At the Aug. 8 Special Town Meeting, voters approved 32-30 the sale of 39.1 acres of town-owned vacant land at 125 Alexander Parkway to NE Edge, LLC, who seeks to build the data center on it and two adjacent parcels to support some of the world’s largest data companies, like Apple, Google, Microsoft, IBM and Meta. The sale was authorized for $5,004,800. Town Manager Mary Calorio said on Monday that she was unaware of any residents’ objections. Once the data center is built out, the town stands to gain as much as $165 million over the 30 year life of the host community agreement. Calorio spoke highly of the project. “This project is environmentally clean and financially advantageous to the town,” she said.

https://www.norwichbulletin.com/story/news/2023/08/22/killingly-to-sell-125-alexander-parkway-ne-edge-for-hyperscale-data-center/70642780007/

Monday Properties — which has offices in Manhattan and Arlington, Va., — is looking to construct a four-building residential complex with 508 apartments at 900 Long Ridge Road, just south of the Merritt Parkway exit. The office park falls in a C-D zoning district, defined as a “Designed Commercial District” by city regulations. The Zoning Board can approve multi-family residential developments in the district by special permit, regulations say, because of a 2021 text change approved by the board itself. The question of what to do with Stamford’s aging corporate office parks has roiled city politics for decades. The Stamford Planning Board has not yet scheduled a date to discuss the application, city planner Vineeta Mathur said in an email.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/local/article/stamford-long-ridge-apartments-proposal-18289804.php

Construction at Saint Aloysius’ New Canaan campus is underway, despite the school closing in this past year. The 65-year-old Catholic school was temporarily operating out of the church’s Holy Spirit campus in Stamford. It was supposed to move to the New Canaan this fall but closed its doors due to low enrollment numbers. The plan for the new building is still underway and will instead be used to house the church’s “religious education program.” That program serves 825 children, and is expected to increase with their planned pre-K program , said Pastor Rob Kinnally of the St. Aloysius Parish in a separate letter regarding the schools closure.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/education/article/construction-continues-saint-aloysius-new-canaan-18290122.php?src=sthpdesecp

Killingly has received $800,000 for a brownfield multipurpose grant from the EPA to help remediate the 17-acre Ballouville Mill site, the 12-acre Danielson-Putnam Twin Drive-in site, and the one-acre Old Borough Wastewater Treatment Plant. This is part of a large increase in brownfield remediation funding nationwide, from around $100 million to $1.5 billion divided over a five-year period due to the Infrastructure, Investment and Jobs Act of 2021. This means that many brownfields that have been backlogged can now start the remediation process, said U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, who visited Killingly on Tuesday. Sites that are abandoned and in disrepair like this represent less tax revenue for the town, but are also prone to fires and vandalism, Courtney said. So far, Killingly has completed Phase I and started Phase II site assessment. The town hopes to finish remediation over the next year, and then begin directly marketing the property, Calorio said.

https://www.norwichbulletin.com/story/news/2023/08/21/killingly-brownfield-remediation-funds-ballouville-mill-old-borough-wastewater-treatment-plant/70618610007/

Town leaders weren’t able to pull off a complex land swap deal to reconfigure the Spring Street and West Street intersection in time to receive state money but still hope to make the roadway improvement in the future. Since the road project wasn’t ready, the town instead applied to use the state’s grant to resurface the Southington High School track. Spring Street ends at West Street but doesn’t quite line up with West Pines Drive, which intersects with West Street just a bit to the north. That unusual geometry has resulted in accidents and traffic delays, according to town officials. DelSanto said there have been more than 40 accidents in that area over the past three years. In July, town leaders were notified about the state’s Small Town Economic Assistance Program grants. That gave Southington five weeks to submit an application on how it would use $500,000.

https://www.myrecordjournal.com/News/Southington/Southington-News/Southington-tries-to-reconfigure-West-Street-intersection-through-land-swap.html

More than 222,000 U.S. bridges need major repair work or should be replaced, according to the American Road & Transportation Builders Association’s (ARTBA) analysis of the recently released U.S. Department of Transportation (U.S. DOT) 2023 National Bridge Inventory (NBI) database. That figure represents 36 percent of all U.S. structures. States currently have access to $10.6 billion from the 2021 federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act’s (IIJA) bridge formula funds that could help make needed repairs, with another $15.9 billion to be available in the next three years. As the end of FY 2023 approaches on Sept. 30, states have committed $3.2 billion, or 30 percent of available bridge formula funds to 2,060 different bridge projects, with $7.4 billion still coming.

https://www.constructionequipmentguide.com/artba-reports-222000-us-bridges-need-repair/62074

The city’s public housing authority plans to purchase the New Haven Clock Company building on Hamilton Street and convert it into 100 mixed-income, mostly-affordable apartments — but only after the abandoned factory’s current owners rid the property of all remaining toxins. The Housing Authority of New Haven’s Board of Commissioners authorized the public housing agency to purchase the storied and long-vacant clock factory for $4.5 million during its monthly meeting on Tuesday in a 360 Orange St. conference room. For years, Reed Community Partners had hoped to transform the factory into 130 affordable housing units, including some set aside for artists. A series of financial and structural twists thwarted this plan. The Housing Authority has agreed to purchase the building on the condition that Reed Community Partners complete remediation of the site beforehand, according to Elm City Communities Vice President Shenae Draughn.

https://www.newhavenindependent.org/article/housing_authority_to_acquire_clock_shop

The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing to dig up hundreds of truckloads of toxic waste buried along Shore Road as part of a new remediation project that is expected to take up to two years to complete. The agency is now seeking public comments on a newly announced $11.2 million plan to remove the soil, which is contaminated with potentially cancer-causing agents and other dangerous chemicals such as lead and asbestos. The proposed cleanup effort calls for crews to remove around three feet of soil at the shoreline of the 4-acre site, including the boat club parking lot and grassy areas, and two feet of soil on the eastern edge of the Shakespeare property. The project, which is expected to start in late 2024, is part of a larger yearslong effort to rid the town of exposed Raymark waste. As of July, the EPA has spent $64 million to remove about 62,000 cubic yards of waste from nearly two dozen private and town-owned properties where the material was dumped or used for fill decades ago.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/epa-raymark-waste-shakespeare-stratford-18298012.php

Community members are skeptical of the state’s latest plans to improve the Route 7 and Merritt Parkway interchange, citing concerns about pedestrian safety and the risk of collisions. A public hearing on the proposal drew the spotlight onto the Norwalk River Valley Trail and the effect the changes could have on the multiuse trail, which is one day meant to connect to Danbury. Project leaders unveiled two alternative solutions at the meeting, each aimed at enhancing connections, safety, and traffic flow among Route 7, Merritt Parkway, and Main Avenue. During the presentation segment of the meeting, John Eberle, a project manager from Stantec Consulting, outlined the alarming frequency of accidents at the project site.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/route-7-merritt-interchange-norwalk-concerns-18299137.php

The bill Biden signed with great fanfare in November 2021 offers a windfall to the state Department of Transportation — a 40% increase in the federal funding that generally comes in five-year commitments, a jump from $3.8 billion to $5.4 billion. But Connecticut is one of seven states that have lost construction jobs since passage, a statistic galling to construction unions that have been gearing up for growth in a state with a backlog of highway, bridge and rail work that have meant longer commutes and added costs for keeping a car on roads that get a C-. “We’re not working,” Joe Toner, the executive director of the State Building Trades Council, told a surprised U.S. Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro, D-3rd District, in a public labor gathering. “We’re seriously not working.” The state had 61,600 construction workers in April 2022, the start of the first outdoor construction season after passage. A year later, the industry was down by 1,900 people — the biggest drop anywhere other than California, which lost 5,100 jobs in a construction industry nearly 15 times larger than Connecticut’s.

Frustration in CT building trades: Where are the jobs?