A heavy excavator was clearing land on Monday to make space for a 24-unit apartment building just outside the city’s downtown limits, where a row of three apartment houses known as “the barracks” were once a blighting influence. “We have a good city with some new housing coming in, and there’s going to be more of it popping up,” said Joseph DaSilva, a landlord and developer who is building the new four-story apartment house on Town Hill Avenue in Danbury. The city’s professional Planning Department gave its approval Jan. 15 requiring, among other conditions, that “the on-site storm drainage system shall remain private, and regular maintenance is crucial for the system to continue to function as intended.” The start of construction for DaSilva Apartments comes one week after the city updated its downtown development rules to bring the city’s Main Street corridor back to life.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/danbury-construction-apartment-town-hill-ave-start-20140909.php

On Monday, Jan. 27, the regional utility holding company agreed to sell Aquarion Water Co. for $1.6 billion plus debt to the New Haven-area’s Regional Water Authority, nearly a year after putting the business up for sale. Regulators had nixed an Aquarion rate hike request in 2023. Then on Tuesday, Eversource CEO Joe Nolan Jr. and his deputies at Eversource gathered in Cambridge, Mass. alongside smiling public officials for the groundbreaking of a $1.8 billion, underground electrical substation with new urban transmission lines — a substation that’s said to be one of the most advanced in the world, extending more than100 feet below the surface as part of a mixed-use development. In his speech, Nolan said nary a negative word about Connecticut. He didn’t have to. The multi-billion-dollar actions spoke loudly enough: In Connecticut, we will invest the bare minimum to maintain reliability and we might see some slippage on that front.

https://www.ctpost.com/business/article/eversource-cuts-ct-mass-20064058.php

City officials are looking to press forward with plans to develop commercial space at the former Bigelow Boiler site on River Street. Michael Piscitelli, New Haven’s economic development administrator, said the work is related to remediation of the site prior to “turning it over” to a developer for a commercial space that could potentially house up to five businesses at 198 River Street and parking at the other two parcels on the site. According to the application materials submitted to the City Plan Commission for approval, the city anticipates construction will begin in the third quarter of 2025 and conclude in the third quarter of 2026.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/new-haven-bigelow-boiler-site-commercial-20058722.php

The town has been awarded a $3.5 million federal grant to construct a sidewalk on the east side of Route 69 from Prospect Elementary School to the center of town. The busy route also is known as Waterbury Road. Prospect was awarded a federal Transportation Alternatives grant that includes a 20% match from the town. The town’s sidewalk task force held a special meeting Tuesday to get the latest project moving. It will start with an 18-month planning and design process, and take an estimated three to four years to complete. Chris Faulkner of VHB will serve as the liaison for the U.S. Department of Transportation. The funds will come from the Federal Highway Administration and be passed through DOT. The town initially will pay the entire cost of the project before it applies for an 80% reimbursement.

https://www.rep-am.com/localnews/2025/01/31/prospect-sidewalk-job-gets-3-5m-boost/#login

The site of an approved residential and retail project at 280 Main Ave. in Norwalk, once planned to be a BJ’s Wholesale Club, has been listed for sale for $15 million. Despite the listing, Planning and Zoning Director Steve Kleppin said the site still has the Planning and Zoning Commission’s approval for development. That approval allows for the construction of a three two-story structures: a 19,000-square-foot retail space with 10 apartments above it; a 2,240-square-foot coffee shop; and a 2,200-square-foot restaurant, along with an electric vehicle charging station. “The owner can pull a permit to construct that development if they wish, or they can sell and someone else can propose a different project,” Kleppin said in an email Thursday. “If what they propose is a completely different project, they would probably have to start from scratch. If there were minor modifications, that might be a simpler process. Hard to say exactly without seeing what was proposed.”

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/norwalk-280-main-ave-bjs-retail-apartments-20066246.php

From demolition of a portion of the former Founders Plaza office park to the sale of town-owned property for a 400-unit apartment complex, 2025 will be another year to push ahead large-scale economic redevelopment projects in East Hartford. Town staff are setting the stage to invest a portion of a $6.5 million state grant to demolish the former Bank of America office building at 99 Founders Plaza, making way for a 300-unit apartment building facing the Connecticut River, Martin noted. This is the first installment of a multi-year effort to build roughly 1,000 apartments mixed with retail, entertainment and other commercial uses along the riverfront. Martin said the investors behind “Port Eastside” have invested more than $22 million into the acquisition of various parcels for the project.

East Hartford mayor touts progress on large apartment, other developments

A Hartford-based rail advocate who travels frequently, Casey Moran, has pitched an idea to build a rail line that would connect Bradley International Airport to the region’s rail network. The Bradley Airport Rail Link would provide a one-seat train ride to Bradley from throughout much of Connecticut. It would have stops in Hartford, Bloomfield and Windsor Locks. The idea was picked up by Rep. Christopher Rosario (D-Bridgeport) who has introduced a bill that would amend a state statute to require the Department of Transportation to establish a new commuter rail line from Hartford’s Union Station to the airport. Bradley’s rail spur would run off the existing Hartford Line, which is served by CTrail and Amtrak trains, and runs between New Haven and Springfield. Adding frequent and efficient rail service would change people’s perceptions of Bradley and provide a long-term return on state investment, he says.

Proposed rail link to Bradley International Airport gains traction with new bill

A new, undated memo from the DOT directs the department to give grant preferences to “communities with marriage and birth rates higher than the national average.” The action comes after the DOT announced that Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy — who was confirmed to the position on Wednesday — had authorized a series of actions to advance President Donald Trump’s agenda to “rescind woke policies” and roll back regulations. Jessica Tillipman, associate dean for government procurement law studies at The George Washington University Law School in Washington, D.C., said she and her colleagues don’t believe they have ever seen a federal government policy tied to marriage and birth rates, and said it’s not clear how it would be enacted. Duffy isn’t the only administration official focused on the country’s birth rate. Vice President JD Vance said in a speech this month that he wants Americans to have more babies.

https://www.constructiondive.com/news/dot-grant-preference-marriage-birth-rate/738942/

Residents on both the east and west sides of the city say they live with intolerable traffic noise caused by highway construction projects and hope state officials can help. Two years ago, the state Department of Transportation embarked on a $500 million highway project to reconfigure the interchange of I-91, I-691 and Route 15 in Meriden to improve traffic flow and make it safer. Before the press conferences to announce the projects, workers cleared trees and brush in the buffers between the highway and the homes, and residents lost their noise barriers. Quinn recently introduced legislation asking the General Assembly to authorize CT DOT to install sound barriers eastbound on I-691 near the Steuben Street neighborhood, on I-91 southbound between the Middletown line and Exit 18, Preston Avenue, for residents on Thurrott Avenue. He estimates the total coverage to be about 1.5 to 2 miles and the cost between $1 million to $2 million per mile, depending on how it’s constructed. Noise barriers in those areas were not included in the state’s project.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/recordjournal/article/meriden-highway-noise-complaints-quinn-bill-20063386.php

The administration of President Donald J. Trump has informed the Connecticut Department of Transportation it would, “to the maximum extent permitted by law,” link federal transportation funding to policies on masks, vaccines, tolls and immigration enforcement. The U.S. Supreme Court has held the federal government can impose conditions on federal funding, but those conditions must be germane to the federal interest in the projects for which the money is used and cannot cross the line from enticement to coercion. Lamont said Thursday that DOT was one of at least three state agencies getting directives establishing new ill-defined conditions for federal funding that arrived after a chaotic 48 hours of vague and ultimately conflicting advise regarding a pause in a broad range of federal funding. Federal grants are one of the two chief ways Connecticut pays for this construction, the other being state borrowing – which is repaid using sales and fuel tax receipts in the budget’s Special Transportation Fund.

Trump ties transportation funding to immigration compliance