Legislation aimed at helping non-college-bound students and workers train for Connecticut’s construction trades won overwhelming approval last week in the legislative Labor Committee to create a group of professionals to look into existing entry-level programs and increase access to various apprenticeship programs. While Ackert’s original proposed bill would have created a new construction pipeline emulating the manufacturing program, the legislative process so far has turned it into a study. As currently written, the study group would examine opportunities in existing public high school curriculums and include pre-apprenticeship programs and avenues to higher education including college degrees in construction management. Some of the state’s unionized worker forces, such as the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 488 of Western Connecticut has a free apprenticeship program.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/politics/article/pipeline-construction-jobs-advances-committee-20186806.php

The preferred developer of a crucial piece in a new neighborhood planned in downtown Hartford is withdrawing from the project, a major setback for the redevelopment of a barren swath of parking lots near The Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts. The Michaels Organization, of Camden, N.J., — chosen in late 2022 to develop the largest parking lot in the envisioned Bushnell South neighborhood — has reached an agreement with the Capital Region Development Authority to step away from the project aimed at creating apartments and storefront space. CRDA is overseeing the reshaping of the Bushnell South neighborhood. The quasi-public CRDA will now have to decide whether to seek new proposals for the nearly 3-acre site or potentially shift to a different focus that could include a larger share of homeownership options.

Plans for crucial piece of new CT neighborhood suffers major setback. ‘More questions than answers.’

State officials have stopped work on the Ponemah Mills site in Taftville as they investigate whether excavated material there is contaminated. McCormack wrote that he and DEEP officials met Tuesday with a representative of One Key LLC, the New Jersey developer in charge of renovating the historical cotton mill complex into a combination of market-rate and affordable apartments and amenities. The larger mill building on the site, which contains 237 apartments plus 77 more in a rear wing, has already been renovated and is currently housing tenants. The second half of the renovation is still underway at the south mill, where One Key is working on a $40 million project to create 146 apartments along with a restaurant in a smaller building to the west. He said any request to reuse polluted soil on the site would need to be authorized by the Remediation Division, which has not received such a request. One Key officials could not be reached for comment Thursday.

https://theday.com/news/719944/state-halts-work-at-ponemah-mills-site/#

Attorney General William Tong filed an enforcement action against Salvatore R. Carabetta and his LLCs for illegally encroaching on Lamentation Mountain State Park property, according to a lawsuit filed in Hartford Superior Court. The action alleges that since owning the property, Carabetta has illegally clearcut acres of state forest, and has unlawfully built numerous fixtures on state property, including guest a guest house, a basketball court, two sheds, an animal shed, an asphalt driveway and a drainage system with runoff into the state park. The lawsuit also claims Carabetta took additional measures to prevent public access to the state park lands, including padlocking the access road with large “Private No Trespassing” signs affixed to state park trees, according to the lawsuit.

https://www.ctinsider.com/recordjournal/article/carabetta-encroaching-deep-lawsuit-berlin-meriden-20231969.php

A project to repave sections of Route 7 and the Merritt Parkway in the city will begin Friday, officials say. On its wesbite, the DOT said the work will also be taking place in Trumbull, Stratford and Milford. It said the contract was awarded to Waters Construction Co. at a cost of $11,349,172. Officials said Route 7 north and south will have lane closures from Friday until Oct. 21 from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., with ramp closures during that same span of months from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. They said Route 15 will also have lane closures from Friday until late Oct. from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m., as well as ramp closures from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. Likely starting in 2027, it calls for five traffic signals to regulate the flow of vehicles entering and exiting the highways; four new bridges; a replacement bridge; and new roadways on Norwalk’s Main Avenue and Creeping Hemlock Drive; and new ramps that make Route 7, the Merritt Parkway and Main Avenue more accessible to each other, according to DOT’s documentation from 2023.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/norwalk-rt-7-rt-15-merritt-construction-closures-20232777.php

he 232-unit housing complex, owned and managed by the Real Estate Asset Development Co., will include studio and one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments. READCO, based in Old Lyme, has owned the plaza since 1995, and built the theater as well as a Stop & Shop supermarket, McDonald’s, Berkshire Bank and Stonington Medical Center offices there. The theater closed in September 2022 when Regal went bankrupt. READCO President Michael Lech said his firm sold its other movie theater locations but held on to the Pawcatuck location. The facilities will include private and public garages and a clubhouse, featuring a swimming pool, barbecue pit, golf simulator and dog-washing station, as well as extensive outdoor walking trails, according to READCO. The company has also acquired an adjacent property that contains a house for future expansion.

https://theday.com/news/719634/former-pawcatuck-movie-theater-being-torn-down-to-make-way-for-80m-project/#

United Illuminating said Wednesday that is has cut nearly $70 million worth of investments in its Connecticut service territory as a result of regulators’ decision to deny much of the utility’s request for a rate increase on its customers in 2023. Those cuts, which company officials alluded to in recent statements bemoaning their financial position, mark the latest exchange in an escalating public feud between the state’s two largest electric utilities and their regulators at the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority. Connecticut’s largest utility company, Eversource, made a similar announcement last year that it was cutting more $500 million worth of investments in the state over five years as a result of its frustrations with PURA’s regulatory approach.

United Illuminating, citing PURA rate case, cuts $70M in CT investments

Guided by an excavation worker, Mayor Kevin Scarpati took the first cut out of the city’s biggest eyesore Wednesday at 116 Cook Ave. Scarpati took out the front entry-way in the 77,000-square foot building that blighted the lower Cook Avenue neighborhood. Its demolition will yield two cleared brownfields and hopes for more economic or community development. In January, the Meriden City Council voted to include $2.6 million in its capital improvement budget to demolish the building. That spending will be offset by a $2 million state grant. The completion of this project will result in about a dozen properties, including 116 Cook Ave., being removed from the city’s flood plain. The Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection oversees the permitting, design review, and oversight of the flood control project.

https://www.ctinsider.com/recordjournal/article/meriden-vacant-building-116-cook-demolition-20228891.php

A company is proposing a project in Plainfield to address Connecticut’s growing trash problem. Developed by SMART Technology Systems, LLC, the SMART Technology Solution uses sorting as well as waste processing and conversion technologies to transform trash into renewable electricity. The electricity produced by the plant is renewable, as there is a never-ending supply of trash used to produce it. The project is planned to be located on Norwich Road and Black Hill Road in Plainfield. Due to the limited capacity of landfills in Connecticut, many municipalities have been transporting their trash out of state. The cost to do this continues to increase and the capacity of out of state landfills is in question.

https://www.norwichbulletin.com/story/news/local/2025/03/20/smart-technology-solution-plant-proposed-to-convert-trash-to-electricity-plainfield/82416183007/

An overgrown former hat factory site with mercury in the soil and a vacant former county courthouse with asbestos and lead paint in its interior are the target of separate cleanup plans worth $4.2 million in state brownfield grants. The first step, which the City Council took on March 4, is to apply for a $200,000 state grant to study the severity of the contamination in the building. “The use of the building will dictate how much work needs to go into it,” said Iadarola, who told the City Council he was last in the building three years ago. “Overall, I didn’t see any major failing foundations or anything of that magnitude – nothing that would require a tear down and rebuild.” The City Council on March 4 applied for a $4 million grant to remove mercury from the site, which is bordered on the east by the Kohanza Brook.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/danbury-old-courthouse-hat-factory-cleanup-grants-20226394.php