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

The Downtown Manchester Improvements Project is billed as a comprehensive redesign of the Main Street corridor that would enhance safety for drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians while smoothing out the flow of traffic. As for how to pay for its new Main Street, estimated in February to cost between $10 million and $15 million, Manchester hopes that the state and federal governments will foot much of the bill. The town received $7.5 million from the state Department of Economic Development in January, and has also lined up $875,000 in federal community project funding. On Tuesday night, the Board of Directors unanimously approved an application to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s “Safe Streets and Roads for All” grant program that is expected to cover the remainder if awarded.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/journalinquirer/article/ct-manchester-main-street-streetscape-grant-19448363.php

A planned cannabis cultivation facility in East Hartford has received a big financial boost from a real estate trust that is investing $16 million into the project, the company announced this week. C3 Industries Inc., a Michigan-based multi-state cannabis company building a cultivation facility in East Hartford, recently took on a $16 million investment from real estate capital provider NewLake Capital Partners, which is based in New Canaan. The funding includes $4 million for the acquisition of a 58,500 square-foot industrial property in East Hartford, and a $12 million construction build out to repurpose the former cold-storage facility into a cannabis grower. C3, founded by brothers Ankur and Vishal Rungta in 2018, was awarded a “Section 149” cultivator license in late 2022, which allows large-scale cultivation sites to locate in areas disproportionately affected by the federal “war on drugs.” The allowable zones under Section 149 are clustered in lower income and urban areas, including East Hartford.

Cannabis cultivator gets $16M investment for planned East Hartford grow facility 

Senate Bill 299 would have required ISO New England, the grid manager for five states in New England, to study the potential impact to the grid of the data center, which would receive power directly from Millstone. It passed the state Senate on Saturday, but the House failed to vote on the bill before the end of its legislative session at midnight Wednesday. Cheeseman and Needleman said there was nothing in the bill that would have killed any data center deals currently on the table, including the host fee agreement Waterford signed with New England Edge last year in which the developer promised to pay a fee of $231 million over 30 years instead of property taxes to construct two, two-story data center buildings on the Millstone property. The location would allow it to buy power directly from Dominion, reducing the cost of power consumed by the data centers.

https://www.theday.com/local-news/20240509/waterford-east-lyme-residents-frustrated-by-failure-of-data-center-study-bill/

The University of Connecticut’s effort to create a dormitory for its downtown Hartford branch campus would include nearly $28 million in financial support from the Capital Region Development Authority and a private lender. According to CRDA Executive Director Michael Freimuth, the plan would create a student dormitory at 64 Pratt St. The six-floor building is an annex to 242 Trumbull St., which was acquired last year by Shelbourne Global Solutions. Shelbourne, based in Brooklyn, New York, is the central business district’s largest office landlord. Shelbourne has partnered with Hartford-based real estate developer and investor Lexington Partners and Hartford-based LAZ Parking to develop the project. The development deal would total $27.9 million, Freimuth said, including a first loan of $10.06 million; $10 million in interim financing provided by the CRDA; $3 million in equity; and approximately $4.9 million in city and state grants.

CRDA’s Freimuth: UConn dorm project would be transformative to downtown Hartford

Elected officials have authorized the signing of an agreement to redevelop the so-called “dark side” of the Broad Street Parkade with a mixture of residential and commercial property. The decision is the first major public-facing action taken on the project since July, when the town spent $2 million to settle a lawsuit with a previously selected developer. Under the new contract, Texas-based developer Anthony Properties hopes to raise $100 million from private investors to build around 300 units of market-rate housing, supported by amenities including a fitness center and swimming pool, and two as-of-yet undetermined commercial sites. Town officials anticipate that Anthony Properties will begin construction in 2025, potentially split into two “phases” based on project financing. Each phase would include a minimum of 150 housing units, with the first phase including infrastructure improvements such as development of an East Coast Greenway connection.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/journalinquirer/article/ct-manchester-broad-street-parkade-contract-19441340.php