement, High-Speed Rail Planning

City and state officials along with members of the development team Friday morning broke ground on a new mixed-use, housing development at the corner of State and Chapel streets in New Haven’s Historic Ninth Square District. The $56.4 million project, led by Boston-based Beacon Communities, is an adaptive reuse with an eye toward historic preservation. Construction is expected to be completed by the end of 2025, and will bring much-needed housing options to New Haven, where nearly 1,000 new or renovated apartments are expected to come online in 2024, with thousands more having been developed in the past few years and as more are set to open in the coming years. Beacon Communities has worked on several senior, affordable or historic renovations around the Northeast, including the Edith Johnson Towers and Montgomery Place projects in New Haven, and the Montgomery Mills historic restoration project in Windsor Locks.

New Ninth Square mixed-use project breaks ground in New Haven 

The state Department of Transportation will hold a virtual public information meeting at 7 p.m. Monday on the planned replacement of the bridge carrying Groton Long Point Road over the Amtrak railroad. “This project will address the existing structural deficiencies and the substandard minimum vertical clearance of the bridge traveling over Amtrak Railroad,” Project Manager Francisco T. Fadul said in a statement. “We encourage the public to attend this meeting to share their feedback with the CTDOT project team to incorporate into the design.” The DOT said construction for the approximately $13.8 million project is expected to start in the fall of 2026, depending on availability of funding, acquisition of rights of way and permits.

https://www.theday.com/local-news/20240510/dot-to-hold-information-meeting-on-groton-bridge-replacement/

State officials are pledging to take a year to rebuild Norwalk’s Fairfield Avenue highway overpass, demolished after a fiery May 6 crash, at an estimated cost of about $20 million. Meanwhile Bridgeport’s multi-year slog to install a new Congress Street drawbridge, out of service since the late 1990s, has been dealt another setback and is stuck in limbo. This week Bridgeport’s economic development office confirmed that the city’s recent application to the U.S. Department of Transportation for $22.1 million to help cover the costs of a new Congress Street Bridge was rejected. In a January briefing, economic development staff told City Council members “we feel very, very competitive.” That $22.1 million is needed because when the city went out to bid on the project last summer it used a $24 million price estimate that dated back to before the global COVID-19 pandemic struck in early 2020. Three years later interested contractors instead submitted bids of $42.55 million, $48.04 million, $56.93 million and $57.63 million.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/bridgeport-congress-street-bridge-norwalk-19450609.php

Greenwich is slated to receive millions more than expected on the Central Middle School rebuild, thanks to the efforts of the town’s three state House representatives. Upping the reimbursement rate means the town will eventually get about $22 million back from Hartford, or about $14.7 million more than anticipated. Full reimbursement is contingent on project completion, audits and other approvals by the state, a process which generally takes years. CMS was briefly closed in 2022 after engineers found structural issues at the school and new cracks formed in April after a small earthquake shook the tri-state area. Construction at CMS is slated to start in December, with hopes of opening the new school in August 2026.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/greenwich-central-middle-school-reimbursement-19450741.php

The proposed station at Hop River and Bunker Hill roads, to be built this year, is meant to regulate pressure in the section of the Algonquin Gas Transmission Pipeline between Cromwell and Chaplin, according to filings with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Opponents object to expanded fossil fuel infrastructure and say methane from the fracking process and inevitable leaks along the line pose a hazard to humans and the overall environment. They are set to meet and invite the public to join them at 7 p.m. at the Booth & Dimock Memorial Library, 1134 Main St. in Coventry. At this point, however, the company is only exploring interest in the project, which would not begin until November 2029. More broadly, Copleman said, the strategy of Gov. Ned Lamont’s administration “is to provide clean, affordable, and reliable energy to the residents and businesses of Connecticut, and to achieve our state’s statutory target of 100 percent zero-carbon electricity by 2040, as set out by the General Assembly in 2022.”

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/connecticut/article/coventry-ct-gas-pipeline-station-19450477.php

Plans to develop a sprawling biotech park in Branford off of Interstate 95, which was announced last April with great fanfare, have been scrapped by the Minnesota-based developer that was proposing the project. A spokeswoman for Ryan Companies told Hearst Connecticut Media on Wednesday that the developer “is no longer pursuing the development.” She declined to comment on the reasons for Ryan Companies abandoning the project. When announced last year, the HealthTech Park project called for creating more than 500,000 square feet of laboratory space, research and development facilities for life sciences companies and some high-tech manufacturing related to the health care sector. The project was to have been built on a 120-acre site off of the Exit 56 interchange. Ryan Companies was working with Stamford-based Heinrich Partners to develop the project on land that includes the former Bittersweet Farm and is owned by Hamden-based Belfonti Companies LLC and A. Secondino & Son of Branford.

https://www.registercitizen.com/business/article/plans-for-branford-biotech-park-scrapped-19448291.php