East Hartford officials are creating a menu of tax breaks and other incentives to secure a project demolishing chunks of the roughly 50-year-old Founders Plaza office park along the Connecticut River, and building back hundreds of new apartments, as well as retail and recreation amenities. East Hartford officials have been negotiating with an undisclosed developer. Mayor Michael Walsh, on Tuesday, shared with the Town Council a draft letter addressed to developer Port Eastside Partners LLC, broadly outlining the possibility of tax stabilization and other potential incentives that could be applied to the ambitious project. According to the draft letter Walsh shared with the council, the plan involves demolition of a four-story office building at 99 Founders Plaza, demolition of a garage attached to a 20-story office tower at 111 Founders Plaza, and demolition of unoccupied warehousing space at 300 East River Drive. Walsh, on Wednesday, estimated demolition costs of $9 million.

East Hartford officials eye tax breaks, other incentives to secure Founders Plaza redevelopment 

The $2.5 million project started in April 2022 and the roadway was completely closed to traffic for three months. After that, traffic was open to just a single lane. Officials from the Greenwich Department of Public Works and the Board of Selectmen gathered at Binney Park on Wednesday to celebrate the project’s completion. The bridge was originally built in 1925 and inspectors found it to be in poor condition five times between 2011 and 2019, which led to the replacement recommendation. The $2.5 million project cost was reimbursed to the town with a grant from the state’s Local Transportation Capital Improvement Program, or LOTCIP. Greenwich is seeking another LOTCIP grant to fund replacement of the North Street Bridge, which is expected to start next year.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/old-greenwich-sound-beach-avenue-bridge-17919879.php

The plan to build a new Elmwood Community Center that would include the senior center, a library branch, teen center and more began when the town purchased the former St. Brigid School at 100 Mayflower St. for $3 million in 2021. Last August, town leaders announced they would be creating a West Hartford Center master plan that it would use as a guide to reconstruct and update roadways, crosswalks, intersections, sidewalks and other street features in the center of town. In April, Ledwith said LaSalle’s reconstruction would be first after the announcement that the road would be returned to its pre-pandemic two-way traffic set up. Final decisions on the road’s reconstruction would be considered by the town’s Community Planning and Economic Development and Public Works and Facilities committees. Construction, though, has been delayed from this year to the spring of 2024, meaning Farmington Avenue’s reconstruction would not begin until the spring of 2025. Over on New Park Avenue, drivers, pedestrians and bicyclists can expect substantial changes, including a road diet that is similar to the one implemented on North Main Street, bringing four lanes of traffic down to two lanes of traffic with a shared left-hand center turn lane.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/westhartford/article/west-hartford-ct-community-center-road-design-18074476.php

A Baltimore-based company that produces wood-frame construction products is planning to build a 450,000-square-foot production facility in Windsor, which it says will help ameliorate the multifamily housing shortage in Connecticut and beyond. Construction on the facility — said to be the largest North American industrial building erected entirely of mass timber — is expected to begin this summer, according to Blueprint CEO Jerome D. Smalley. The new facility will be 2.5 times larger than the existing one, though the company will maintain its headquarters in Baltimore. It will be constructed on a vacant lot at 11 Goodwin Drive, just to the north of a large Amazon warehouse, near Day Hill Road. Smalley said the plan is to open the facility in the third quarter of 2024. Blueprint received zoning approval to subdivide the property in early April.

Baltimore wood-frame producer Blueprint has major CT growth plans with new Windsor facility

The property’s new owner is aiming to break ground in the coming weeks, and, according to City Hall, already received zoning sign-offs from municipal staff with no public hearing required. “This is major construction. Residents are not happy. They’re worried about environmental issues, the air quality, flooding, parking, the amount of people that will be there,” Herron said Monday. The rare zone change Testa obtained in 2013 laid the groundwork. The land at 1775 Madison Ave. had for decades been the site of restaurants and there were tight restrictions on what could be constructed there. Testa was granted an ORG (office, retail, general) designation, which his attorney at the time, Charles Willinger, claimed was necessary for his client to pursue refinancing and was not a prelude to a sale and redevelopment of the site. Jump ahead to late 2021. Bridgeport, following a broad public-engagement effort, had just updated its ten-year master plan of development and the related city-wide changes to zoning regulations were set to take affect Jan. 1, 2022.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/bridgeport-approves-177-unit-apartment-complex-18065518.php

The WestConn students organized the roughly 1.5-mile walk last Wednesday afternoon to study walkability and transit-oriented development in the vicinity of the Metro-North train station on Patriot Drive. More than 40 people participated in the walk, which was organized with support from pro-home advocacy group Desegregate Connecticut. Observations made during her students’ walk audit appear to align with the city’s transit-oriented development plan, which calls for sidewalk improvements and relocating the bus station from Kennedy Avenue to a site adjacent to the train station to create the Danbury Transit Center. The first phase of the city’s streetscape upgrades is complete, but a second phase is planned to improve sidewalks on Main Street, near the train station and other areas. In addition to walkability around Danbury’s train station, the walk audit focused on ways in which the area can be more transit-oriented, and Hegel said a lack of transit-connectedness stood out.

https://www.newstimes.com/news/article/wcsu-walk-audit-danbury-transit-walkability-17919956.php

The Stamford Transportation Center — the second-busiest Metro-North Railroad station after Grand Central Terminal — will soon have a new $81.7 million, 928-spot garage to replace its existing one on Station Place. Looming over Interstate 95’s Exit 7, the gray structure might be the most visible, but it’s just one of multiple projects the transit hub has received funding for in recent years. Other projects that have been announced include elevator and escalator repairs, a master plan to guide future improvements and the eventual demolition of the existing parking garage. Burnham said the entire project will be completed by the end of summer 2024. Previously, officials said it would be done this August; they did not say the cause of delays.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/local/article/stamford-train-transportation-center-renovations-17918598.php?src=sthpdesecp

The city recently received approval of the grant from the state Community Investment Fund that will construct 2,700 feet of access road and install utilities running from Route 97 in Occum into the 384-acre Business Park North. The Norwich Community Development Corp. purchased the property in December for $3.55 million. The grant will build a road from the area near the Exit 18 ramp from I-395 into the business park property to Canterbury Turnpike and prepare 12 development pads. Norwich Public Utilities will install natural gas, water and electric lines along the roadway. NCDC President Kevin Brown said the rest of this year will be spent designing and engineering the road and market the development sites, now that construction is imminent. Brown said construction should start next January, with a goal of opening the first development parcels by December 2024.

https://www.theday.com/local-news/20230501/officials-celebrate-planned-access-road-to-new-norwich-business-park-land/

The town’s Conservation Commission has until May 23 to make its final decision on a controversial wetlands application for the construction of a large distribution center. On Monday, the commission met at the Shepardson Community Center to begin deliberations on the application after closing the hearing last month, a hearing that spanned five meetings and nearly three months. It did so before a packed house full of residents opposed to the plan by Drubner Equities, LLC of Waterbury to build a 750,000 square foot distribution facility on the campus of what is currently the Timex Corp. world headquarters off Christian Road. Residents fear that the massive distribution center, with trucks rolling in 24-7, will destroy their community’s small-town feel. They are appealing to the commission’s “conservation consciousness” and to reject the application.

https://www.rep-am.com/localnews/2023/05/01/middlebury-neighbors-fighting-proposed-distribution-center-at-timex-corp/

Encompass Health Corporation, whose plans to build a $36 million 100,000-square-foot facility on Danbury’s west side were approved by zoning officials in May 2021, has been waiting for state approval of the Certificate of Need application it filed in August 2020. With its certificate granted last week, construction on Encompass Health’s new rehabilitation hospital near the intersection of Reserve Road and Winding Ridge Way can at last commence. The 40-bed inpatient rehabilitation hospital will serve people who have suffered strokes, heart attacks, and neurological ailments by providing physical rehabilitation, occupational therapy and speech therapy. The facility will become part of Encompass Health’s national network of rehabilitation hospitals and be the company’s first rehab hospital in the state of Connecticut.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/danbury-rehab-hospital-certificate-of-need-approve-17920363.php