Demolition of New London’s Crystal Avenue high-rises out to bid

Greg Smith  New London — The city has issued a call for bids on the demolition and environmental cleanup of the residential high-rises on Crystal Avenue that have been vacant since the summer of 2018.

Requests for proposals for the project are being accepted through March 9, and city officials hope to have the buildings razed by spring, with the majority of the costs being shouldered by the state.

The site is the former home of Thames River Apartments, a 124-unit federally subsidized housing complex for low-income families. For years it was the source of complaints from residents over deferred maintenance and deteriorating conditions. A joint effort by the city and New London Housing Authority, prompted by a long-running class-action lawsuit, led to U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development approval to move residents to private properties with Section 8 housing vouchers.

The last residents moved out in 2018. The city later bought the property for $185,000 and rezoned the 12-acre site to commercial and industrial with the idea of turning a tax-exempt property into a tax generator.

New London Mayor Michael Passero said the apartment complex, tucked in an industrial area in the shadow of the Gold Star Memorial Bridge, should never have been built and was a black eye for the city. Now that residents are moved out, the property represents an asset to the city "and a great opportunity for expanding the grand list,” he said.

“Our intention is to begin marketing the property very shortly," Passero said.

Early discussion about uses for the property had included a connection to the multimillion-dollar reconstruction of nearby State Pier by the state and offshore wind industry. The Connecticut Port Authority, which oversees the State Pier property, had briefly been in discussions with the city about uses of the Crystal Avenue site. However, those talks never led to any commitments.

The state pledged $2 million toward the demolition project during discussion of the state's investment at State Pier. In his announcement about the funding in 2018, Gov. Ned Lamont said, “New London and the state are collaborating to usher in a new era of growth and prosperity as the addition of the offshore wind industry to the city’s economic base propels the city to new prominence."

New London has since soured on the plans for State Pier because of what Passero repeatedly has said is a lack of fair compensation as host city.

Peter Davis, executive director of the Renaissance City Development Association, said once the city has chosen a firm for the demolition work, it will go to the state for approval of the process. The $2 million contributed by the state is administered by the state Department of Economic and Community Development from the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection's Urban Site Remedial Action Program. The program facilitates cleanup, reuse and redevelopment of polluted commercial and industrial properties.

Consulting firm Tighe & Bond performed a detailed environmental assessment of the property last year and, as expected, turned up pollutants in the buildings that included asbestos, PCBs and lead. Davis said the levels were below the threshold that warranted federal Environmental Protection Agency oversight.

Tighe & Bond additionally was hired to develop the remediation and development plan for the bid packages. The city has spent a total of $113,000 in state money with the firm, Davis said.

While the final cost will remain an unknown until bids come in, city officials are hoping to not only cover costs of removing hazardous materials and demolishing the buildings but making the property as close to development ready as possible.

Interested bidders are expected to gather for a visit to the property Feb. 16.

Biden hopes infrastructure can bridge partisan divide

Josh Boak Matthew Daly  AP  WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden is hoping that launching an effort to build roads and bridges can help to unite Democrats and Republicans in a time of sharp partisan divisions.

Biden met with lawmakers from both parties at the White House to discuss infrastructure on Thursday, even as the Senate is holding impeachment proceedings against former President Donald Trump where partisan divisions are on full display.

“I’ve been around long enough," Biden said, "that infrastructure wasn’t a Republican or a Democratic issue.”

The president specifically mentioned the potential for improvement projects in the states of the senators attending the meeting, signaling that lawmakers might be willing to cooperate in order to make their voters' lives better.

Biden highlighted the need for repairs to “a lot of bridges in West Virginia.” Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, the ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, was among those in attendance. She later voiced her support for a “bipartisan surface transportation reauthorization bill that makes long-term investments in our nation’s roads and bridges.”

The president also referenced Route 9 in his home state of Delaware, which he shares with Democratic Sen. Tom Carper, the committee chairman, who was also in the Oval Office meeting Thursday and had discussed these issues with Biden last week.

“The American people desperately want us to bring our roads, trains and bridges out of the last century and into the future," Carper said after Thursday's meeting.

Carper pledged to work on a transportation bill that will focus on reducing greenhouse gas emissions by cars and trucks and boosting electric cars. “I’m glad it’s at the top of the administration’s agenda.″

The current authorization bill for surface transportation expires in September, so “there is no time to waste,″ Carper said, adding that he expects bipartisan support for the reauthorization bill in the Senate.

Also at the meeting were Vice President Kamala Harris, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg virtually, Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma and Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland.

Inhofe later told reporters that the meeting with Biden was "very good, very good.

“One reason is that I’ve known the president forever, and we’ve worked on highway bills before," Inhofe said. “The main thing that I want to be careful on is when you’re working on infrastructure that’s high dollar stuff.”

Biden said there are “a number of things out there that the American people are looking for us to step up" and do. During the presidential campaign, Biden committed to deploying $2 trillion on infrastructure and clean energy investments over four years.

His campaign pledged that millions of jobs would flow from repairing roads, building electric vehicle charging stations, weatherizing buildings, improving access to public transit and updating the U.S. power grid to be carbon-pollution free by 2035.

Since the pandemic began in February 2020, the United States has lost 256,000 construction jobs, lowering total construction employment to 7.4 million. Still, total construction spending has increased slightly to an annualized rate of $1.49 trillion, according to the Census Bureau. About a quarter of that spending comes from the federal, state and local governments.

Both the Obama and Trump administrations famously promised to invest in infrastructure, only never fully to deliver. The term “infrastructure week” became something of a joke during the Trump era, when it was associated with a policy push that was meant to take public attention away from controversial remarks or actions by the president.

Biden has been warned that his push for $1.9 trillion in coronavirus relief might hamper a later push to get bipartisan support for infrastructure improvements. In a speech earlier this month to the Senate, Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, said a party-line vote on financial relief would “poison the well” for infrastructure.

“I think it’s going to be harder if we start off on the wrong foot, if we start off in a purely partisan way,” Portman said.

The Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University released an analysis Wednesday about the infrastructure needs of 134 cities. Its survey found cities prioritizing transportation and water and climate projects, but also projects to address the fallout from the pandemic such as broadband access, emergency response and health facilities, and public transit for essential workers.

“Mayors and other local regional leaders around the country are very much in alignment with what President Biden has talked about, especially with climate change," said Bill Fulton, director of the institute. "But it’s clear that the pandemic has changed infrastructure needs.”

Massachusetts demo firm hired for Waterbury project

Michael Puffer   WATERBURY — City officials on Friday awarded a Massachusetts company a $1 million contract to demolish eight buildings of the former Anaconda-American Brass site on Freight Street.

Costello Dismantiling Co. has six months to clear eight buildings on 10.5 acres at 130 Freight St., according to its contract with the Waterbury Development Corp.

These include a massive, crumbling, brick factory building fronting Freight Street, an office building that burned late last year, a building once used by Phoenix Soil and a collection of smaller buildings.

Work is expected to begin the last week of January or first week of February, WDC Environmental Engineer Mansi Doshi told the WDC board of directors Friday.

The city claimed the 10.5-acre property at 130 Freight St. and its collection of decaying industrial buildings for unpaid taxes late last year.

Mayor Neil M. O’Leary hopes to flatten the buildings and work on cleaning polluted soils to see the property and others around it redeveloped – generating jobs and taxes for the city.

Eight companies bid on the demolition work and Costello was the lowest qualified bidder.

Former Gov. Dannel Malloy’s administration awarded Waterbury a $1.5 million grant for the demolition and cleanup work at 130 Freight St.

Pesce said the city is still contemplating how to best use the remaining $500,000.

City attorneys are also working to claim a neighboring 3.5-acre parcel that fronts West Main Street as part of the broader redevelopment. It contains a metal-sided industrial building that is falling apart. The demolition of that building is not covered under the contract approved by the Waterbury Development Corp. board of directors Friday.

The demolition work will leave the foundations behind. After the buildings are down, the city is planning further studies to determine what sort of environmental cleanup is needed ahead of redevelopment.