Outfitted in hard hats and neon orange construction vests, the city’s mayor and top engineer looked out the third floor windows of what will be Danbury’s new high school, their eyes fixed on an office building down the hill on Apple Ridge Road. With the demolition of the interior complete, and construction workers putting in the lines on the concrete for the framing that will become classrooms, labs and offices, Iadarola said it was easy to see the city’s vision coming into reality for the 24-acre west side campus and the rebranding of the high school known as the Academies of Danbury. The completion of the demolition phase and the start of the construction phase is part of a larger $208 million spending plan approved by voters in 2022 to build more classrooms across the city, including $27 million for a 16-classroom early childhood education center at location to be determined.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/danbury-career-academy-construction-underway-demo-18428940.php

The City Council agreed 5 to 1 Monday to authorize Mayor Elinor C. Carbone to negotiate a lease agreement with Walden Renewables of Portland, Maine to lease six acres at the landfill. In the initial six-year development period, the company will pay $5,000 a year while it looks into permitting and connecting the facility with Eversource. After that, it will enter a 40-year lease at $6,000 per acre with a 2% increase per year. The facility, which would potentially hold between 100 and 150 megawatts of renewable energy, would be connected to the Eversource power grid and serve as a backup for power “to save for a rainy day when we have a capacity event,” Dale Knapp of Walden Renewables of Portland, Maine told the City Council last month during a presentation on the project. If the solar array and energy storage facility are built, there will still be about 55 undeveloped acres left at the landfill, he said.

https://www.rep-am.com/localnews/2023/10/16/battery-project-gets-boost/

Now that the Mixmaster rehabilitation project is nearing completion, the state Department of Transportation is moving on to New Mix, a plan to look ahead to what the interchange of Interstate 84 and Route 8 will be like as much as 50 years from now. And removing the long-closed Exit 21 exit ramp on I-84 eastbound will be among the first projects on the list. To that end, a public meeting will be held Oct. 25 to discuss the removal of the exit ramp, which will include extending an auxiliary lane near Exit 22. The Oct. 25 meeting will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. at Maloney Magnet School, 233 S. Elm St., Waterbury. The first half hour will be an informal open house so the public can speak one on one with DOT project staff.

CT DOT looking ahead up to 50 years on a highway interchange. What will the big changes mean for drivers?

The zoning board of appeals in an unusual move is scheduled to convene Wednesday and Thursday just to hear testimony for and against the North End development, an indication of the anticipated sizeable turnout. At issue is the July 27 decision by Paul Boucher, head of the municipal zoning department, to revoke the authorization his office issued last October for Lakhotia’s development, located at Madison and Westfield avenues. That zoning application was submitted in late 2021, before new, more restrictive citywide land-use regulations took effect the following January that would limit the proposed four-story building’s height to three and require ground floor commercial tenants.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/testos-apartments-appeal-madison-ave-mario-testa-18429180.php

Connecticut drivers should avoid taking I-95 in Norwalk and Westport this weekend due to a major bridge replacement project at Exit 17. A section of I-95 northbound will be closed from Oct. 20 at 8 p.m. to Oct. 23 at 6 a.m. while the Connecticut Department of Transportation completes the first of two lateral shifts to replace the bridge over Saugatuck Avenue. DOT can accomplish the bridge replacement in one weekend because of the use of an accelerated bridge construction method called a lateral slide. Rosenblatt said the bridge replacement is one of the largest elements of the $104 million Norwalk-Westport I-95 improvement project.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/i-95n-closed-norwalk-westport-bridge-replaced-18422100.php

Andre Swanston, a multimillionaire tech entrepreneur who attended the University of Connecticut and now lives in Ridgefield, is pursuing expansion teams in both Major League Soccer and the National Women’s Soccer League, to play in a new stadium in Bridgeport. The project would also include housing, restaurants and a hotel adjacent to the stadium, Swanston told CT Insider in an exclusive interview. Swanston said his effort will be “overwhelming majority privately funded” but that he will likely seek some amount of public financing as well. The total cost of the project, including expansion fees and construction costs, will exceed $1 billion, he said. The proposed new stadium in Bridgeport would be built on a property along the Pequonnock River currently home to the Shoreline Star Greyhound Park, which has been vacant since 2021.

https://www.ctpost.com/sports/article/mls-nwsl-bridgeport-andre-swanston-18424628.php?src=rdctpdensecp

Connecticut and the Northeast came up losers Friday in the high-stakes competition for regional hydrogen hubs — part of the Biden administration’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law’s focus on hydrogen as an important clean energy source to fight climate change. A seven-state consortium led by New York and including Connecticut and the rest of New England except New Hampshire, plus New Jersey, were not among seven hubs selected to share $7 billion. The Biden administration estimates the hubs will catalyze another $40 billion in private investment and create tens of thousands of jobs. The decision is especially disappointing for Connecticut. The state has a decades-long history with hydrogen, a necessary component of its well-known and regarded fuel cell industry. FuelCell Energy is headquartered in Danbury, and there are expertise hubs at the Connecticut Center for Advanced Technology (CCAT) and the University of Connecticut. Hydrogen in something like a fuel cell is part of a clean electrochemical — not combustion — process that produces electricity and leaves only water and heat behind, no greenhouse gasses. To that end, the Biden administration, governors and legislatures like those in Connecticut have viewed hydrogen not far below solar and wind for how to lower the greenhouse gas emissions.

No hydrogen hub for CT and the Northeast

Construction has resumed at 188 Lafayette St., the site of a June 2 partial collapse of a seven-story, 112-unit apartment building under construction. Involving more than 4 million pounds of concrete, the collapse injured eight workers, two critically. An investigation by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration is continuing and no information or reports have yet been released, said Edmund Fitzgerald, a spokesman in OSHA’s Boston office. Lenny Alvarez, principal of Seven Concrete, LLC of Orange, the non-union concrete subcontractor that OSHA is investigating, declined to comment. Workers were pouring more than 4 million pounds of concrete when a building under construction on Lafayette Street collapsed Friday, injuring eight, Fontana previously said. The building is owned by RMS Companies. and is on land owned by Yale University, Mayor Justin Elicker said at the time of the collapse.

https://www.nhregister.com/news/article/new-haven-lafayette-street-construction-collapse-18410315.php?src=nhrhpdesecp

But with the most concrete proposal for the property on the table — West Hartford 1 LLC wants to turn the former college campus into a mixed-use residential and retail development featuring 620 units of housing, a grocery store, a restaurant and more — a decision on the site’s future is looming. It’s been one year since the developers first proposed their plans for the deserted site and there are hurdles yet to clear, including an upcoming Town Planning and Zoning and Inland Wetlands and Watercourse Agency meeting, future public hearings and Town Council debate, before a plan is finalized and shovels on what developers are calling Oakwood Park can go in the ground. Plans have morphed since they were first proposed in October 2022, when the developers pitched the general concept it has landed on today: a “neighborhood” type village that combines multifamily housing with retail, restaurants, and more. In the year since, developers have appeared at numerous Design Review Advisory Committee meetings, using feedback to shape designs to where they stand now — 620 units of housing split between apartments, townhouses, and assisted living, all existing alongside space for retail, a restaurant, a grocery store, a cafe, and more.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/westhartford/article/west-hartford-uconn-campus-housing-development-18416985.php

Checked luggage is now screened by large machines adjacent to the ticket counters for the airlines that fly out of Bradley. Travelers get their boarding passes, have their suitcases weighed, and then take them to the station where U.S. Transportation Security Administration officers feed the luggage into the large Computer Tomography X-ray machines for screening. Once construction of the new screening building is completed, passengers will simply hand their checked bags to the ticketing agent who will tag and place them on a conveyer belt for routing through the new facility. That will involve the use of over one mile of conveyer belt systems, airport officials say. By moving the baggage function from the front of the terminal building to the air side, Sisic said, it allows for the future construction of new gates and concession space. The relocations will result in a net increase of two new boarding gates at the airport, she said.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/business/article/ct-bradley-airport-bag-screening-facility-18407997.php