Wellbuilt Company, a developer headquartered in Greenwich with two projects already in Stamford, has filed a pre-application with the Land Use Bureau to explore building an extended stay hotel on the property. Preliminary designs include a 10-story building with 95 rooms and ground-floor space reserved for retail or a restaurant. Parking would be off-site in the Bell Street garage. According to the pre-application, the concept is common for urban hotels and it was reviewed favorably by the city’s Transportation, Traffic and Parking Department. The developer has yet to submit a formal Zoning Board application, opting instead to file a pre-application. In order for the deal to close, though, the developer must secure zoning approval for the project. Trinity Financial, the developer of 66 Summer, did not respond to an immediate request for comment. In 2017, the company sold the 200-unit building to an out-of-state company for $67.5 million.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/local/article/greenwich-developer-exploring-plans-10-story-18074598.php?src=sthpdesecp

Much has changed since workers building the 66-story, 850-foot-tall Rockefeller Center in midtown Manhattan posed for “Lunch Atop a Skyscraper” in 1932, but it remains construction’s most iconic photograph. The OSH Act created OSHA in 1971, so this photo existed decades before any federal agency provided standards or cited employers for violations. Goss and Rank also both noted a long battle to create the steel erection standard, which is a little over 20 years old. With today’s OSHA standards, if an inspector came across a sight like the men in the photo, the fines could vary, depending on whether they are classified as willful or not. If they are, Goss said, the construction firm could face an initial fine of around $155,000 per person — about $1.5 million total. That would be before negotiating a settlement from OSHA. For context, that would be about $200,000 higher than the largest initial fine of 2022.

https://www.constructiondive.com/news/Lunch-Atop-Skyscraper-safety-week-construction-violations-OSHA/649221/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Issue:%202023-05-05%20Construction%20Dive%20Newsletter%20%5Bissue:50248%5D&utm_term=Construction%20Dive

Given the shock of the earlier plumes of black smoke emanating from the bridge, there was some surprise when two southbound lanes opened three hours later. Additional lanes opened the following morning, but the right-hand acceleration lane and pedestrian walkway remain closed. “The Gold Star Bridge was inspected by experts immediately following the crash, which is why it was able to reopen several hours later,” DOT spokesperson Josh Morgan said in an email Wednesday. “Under no circumstances would that bridge have been reopened if there were any safety concerns.” Sweeney said if the superstructure had been jeopardized, DOT was looking at an alternate plan to push southbound traffic onto the northbound span. Rizzo said as Sweeney’s team did its assessment underneath the bridge and it became clear the left two lanes could likely reopen, the highway operations team was coming up with a traffic plan and acquiring the needed materials.

https://www.theday.com/local-news/20230506/how-dot-determined-the-gold-star-bridge-was-safe-to-reopen-after-catching-fire/

A Norwegian green hydrogen company recently announced plans for a “gigafactory” to be built in Michigan using technology that is being developed and tested at the company’s Wallingford operation. Nel Hydrogen makes devices that take water and split it into hydrogen and oxygen, known as electrolyzers, as well as making fueling stations. It recently announced plans for the new plant in Michigan, as well as an expansion of Proton Onsite, the electrolyzer manufacturing facility on Technology Drive in Wallingford, which it purchased in 2017. The Wallingford expansion will assist in the operations at the Michigan plant. Van Name said he did not have information with regard to how many new jobs the project may bring to Wallingford, but said the company has been actively hiring for the last year.

https://www.myrecordjournal.com/News/Wallingford/Wallingford-News/Wallingford-company-expansion-will-test-new-equipment-for-new-Michigan-plant.html

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