A 738-bed student housing development is expected to break ground later this year in Storrs just off of the University of Connecticut campus in an effort to help alleviate the ongoing student housing crunch. Landmark Properties has closed on the property called The Mark Mansfield, which will be located at 134 North Eagleville Road adjacent to the UConn main campus, and will serve as the general contractor. UConn spokesperson Stephanie Reitz said student housing options on UConn’s Storrs campus and nearby have been in flux, with large additions that include the opening of Connecticut Hall and the addition of more than 650 beds there at the start of the current academic year. Mansfield town manager Ryan Aylesworth said the new building will fit the character of the buildings near the UConn campus. “The project is well supported for a few reasons. The location is a high-density area that wouldn’t impede on lesser development areas,” Aylesworth said. “We know there is a high demand for additional housing at UConn.

Massive off-campus housing development planned near UConn. Think pool, fitness center, walk to campus.

An 80-acre site in Hartford’s South Meadows received garbage from most of Connecticut for decades, processing it in a massive facility that burned trash for energy. The quasi-public Materials Innovation and Recycling Authority shut the faltering plant down in 2022, and local officials have been pushing to prep the large site in Hartford’s industrial South Meadows neighborhood for redevelopment. That preparation will take years and cost anywhere from $27.87 million to $333.87 million, depending on how many of the existing buildings are demolished, and what sort of future development is pursued, according to a recently completed study. Those cost estimates are also based on a 2026 start date, and rise sharply with delay. CRDA – a quasi-governmental agency responsible for economic development efforts in Greater Hartford – is a logical choice for the job, Freimuth said. But his 13-staff agency already has a hefty workload and would need additional manpower and money to take on the South Meadows site, he said. “We have been asked to assess whether CRDA can play a role,” Freimuth said. “It would be a major undertaking of our staff and resources. Hopefully, we would get more resources if that comes our way.”

Study: Costs to prep Hartford’s 80-acre former trash-burning site for residential redevelopment range up to $333.87M

A historic iron bridge has taken people over Mill River since 1888, but it is proving unable to cross a deeper divide. It’s the gap between the struggling West Side and the thriving downtown; between longtime residents and newcomers; between the haves and the have-nots. Through its stages of deterioration, the bridge has been closed to cars, shored up as a pedestrian crossing, replaced with a “temporary” prefabricated walkbridge, and now abandoned in a sorry state. West Side residents and their supporters say no one cared about the West Main Street bridge before the then-deteriorating downtown was turned around. Luxury apartment high-rises went up, and city officials began spending millions of dollars to reroute the stagnant Mill River and rebuild what had been a neglected, crime-ridden Mill River Park. One is to restore the historic elements of the bridge and rebuild it to support two lanes of car traffic. The prefabricated walkbridge would be removed. Estimated cost: $6.7 million. The other is to take down the iron bridge and remove the trusses, installing them as a historic artifact in the park. The prefabricated walkbridge would remain. Estimated cost: $1.2 million.

Vote to Restore Bridge Traffic Heads to Stamford Reps

State officials recently temporarily halted renovations to the former American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) building downtown over labor law violations. Juliet Manalan, a labor department spokesperson, confirmed that agency’s wage and workplace standards division issued stop work orders to a trio of businesses involved in the project for misclassifying workers and not having workers’ compensation insurance: Odysseus Multi-tech and Pillar Management, both of New York, and a J. Gonzalez, of Connecticut, which had the insurance but not for the correct amount of employees or type of work. Odysseus was also cited for having unlicensed personnel performing plumbing. A pair of construction unions — the Fairfield County Building Trades and Carpenter’s Local 326 — scheduled a 10 a.m. rally Saturday at 430 John St. to protest the violations. Their announcement noted this is the second high profile redevelopment in Bridgeport where stop work orders were issued over workers’ compensation and misclassification issues.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/bridgeport-att-building-renovations-halted-20234001.php

The approximately $4.2 million Railroad Square Revitalization project has been awarded to Yield Industries. Officials are now awaiting approval by the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development, said City Engineer and Deputy Public Works Director Paul Kundzins. “Construction will begin as soon as we can mobilize,” he said. “The project is required to be completed by the end of this calendar year, so we’re going to be done. Busy, busy summer.” At $4.1 million with $207,355 for contingencies and quantity fluctuations, the Torrington-based Yield Industries’ bid was the lowest, Kundzins said. The project will be funded by a DECD Community Challenge Grant, the City of Torrington Pavement Management Program Bond Fund and the state Department of Transportation Town Aid Road program. The overall project includes the replacement of the railroad platform and construction of a canopy at Railroad Square, the $632,967 contract for which was awarded to Millennium Builders Inc. in January.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/waterbury/article/torrington-railroad-square-yield-industries-20231599.php

An elevated pedestrian bridge will now be able to connect Choate Rosemary Hall’s north and south campus along Christian Street. The proposal was brought before the town council last year when the school sought an air easement to construct the 17-foot-tall wooden bridge, which is planned to be located just south of Rosemary Lane. It was recently approved by the Planning and Zoning Commission. Officials said the project would have limited environmental impact due to the narrow footprint and the porous asphalt that will be used for the overflow parking area. While twice as expensive as normal asphalt, it would allow the water to seep into the soil directly beneath the paved area and wouldn’t require a catch basin, which would likely come at a greater expense for the school to maintain in the long term.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/recordjournal/article/wallingford-chaote-bridge-approval-christian-st-20219633.php

Acting Superintendent of Schools Royce Avery believes the school system must first secure the funding and construct new school buildings before it moves forward with a proposal to shutter several old facilities. A recently completed study found the district’s aging buildings will need $702.5 million in upgrades over the next decade and recommends closing seven aging schools to save money on costly repairs. The report notes many of the schools were originally built more than a century ago and that replacing badly rundown facilities with brand new ones could help the cash-strapped district save millions of dollars in maintenance costs. The district is holding three public forums this spring about the future of the facilities. The first will take place on March 31 at Harding High School, while the second will be on April 1 at Central High School and the third will be on April 2 at Bassick High School.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/education/article/bridgeport-school-closures-new-buildings-20226926.php

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/#