As the Wilton Planning & Zoning Commission considers a proposal for a new four-story hotel on the town’s side of the iPark complex, owners of the campus outlined its plans to also build a parking garage and apartments on the Norwalk side. The P&Z Commission will continue the public hearing for iPark Hotel, a 120-room hotel proposed for the iPark mixed-use campus on the Wilton-Norwalk border, at its meeting on May 22. Plans for the proposed four-story building on Cannondale Way were approved by the Architectural Review Board last November. This would be the first within the town’s borders. The plans for a hotel in Wilton have been in the works for many years. The Planning and Zoning Commission voted in 2016 to allow hotels under the town’s zoning regulations, with this specific project in mind. Wilton currently has no hotels.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/wilton-hotel-ipark-cannondale-way-18099597.php

The 877 Ethan Allen Highway property will be sold for $441,000 to the Ridgefield Professional Office Complex, which aims to build 71 townhouses and 21 apartments, including 14 units that will be designated as affordable. The property, also known as the “Village at Ponds Edge,” is home to one of the town’s sewer plants. The majority of the proposed development would be built on a neighboring 27 acres surrounding the 877 Ethan Allen Highway land. The property sale was approved during a May 10 special town meeting, but the development project requires further land use approvals. There is no date yet for construction to begin. Remediation would be needed to clean up contamination that has collected on the site. The WPCA will cover the cost of all the remediation, Marconi said. While the sale of the property has been approved, the town’s Inland Wetlands Board and Planning & Zoning Commission will address the intended use of the property at their next meetings. The property was on the agenda for the Planning & Zoning Commission’s May 16 meeting and the Inland Wetlands Board’s May 25 meeting.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/ridgefield-ponds-edge-sale-housing-18099738.php

CT Century Gardens, run by Albert Gad, has been fighting the condemnation in state Superior Court since January and also earlier this month placed the factory on the market for $6.5 million. While CT Century Gardens wants $6.5 million, the building has been appraised by the city’s tax assessor at $1.9 million. “Someone’s not going to be able to come in there and buy that and rehab it at their price. It wouldn’t make economic sense,” Bridgeport Economic Development Director Thomas Gill said in an interview late last week. Meanwhile a remote court hearing on the condemnation and pending demolition was scheduled for Tuesday. According to the Bridgeport tax collector’s online database, which covers 2016 through present, CT Century Gardens has mostly kept up with the tax bill for the property, most recently paying $65,639. But a lien was placed on the site for 2020’s tax payment. No additional information was immediately available.

https://www.ctpost.com/news/article/bridgeport-seeks-demolish-long-abandoned-warnaco-18095794.php?src=rdctpdensecp

With an official construction kickoff Tuesday in Middletown, Springside moved closer to becoming one of the largest new apartment complexes in central Connecticut: Plans call for 414 units. Middletown negotiated two unusual provisions when it granted tax breaks to developers PB Development and Harbor Group International. The companies agreed to earmark $1 million of the construction budget for minority-owned contractors, and also pledged to provide $100,000 in local business gift cards to tenants in the 414 apartments. The developers recruited Marshall to run the set-aside program, and he said Tuesday that Springside is more than housing. The first phase of Springside should take 27 months to complete, and will produce 240 units, Dale said. The second phase will build another 174. Dale said he would like to begin construction on phase two sometime during phase one, but said that could be held off depending on market conditions. The cost of the first phase has been estimated at $83 million. Dale on Tuesday said the cost of the entire project will be over $100 million, but cited construction inflation as one reason he wouldn’t give a more precise figure.

Middletown housing complex ‘breaks ground’ with offering private money for minority contractors

The Connecticut Water Co. will invest $60 million this year on more than 100 infrastructure upgrades and improvement projects, officials with the Clinton-based utility have announced. Connecticut Water, which serves more than 350,000 people in 60 communities in the state, will be replacing components of its distribution network that are between 40-and-100-years old. One of the larger projects is a new $12 million water treatment facility being built in East Windsor to serve customers in north central Connecticut, according to Dan Meaney, a spokesman for the utility. It will take the efforts of about 260 construction workers to complete this year’s improvement projects. A majority of the improvements are being done by outside contractors hired by Connecticut Water, Meaney said. Connecticut Water is also installing a 275 kilowatt array of solar panels in Clinton to offset the power needs of the company’s Clinton office, as well as the southern region work center and two electric vehicle charging stations, which are need because the utility is electrifying part of its fleet. Work on the solar array got underway last month and will be completed by the end of June.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/business/article/utility-to-spend-60m-on-system-improvements-18099416.php

The $280 million new tower, adjacent to the hospital’s current Hartford premises, has been in the works for several years. It will house several ambitious new programs, including a fetal surgery center that is expected to make Hartford a national leader in the discipline, a NICU unit with 50 private rooms, and state-of-the-art facilities for bone marrow transplant work and gene therapy. Where previously the hospital counted 750,000 children in Connecticut as its core patient population, it has now extended into western Massachusetts and eastern New York, encompassing a potential patient population of 1.2 million children. In addition to the physical infrastructure build-out and new relationships around the state, Shmerling also partnered with peer institutions. Connecticut Children’s now runs the neonatal intensive care units at eight other hospitals in the region, and for some, their pediatric units as well. By June 2022, Shmerling and his team were back at work on the expansion project, submitting the proposal for state and city approvals. At the same time, Connecticut Children’s began to build the clinical programs that will eventually be housed in the new tower.

CT Children’s new $280M patient tower a linchpin in broader financial turnaround, expansion

More housing could be coming to the town’s transit-oriented district via a 70-unit housing development proposed at 579 New Park Ave. Designs and plans submitted to the town’s Design Review Advisory Committee are preliminary but do indicate that the proposed building would be five stories in height, with the street-facing side of the building having mixed-use retail space available for commercial tenants. The first floor of the building, at street level, would include 11 units of housing, the second and third floors would include 20 units of housing each and the fourth floor would include 19 units of housing. The development is a mix of one- and two-bedroom units, according to the submitted plans. Kristen Gorski, the town’s economic development coordinator, said the proposal was submitted by Li Brothers Construction. On the committee’s meeting agenda, it indicate that the current building — listed as the location of Gozzo Design & Remodel LLC — would be demolished and replaced.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/westhartford/article/west-hartford-ct-new-park-avenue-housing-project-18090873.php

For the nearly $1 billion project, the existing four-span Walk Bridge will be replaced with a state-of-the-art multispan bridge, including 240-foot dual lift spans with fixed east and west approach spans over the Norwalk River. The bridge appears shiny and silvery in the drawings, with a tall vertical tower on each end. The structure will replace the 127-year-old swing bridge that takes Amtrak and Metro-North trains over the Norwalk River. The old bridge, which is considered obsolete, occasionally fails to close completely after opening to allow marine traffic to pass, causing train delays. The new conceptual Walk Bridge renderings, which were posted on the Walk Bridge Project website last month, show how the new bridge will appear and operate.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/walk-bridge-norwalk-conceptual-drawings-18091034.php

A proposal awaiting its day before the Stamford Zoning Board would knock down an office building in downtown’s Landmark Square to construct what could be one of the city’s tallest buildings. The Cappelli Organization — a White Plains, N.Y., developer with a footprint already in Downtown Stamford — would replace the existing structure, Landmark 3, with a 31-story high-rise apartment building. The skyscraper would feature 400 luxury apartments, 420 parking spaces and 5,200 square feet of retail space on the ground floor, which consultants said would likely include a restaurant with outdoor seating. Cappelli is requesting a special permit to contribute about $10.7 million to Stamford’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund in lieu of including 40 below-market-rate apartments in the floor plans.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/local/article/developer-wants-build-stamford-s-second-highest-18082122.php

A $14 million housing project needed to help Connecticut’s largest city boost its stock of affordably-priced units has again faced a funding setback. For the second year in a row, Building Neighborhoods Together did not qualify for a state-administered federal tax credit that would cover around $1 million of the building costs for 44 apartments on the East Side. The Christophs, the father/son team that has spent years slowly redeveloping Steelpointe, under an agreement with the city must also build or help pay for new affordably priced units representing 10 percent of their total market-rate ones. And most of those can be scattered around town rather than all at Steelpointe. Although delayed by ground contamination, the Christophs are expected to break ground in the coming months on their luxury housing even as BNT’s low income project remains stalled.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/key-bridgeport-affordable-housing-project-denied-18095788.php