The long-awaited residential and commercial development of the former Ideal Forging site in downtown Southington may break ground on the first building in the next month or two. Property owners of the industrial site have approval to build the foundation of a 55-unit residential building and are working to get a multifamily construction permit. The project, Greenway Commons, includes hundreds of residential units as well as commercial space. Contamination from the forging site was cleaned up but the project stalled due to financing and other challenges. Meridian Development Partners, a New York firm, sold the property last year to 195 Center Street Associates, a Branford company. Lou Perillo, the town’s economic development coordinator, said he’s “cautiously optimistic” that the first building could start going up this year. The last he’d heard from the company was that construction would start in the next 30 to 60 days. It’s unclear if construction will continue through the winter. Perillo said excavation equipment will be onsite and that the company’s preference is for it to be used immediately but he wasn’t sure about the schedule.

https://www.myrecordjournal.com/News/Southington/Southington-News/Greenway-Commonts-project-in-Southington-could-start-this-year.html

Explosives engineer Mike Rodriguez was in a bright orange sweatshirt and a hard hat as he led a group of 14 aspiring engineers through the blasting site on the northbound side of Interstate 95 that has eroded 800 feet of ledge over the past three months. The site is part of a four-and-a-half year highway reconstruction project being pitched Wednesday to the East Lyme High School engineering class as a $148 million project generating more than $30 million annually. It’s overseen by Plainville-based general contractor Manafort Brothers of Plainville and engineering firm GM2 of Glastonbury. Resident Engineer Robert Obey, of GM2, said as many as 60 contractors and subcontractors work daily in multiple areas across the 1.3-mile project span from Exit 73 to just south of Exit 75. Inspection staff account for another 15 jobs. Obey said the initial blasting project, estimated at six-to-eight weeks when it began on Aug. 1, took down a looming wall of ledge to make room for a wider highway.

https://www.theday.com/local-news/20231101/i-95-blasting-engineer-turns-over-detonator-to-next-generation-in-east-lyme/

Drivers should once again avoid Interstate 95 in the Norwalk and Westport area this weekend due to the second phase of the Saugatuck bridge replacement project. After a successful northbound bridge replacement nearly two weeks ago, Connecticut’s Department of Transportation will replace the southbound bridge, also by using a lateral slide method, this weekend. Southbound traffic on I-95 will be diverted to the northbound side from 8 p.m. Friday, Nov. 3, to 6 a.m. Monday, Nov. 6. During that time, the crew will work around the clock to demolish the existing bridge and then slide in the newly constructed bridge. For the project this weekend, CTDOT is encouraging drivers to find alternate routes and to avoid I-95 all weekend, but especially on Sunday afternoon, Morgan said. Using the accelerated lateral slide bridge construction method, CTDOT crews have built the new southbound bridge on stilts next to the existing bridge. On Friday night, the old bridge will be demolished, then the new bridge will be slowly rolled into place on I-95.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/i-95-south-westport-norwalk-bridge-replacement-18459088.php

The city received two grants totaling more than $11.6 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency aimed at addressing flood control in the downtown area, Congressional lawmakers said Tuesday. The funding from FEMA will support $11,165,250 million of the city’s $14.7 million total project cost. The project includes channel realignment and profile adjustment, removing two undersized bridges that constrict water flow, floodproofing buildings along the brook, creating riparian floodplain and wildlife habitat, modifying impacted utilities, and installing a waterfront trail system. An additional $480,000 grant from FEMA will fund costs for the administration and management of this project. Improvements will be made along an 1,800 foot stretch of Harbor Brook spanning from Cooper Street in downtown Meriden to the Amtrak railroad near Colony Street. The former ION Bank building on Hanover Street was razed to make way for the channel widening and deepening. Another building at 116 Cook Ave., an area prone for flooding, has been slated for demolition and reconstruction to make way for a new senior center.

https://www.myrecordjournal.com/News/Meriden/Meriden-News/FEMA-gives-Meriden-$11-6-million-for-flood-control.html

Windsor Locks has been awarded a $4.8 million state grant, helping secure a developer’s commitment to build a $42 million mixed-use apartment project near the town’s new planned train station. The welcome center will be located a stone’s throw away from the town’s new $65 million train station, which broke ground last year and is expected to be completed in 2025. The new station will be served by the CTrail Hartford Line, which connects New Haven to Springfield, and four Amtrak lines. The other $2.4 million in state funding will go toward acquiring the Windsor Locks Commons property at 255 Main St., adjacent to where the new train station is being built. The property is currently home to an underutilized retail complex. The Community Investment Fund is an economic development program created by the Lamont administration to invest up to $875 million in distressed communities over a five-year period. So far, there have been three rounds of CIF grant funding. The latest round, approved in September, allocated $76.4 million to 20 projects.

State grant, new train station spur $42M Windsor Locks mixed-use apartment development

The Biden administration on Monday pledged financial support for a two-way transmission line capable of carrying hydroelectricity from Quebec into New England and eventually offshore wind and solar power from New England to Quebec. The transmission line, being developed by National Grid and Citizens Energy, was one of three transmission projects receiving a total of $1.3 billion under a new federal program funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The goal of the program is to expand the nation’s transmission capacity and also break down barriers between regions, allowing electricity to flow from one state or groups of states surpluses to areas dealing with periodic shortages. The federal funding represents an upfront commitment to purchase power from the projects, but the expectation is that the money may never be needed. The Twin States Clean Energy Link would enter New England at the border town of Canaan in Vermont. From there the line would travel 75 miles underground in Vermont along roadways bordering the Connecticut River. It would then go under the river and into New Hampshire near Dalton, traveling 26 miles underground to Monroe, where it would then come above ground on an existing transmission right-of-way to Londonderry.

Quebec-New England transmission line gets Biden backing

The U.S. offshore wind industry has developed much more slowly than in Europe because it took years for the states and federal government to provide subsidies and draw up rules and regulations, slowing leasing and permitting. However, as government policies started to line up in the industry’s favor in recent years, offshore wind developers unveiled a host of new project proposals, mostly off the U.S. East Coast. The COVID-19 pandemic gummed up supply chains and increased the cost of equipment and labor, making new projects far more expensive than initially projected. Many contracts for offshore wind projects have no mechanism for adjustment in the case of higher interest rates or costs. Some developers have paid to get out of their contracts rather than build them and face years of losses or low returns. Biden’s administration has sought to supercharge clean energy development with passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), a sweeping law that provides billions of dollars of incentives to projects that fight climate change. Since the law passed last year, companies have announced billions of dollars in new manufacturing for solar and electric vehicle (EV) batteries across the U.S. But the offshore wind industry is not fully satisfied.

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/why-us-offshore-wind-industry-is-doldrums-2023-10-31/

Danish energy developer Orsted said Tuesday night it is scrapping two large offshore wind power projects off the coast of New Jersey, adding uncertainty to a nascent industry the Biden administration and many state governments are counting on to help transition away from the burning of planet-warming fossil fuels. The company said it is canceling its Ocean Wind I and II projects in southern New Jersey, citing supply chain issues and rising interest rates. Orsted stands to lose a $100 million guarantee it posted with New Jersey earlier this month that it would build Ocean Wind I by the end of 2025. That money could be returned to ratepayers. The company said it would move forward with its Revolution Wind project in Connecticut and Rhode Island. A handful of other offshore wind projects have been canceled. They include the Park City Wind project off the coast of Massachusetts. Avangrid, a subsidiary of Spanish utility company Iberdrola, and several Connecticut utilities scrapped a long-term power purchase agreement.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/business/article/orsted-scraps-2-offshore-wind-power-projects-in-18460795.php

Eversource President and Chief Executive Officer Joe Nolan said Ørsted, the Danish wind company his firm is partnering with on the South Fork Wind project, said a final investment decision was reached earlier in the day to move ahead with another joint venture, the 704-megawatt Revolution Wind project, which is expected to deliver power to sections of Connecticut and Rhode Island. The decision notice came on the same day the first load of offshore wind components were set to be shipped from New London’s deep-water port via barge to the coast of Long Island for assembly as part of the South Fork Wind project. The 130-megawatt South Fork project promises to deliver energy to 70,000 homes on Long Island with power expected to begin flowing to the grid before the end of the year.
The Revolution project is expected to generate 400 megawatts of power to Rhode Island and 304 megawatts to Connecticut.

https://www.theday.com/local-news/20231031/as-first-set-of-wind-turbine-parts-leave-new-london-new-wind-project-gets-key-approval/

Connecticut and Rhode Island have opened bid solicitations for 2 GW and 1.2 GW of offshore wind, respectively, after announcing a multistate memorandum of understanding with Massachusetts earlier in October. The final Connecticut RFP also includes a provision allowing bidders to submit pricing at a rate indexed to the price of “listed macroeconomic factors and commodities and that would be fixed at a date certain in the future,” allowing prices to adjust for factors like inflation. The addition of this provision comes as some offshore wind developers, struggling to advance projects in the face of inflation and other challenges, are asking states to allow them to exit and rebid their power purchase agreements. The indexed pricing option adjusts for changes that might occur after the bid due date but before the project reaches final close, and allows for the final price to be adjusted either up or down by no more than 15%.

https://www.utilitydive.com/news/connecticut-rhode-island-massachusetts-offshore-wind-solicitation/698250/