Bristol, Groton officials: State pressured them on school building contracts

Officials in Bristol and Groton say they were pressured to scrap competitive bids for school-related construction projects in early 2020 and instead told to award multimillion-dollar contracts to companies pre-selected by the state, echoing claims made by other Connecticut towns.

Current and former officials in both municipalities said they received orders from the Connecticut Office of School Construction Grants and Review, which was led by former legislator Konstantinos Diamantis, to reject the winning bids for demolition services and hazardous materials cleanup for three different schools.

They said they were instructed to give that work instead to two companies that had existing emergency contracts with the state.

A letter obtained by the CT Mirror alleges that Diamantis was responsible for the “directive” that was issued to city officials in Bristol in April 2020.

Diamantis led the state’s school construction grant program for more than six years, but he retired last October after Gov. Ned Lamont placed him on paid administrative leave in conjunction with an investigation into his daughter’s hiring at the state Division of Criminal Justice.

Diamantis was fired from his other position as deputy commissioner at the Office of Policy and Management the same day.

The state was subpoenaed by a federal grand jury around the same time for records related to Diamantis and several state-financed projects, including school construction grants and the State Pier in New London.

Norm Pattis, a lawyer who represents Kosta Diamantis, did not respond to a request for comment.

But in recent weeks, school officials and municipal leaders in Tolland, Hartford and New Britain have come forward, claiming they also felt pressured to pick school construction contractors that were recommended by the state in recent years.

Documents have also emerged that show a disgruntled contractor warned the Lamont administration and Attorney General William Tong as far back as April 2020 that state officials were allegedly sidestepping the normal bidding procedures for school-related projects.

The three school construction projects undertaken in Bristol and Groton in the spring of 2020 were all mentioned in letters sent to the attorney general’s office, Lamont’s budget secretary and his former chief operating officer.

And all three projects ran into similar issues, with state officials placing significant pressure on the municipalities to pick a demolition and hazardous material contractor that had a pre-existing relationship with the state.

The ‘directive’

Elected leaders and municipal employees in Groton and Bristol said they were baffled when the state instructed them to throw out the winning bids that had been chosen after a public procurement process.

They were also confused why the state was urging them to give the government contracts to companies that had already submitted less-favorable offers.

In the end, both municipalities ignored the state’s advice and awarded the contracts to companies that made lower bids.

But the episodes left some people questioning the actions and policies of the Office of School Construction Grants and Review.

“I do remember there was some talk about whether we had to dispense with the low bidder because the second-lowest bidder was on a state contract,” said Ellen Zoppo-Sassu, the former mayor of Bristol.

“I pushed back, because if there is a low bidder, there is a low bidder,” she added. “It was a very confusing thing right as we were beginning.”

Dale Clift, Bristol’s former corporation counsel, wrote a letter to Diamantis in May 2020 that described the back-and-forth that took place between the city and the state. It laid out a detailed timeline of what the state had communicated to the city.

The letter shows that the city received numerous bids for the demolition and abatement work for Bristol’s Memorial Boulevard Arts Magnet School on April 21, 2020.

Select Demo Services, which is headquartered in New Hampshire, was the lowest bidder, offering to do the work for $4.73 million.

But before the contract could be finalized, Clift wrote, officials in the city were approached by Michael Sanders, a former employee at the state Department of Administrative Services. He advised the city to reject the other bids and hire Bestech, an Ellington-based company, instead.

According to Clift’s letter, that “directive” was delivered by Sanders but was issued by Diamantis.

Sanders worked as an associate project manager for construction services under Diamantis at the Office of School Construction Grants and Review, according to state records.

“(Sanders) represented that you were directing all bids for abatement and demolition to be rejected,” Clift told Diamantis in the letter. “This directive came so late in the process and was so surprising, the project personnel sought and received verbal reinforcement and validation of your directive over the next several days.”

Bestech, which did not respond to a phone call seeking comment for this story, had also bid on the demolition and abatement work at Bristol’s new magnet school.

It was considered the runner-up because it offered to perform the work for $200,000 more than Select Demo, which also did not return phone calls for this story.

Even so, the letter alleges Sanders “invoked” Diamantis’ “authority,” as the head of the state’s school construction grant program, to justify awarding the job to Bestech.

Sanders, who worked for the state government for 27 years and was a resident of Old Lyme, died late last year.

Police found the 53-year-old’s body at a home in Old Saybrook on Dec. 17. The state’s Chief Medical Examiner later listed his cause of death as an accidental overdose tied to cocaine and fentanyl.

The letter notes that Bristol initially went along with the state’s plan to award the work to Bestech after Sanders delivered his message to the city, but local officials reversed course after Select Demo protested the decision.

Clift, Bristol’s former attorney, said he wrote the letter to Diamantis in May 2020 in order to confirm that the state would support the city’s choice to stick with Select Demo. He wanted to help the city to “avoid any legal jeopardy” from that decision.

But Diamantis never responded to the letter, Clift said.

‘State-qualified contractors’

Meanwhile, in Groton, local officials also struggled to understand the orders that were handed down by the state.

The town was busy that spring with two state-financed renovation projects at the West Side Elementary School and Cutler Elementary School.

Local officials had already selected O&G Industries, a Torrington-based company, to serve as the primary contractor for the projects, but O&G needed to hire a demolition and hazardous materials cleanup crew for the job.

To do so, the town followed the normal procedures and solicited offers from a number of companies specializing in those services.

After, the town was prepared to hire Stamford Wrecking Services for the West Side project and American Environmental Inc. for the Cutler project.

Those companies, which did not respond to a request for comment, came in as the lowest bidders for the elementary school jobs. But just like in Bristol, local officials were stopped before they could complete the contracts, officials said.

Greg Hanover, Groton’s Director of Public Works, said someone from the state notified O&G that it should reject the lowest bids and award the contracts to AAIS, a West Haven company that was the runner-up for both school projects.

AAIS did not respond to a phone call or email for this story.

“Somebody contacted O&G from the Office of School Constructions Grants and Review and informed them that there’s a new policy in place and that for demolition contractors we were supposed to use one of the state-qualified contractors and pay them on a time and material basis,” Hanover said.

That didn’t sit well with Groton officials, according to Hanover. He said the town “pushed back” and informed the state that the town had already completed the procurement process for the work.

There were significant price disparities between what the winning companies had offered and what AAIS had proposed. For the West Side school project, for instance, Stamford Wrecking’s bid was nearly $240,000 less than the offer submitted by AAIS.

“It kind of went back and forth, but we ultimately prevailed over the state and hired the two low bidders,” Hanover said.

Roughly a year later, Diamantis issued a policy statement that clarified that it was up to municipalities to decide the “appropriateness” of using demolition and hazardous material contractors that were pre-selected by the state.

Hartford fired consultant now at the center of state school construction scandal; cost a key factor, mayor says

 EDMUND H. MAHONY and ELIZA FAWCETT

The city of Hartford hired a new consultant on a school building project — even through it already had a different consultant under contract for the same work.

Similar issues are becoming public as federal investigators dig in on an investigation focused largely on the state’s pricey school construction program — a program under which the state spends hundreds of millions of dollars annually to reimburse cities and towns for the costs of building and renovating schools.

At the center of the investigation, according to a federal grand jury subpoena served on the state in October, is former state Rep. Konstantinos Diamantis, a Bristol Democrat who ran the Connecticut Office of School Construction Grants & Review. Gov. Ned Lamont fired Diamantis from his position of deputy secretary of the Office of Policy and Management on Oct. 28, days after the subpoena was served.

Municipal school officials have alleged that Diamantis, who had substantial control over how school construction grants were awarded and at what rate cities and towns were reimbursed, used threats to withhold state financing as leverage to press them to hire builders and other contractors of his choice.

Hartford officials said Diamantis inserted himself into the city’s Bulkeley High School reconstruction project to press the city to hire a consultant. The city hired Construction Advocacy Professionals, an eastern Connecticut consultant that acts as the owner’s representative on construction projects.

At the time of the Diamantis intervention, Hartford had the firm ARCADIS/O&G under contract as its owner’s representative. The ARCADIS joint venture had been hired in 2010 when the city school system was under state control and had been supervising a massive, city-wide school renovation program for a decade.

People familiar with the event said Diamantis was critical of work done by ARCADIS/O&G. The city also believed it would be reimbursed by the state, through Diamantis, for the cost of CAP’s services.

When Hartford learned from Diamantis’ old office — after his dismissal in October — that the city would not be reimbursed for work by CAP, the city terminated the contract, Mayor Luke Bronin said.

“Since the state covers the overwhelming share of school construction costs, the city’s school building committee gave a great deal of deference to the state official in charge of school construction — including his direction that an additional owner’s representative should be hired to oversee project costs, at the state’s expense,” Bronin said.

“When it was recently made clear that the state would not reimburse the costs for that firm, the contract with that firm was immediately terminated,” Bronin said.

Attorney Craig Raabe, who represents CAP owner Antonietta DiBenedetto Roy, said she declined comment.

Municipal officials and contractors across the state have complained about being pressed by Diamantis over who to hire and the suspension of competitive bidding or other project issues, including in Groton, New London, Manchester, Tolland, Hartford, New Britain, Danbury and Norwalk.

State representative and former Tolland Town Council Chairman Tammy Nuccio said recently that Diamantis used his control over state financing to bully her town into skipping competitive bidding and hiring CAP and a construction manager of his choice.

“It was, ‘Do what we want or you are not going to have emergency status,’ " Nuccio said. “ ’Do what we want or you are not going to have funding. Do what we want or you are going to go over and you are going to have to pay that amount.’ Kosta said, point blank, ‘I own this project.’ ”

In New Britain, officials said Diamantis’ recommendation that the city hire a consultant led to the hiring of CAP and touched off a dispute between Mayor Erin Stewart and the school board. The Stewart administration wanted to supervise the project in-house. The board however, followed Diamantis’ advice.

At the time, in 2019, New Britain had a dozen or so school projects that had been completed but needed to be closed out in order to obtain state reimbursement. Merrill Gay, vice president of the school board, said “the state” recommended hiring CAP as a consultant to complete the work. Gay said he did not recall pressure to hire CAP.

“It didn’t seem unreasonable to get a consultant on this, and that the state was saying, ‘Here’s somebody qualified who can get it done for you.’ It didn’t seem that unrealistic,” he said. “I don’t know if there was any pressure from the state that the administration was getting. We didn’t hear about it in the board.”

Disputes also surfaced elsewhere over the intervention of Diamantis’ office in the award of demolition work, which occurs early in the construction process and can involve unexpected costs arising from discovery and removal of hazardous materials. The construction industry has complained to the towns, the Lamont administration and to state Attorney General William Tong about decisions by Diamantis to waive competitive bidding and award contracts on school jobs in Groton and Bristol.

According to correspondence, both towns were instructed by Diamantis or his office to reject contractors selected after submitting the low price in competitive bidding in 2020 and hire contractors who had submitted higher bids, but were on a state list of companies pre-selected to do emergency work. The towns initially followed the instructions, but ultimately reversed themselves and hired the low bidders. The state intervention and ultimate reversal is demonstrated in a long letter, obtained by the Courant, from an attorney for the city of Bristol to Diamantis on May 5, 2020. Corporation Counsel Wyland Dale Clift asks Diamantis to clarify his instruction to scrap the low bid in favor of a higher price and give the city “assurance and confirmation” that doing so would not put it and its general contractor in “legal jeopardy.”

The letter claimed, among other things, that a former Diamantis assistant “represented that you were directing all bids for abatement and demolition to be rejected. This directive came so late in the process and was so surprising, the project personnel sought and received verbal reinforcement and validation of your directive over the next several days.”

Diamantis’ lawyer, Norm Pattis, said disagreement over bidding for the demolition work may arise from different accounting practices for the costs of construction and hazardous material abatement.

“The lines between abatement and school construction projects were not entirely clear to many local school administrators,” Pattis said. “And the local administrators ended up with the lowest bidder. We reject the suggestion that Mr. Diamantis did anything inconsistent with his duties as a state administrator.”

In another letter obtained by the Courant, a construction industry lawyer, Ray Garcia, working with a trade group, asked Tong to intervene “to stop the persistent effort by the Office of Policy and Management and municipalities to circumvent statutory public bidding requirements for Connecticut financed school construction projects.”

Tong said Thursday he arranged a series of meetings with Garcia and a variety of state officials and believes the specific concerns of bid procedures in Groton and Bristol were resolved.

Diamantis, other state officials met with unions and industry to solve issues in 2020

John Moritz

Faced with mounting complaints from contractors and union officials in the summer of 2020, Konstantinos Diamantis worked with top aides to Gov. Ned Lamont to help diffuse tensions surrounding his oversight of school construction contracts, the embattled former state official said this week in emails and interviews. Diamantis, who is now at the center of an investigation by federal prosecutors into how the state handled school building contracts and grants, said those efforts in some instances led to positive results.

The complaints and allegations revolve around three basic points: Labor concerns, especially over circumventing “project labor agreements,” which assure union participation in projects; improper use of a longstanding list of pre-approved contractors that cities, towns and the state can hire for demolition and hazardous waste removal in emergencies; and the steering of work to favored contractors by the state Office of School Construction Grants and Review, which Diamantis headed until he retired under pressure from Lamont on Oct. 28.

Diamantis denies wrongdoing, saying that the concerns raised about his office amounted to “misinterpretation and process errors” in some cases and simple disagreements with union leaders on other matters.

Speaking of labor concerns, for example, Diamantis recalled this week that he and union leaders “discussed all those issues, we resolved those issues and we moved along to work cooperatively moving forward.”

Emergency contractors list

The emergence of the nearly two-year old complaints involving Diamantis and the school construction office face renewed relevance because they occurred well before federal investigators began to subpoena state records related to Diamantis’ handling of the contracts.

Diamantis and others, including Attorney General William Tong, who responded to one complaint he received, say the state worked at the time to resolve the issues.

The issue that was brought to Tong’s office involved a Stamford-based demolition contractor, which accused Diamantis of circumventing competitive bidding practices by using an emergency bid list.

Raymond Garcia, an attorney for the contractor Stamford Wrecking, wrote in a letter to Tong’s office dated Feb. 2, 2021 requesting Tong’s assistance to require local officials and Diamantis’ office “to follow the laws of our state and publicly bid all elements of the school construction projects.”

Stamford Wrecking’s concerns, which were brought to the attention of state officials as early as April 2020, were first reported by the CT Mirror on Wednesday. Neither Garcia nor Stamford Wrecking’s owner, Irving Goldblum, responded to requests for comment this week.

Diamantis said he met with Lamont’s then-chief operating officer, Josh Geballe, and attorneys on Tong’s staff to resolve the allegations surrounding the emergency bid list.

“With the assistance of the AGs office the issue was resolved and a clear policy was created and reviewed,” Diamantis said in an email Wednesday, when asked of the complaints raised by Stamford Wrecking. “The office of school construction was to have sent it to all superintendents and to the various construction associations. Matter was resolved and since then no further issues on the use of state contracts.”

In an interview this week, Tong said that he helped facilitate discussions between Stamford Wrecking’s attorneys and the state officials involved with the school construction office. Tong said his recollection was that the issue was resolved and the projects in question were re-bid.

“We did what we often do, which is to step in and help a constituent who feels like they were not treated properly or something isn’t right,” Tong said, later adding “Frankly, we put a fair amount of work into it.”

One change, sources familiar with the talks said, was a message sent to municipalities spelling out the strict limits under which they should contract with the firms on the list without bids — small jobs with tight time pressure and emergencies such as the discovery of asbestos, for example.

Representatives with Lamont’s office and the Department of Administrative Services, which now oversees the school construction office, did not identify all of the changes put in place as a result of Stamford Wrecking’s complaints — and whether those changes were actually followed.

Union agreements

In a separate matter that arose in July 2020, labor union officials were planning to meet with Lamont that summer to complain that Diamantis had been pressuring local officials to use his preferred contractors and avoid labor agreements. That meeting happened — in Hartford under a tent at the Iron Workers Local 15 — but it was brief, sources said, and Lamont and a union official both said the topic of school contracts didn’t come up.

Instead, leaders of the Connecticut Building Trades Council took their concerns to others in the adminstration including Diamantis. He met directly with union and industry leaders, and other state officials, that same month in an effort to resolve the issues surrounding labor agreements, he said this week. A person familiar with the talks corroborated that story.

The issue seemed to die down after those meetings.

“It appeared to me that it calmed down because there was some progress made on all fronts including the use of PLA’s when appropriate on school construction projects,” the person familiar with the talks said this week, referring to project labor agreements, which assure union pay scale and union participation on certain construction jobs.

Gov. Lamont has said repeatedly that none of the concerns about Diamantis that bubbled up that summer were “actionable.” He likened the complaints that he was aware of to those typically made by a “disgruntled contractor.”

Broad labor concerns

Diamantis said in an email Wednesday the unions were primarily concerned with Lamont’s administration keeping its campaign commitments to utilize labor agreements on public works projects, particularly road construction. Department of Transportation Commissioner Joseph Giulietti was in attendance at the second meeting, Diamantis said, which was held at the Office of Policy and Management in Hartford.

In addition to directing the school construction office, Diamantis was deputy secretary at OPM, making him a top ranking overall state budget official under Secretary Melissa McCaw.

“The discussion was the list of items on the trades agenda as well as a discussion of the lack of projects moving forward from DOT,” Diamantis wrote in an email. “People needed to get to work and those projects needed to move from their prospective. We discussed the future with the feds moving forward with an infrastructure bill and what it meant for work in Connecticut . The commissioner explained his position and what the issues were. [There] was agreement to disagree on some issues and progress on others involving moving projects forward and moving designs along.”

When asked about the unions’ allegation at the time that he had “disparaged” labor agreements to local officials, Diamantis denied doing so, saying he had only commissioned a study from the University of Connecticut to determine if they were contributing to the state’s high cost of construction.

No authority to investigate

Tong said this week that his office’s authority to investigate issues such as those swirling around Diamantis in 2020 and 2021 is extremely limited. And while his office does have the authority to issue legal opinions to state agencies, Tong said those requests are kept confidential due to attorney-client privilege.

“Nobody referred anything to us for investigation, period,” Tong said. “Because that’s not our role.”

None of the concerns about Diamantis’ role administering school construction contracts — whether from the unions or Stamford Wrecking — made it to the State Contracting Standards Board, according to board member Robert Rinker.

The board, which serves as a procurement watchdog for state agencies, has the power to investigate allegations of improper bidding and take corrective action against contractors who are found to have violated state law, Rinker said.

While it is an “open question,” of whether contracts awarded with state funds directed through local school districts fall under the board’s jurisdiction, Rinker said that the board members were never given an opportunity to look into Diamantis’ handling of the contracts because no complaints were ever filed with the board.

“I don’t know how they missed us, but they did,” Rinker said on Wednesday.

‘Partners with towns...to keep costs down’

After further allegations of nepotism were leveled against Diamantis last fall, he was fired from his deputy secretary job and placed on paid leave by Lamont from his job as head of the Office of School Construction and Review. Instead of accepting the suspension, Diamantis retired.

The later set of allegations involved Diamantis’ daughter, Anastasia, being hired as an executive assistant to Chief State’s Attorney Richard Colangelo while he was also seeking approval for pay raises from Diamantis and other officials at OPM.

Since his departure, local officials who worked with Diamantis on school construction projects have publicly accused him of pressuring them to hire a construction management company that employed his daughter in a part-time role. One of those projects, fixing the foundation of the Birch Grove School in Tolland, was on the emergency bid list — even though it was a $46 million job.

That was the source of separate complaints made in early 2020 by Stamford Wrecking.

In addition to Tolland, officials in New Britain, Hartford, Groton and Bristol have publicly said Diamantis pressured them or suggested they should hire specified firms.

Diamantis has repeatedly denied that he abused his authority overseeing school construction contracts in any way, and insisted that any firms he suggested would have saved school districts money on projects.

“The office of school construction partners with towns to keep costs down,” he said in an email in response to some of those charges. State officials, he said, “were there to assist when needed to protect against increased budget costs.

Anastasia Diamantis was placed on paid leave from her job in the Chief State’s Attorney’s office this month, pending a full review of the allegations involving her father. Colangelo, the head of that office, announced his decision to retire last week.

Groton ‘prevailed’ in using low bidders for demolition, hazardous material abatement for new school projects

Kimberly Drelich

Groton — When the state told Groton in 2020 to use one of the state’s qualified contractors for demolition and hazardous material abatement at the two new elementary school sites, the town pushed back to instead use the companies it had chosen through a competitive bidding process, the town’s public works director says.

Irving Goldblum, president of Stamford Wrecking Co., which bid on the two Groton elementary school projects, alleged in April 2020 that the state Office of Policy and Management "intervened and potentially directed Groton to award the work to a contractor on the Emergency Bid List — not the low bidder for the worked based on the invitation to bidders for the Project," according to the document obtained by The Day under a Freedom of Information Act request.

News of the complaint made by Goldblum, and others related to projects in other municipalities, first was reported by The Connecticut Mirror.

Konstantinos Diamantis, formerly both the deputy secretary of the Office of Policy and Management and head of the Office of School Construction Grants and Review, told the CT Mirror that the list was to "help municipalities save money, not interfere in competitive bidding."

A federal grand jury issued a subpoena in October 2021 for documents, from January 2018 to the present, associated with Diamantis and concerning “the planning, bidding, awarding, and implementation” of school construction projects and hazardous materials abatement projects, and the State Pier redevelopment project in New London, according to the document obtained by The Day under a previous FOIA request.

Groton Director of Public Works Greg Hanover told The Day that two years ago Groton’s construction manager, O&G Industries, had bid out contracts for demolition and hazardous material removal for the elementary school projects.

After Groton received the low bids in March 2020, the state Office of School Construction Grants and Review informed Groton that it was supposed to use one of the state-qualified contractors, he said. The office at the time was under OPM but now is under the state Department of Administrative Services.

Hanover said he was not aware that the state was directing the town to use any one particular contractor as long as it was one on the approved list.

Since Groton already had received the low bids, it was not in favor of going that route, so its consultant, Arcadis, told the state that this was not going to work, Hanover said. Groton then received permission to use the lowest bidders for each site: Stamford Wrecking Co. for the former West Side Middle School — now Thames River Magnet School — and American Environmental Inc. of Holyoke, Mass., for the former Cutler Middle School — now Mystic River Magnet School.

“I think, in the end, we prevailed and got the project done under budget,” Hanover said. “Usually, using the lowest bidder is the best way to go.”

Stamford Wrecking's bid, with accepted alternates, for the West Side site was $1,997,300, while American Environmental Inc.'s was $1,453,000 for the Cutler site, according to project documents obtained by The Day under a FOIA request.

Two of the companies on the state contractor list — AAIS and Bestech — were among the companies that provided bids, but neither was the lowest bidder on either project, John Butkus, a senior program manager for Arcadis, wrote in an April 2020 email obtained through the FOIA request. The email included a series of questions to the Office of School Construction Grants and Review regarding the "new OSCGR direction regarding abatement and demo." In an earlier email that month, he said a rule has "come down from OSCGR that we throw out the bids and go (Time and Materials) with one of the state contract holders."

For West Side, with accepted alternates, Bestech's bid was $2,529,100, and AAIS's was $3,460,640, according to documents. For Cutler, with accepted alternates, Bestech's bid was $1,937,500 and AAIS's was $2,337,495.

"It is not and should not be common practice to require or pressure municipalities to use specific contractors in order to access state funding," a spokesperson for DAS said in a statement Thursday. "Our competitive bidding process, and collaboration with municipal leadership are key values in this administration. Since DAS has re-inherited the administration of the school construction grant program, DAS has adhered to all policies, laws, and ethical guidelines while ensuring complete transparency."

Groton voters in 2019 approved the $184.5 million school construction project — the Groton 2020 plan — to build a new consolidated middle school next to Robert E. Fitch High School and two new elementary schools on the sites of the former middle schools, determined to be the most cost-efficient option. The new Groton Middle School opened in September 2020, and the two new themed magnet elementary schools opened in September 2021.

Rick Norris, who served as project manager for the town, had said last month that the overall cost for the three schools was about $15 million under budget, though the numbers are not yet final. That does not mean the town has a pot of extra money but spent less than anticipated, he explained.

Stamford Wrecking, American Environmental Inc., Arcadis, O&G Industries, Bestech, AAIS and the state OPM did not immediately provide a comment to The Day.

Rhode Island development exec is key player in West Hartford UConn campus redevelopment

Greg Bordonaro

A top executive at a Rhode Island real estate development company has emerged as a key player in the redevelopment of UConn’s former satellite campus in West Hartford, the Hartford Business Journal has confirmed. 

Domenic Carpionato has been named project manager for the ownership group that is heading the highly-anticipated and closely-watched project, officials confirmed. 
 
He is the senior vice president of Carpionato Group, the firm currently developing the Avon Village Center project, a major office, retail and residential development in the heart of Avon that debuted its first phase — anchored by a 44,000-square-foot Whole Foods — late last summer.
 
Carpionato Group is not the buyer or developer of the West Hartford property, officials said, but Domenic Carpionato will play a key role in any redevelopment efforts, although there are currently no plans for the property. 

UConn’s former West Hartford campus, which years ago was purchased by a fintech company that planned to establish a major tech campus there but later abandoned the plans, was purchased late last year for $2.75 million by West Hartford 1 LLC.
 
It’s still not clear who the principals are of West Hartford 1 LLC. They have chosen not to publicly reveal themselves so far as they do due diligence on the property. The limited liability company is registered in Delaware, not Connecticut, which makes it more difficult to identify who controls the company. 

HBJ, through sources and other reporting, identified Domenic Carpionato as being involved in the project, and the ownership group confirmed it. 

In a statement, West Hartford 1 LLC said: “We are presently working to develop a vision that is befitting the size, scale and superb potential of this property and preparing our first steps to engage our West Hartford neighbors, key community organizations and town officials.” 
 
The 58-acre property at 1700 and 1800 Asylum Ave. was put up for sale in 2020 after Ideanomics pulled out of a planned  $400-million development for the site. 

Brokers involved in the sale previously told HBJ that the property was ideally suited for multifamily, medical office, retail, recreational and/or open space use for the community.

Ideanomics acquired the former UConn property in late 2018 for $5.2 million.

A property listing said the Asylum Avenue site was the largest to come to market in West Hartford in the last two decades. At the time of the listing it housed four buildings totaling 157,662 square feet that were previously used as academic buildings by UConn.

Distribution center proposed for Parker Street property in Manchester

Austin Mirmina

The proliferation of distribution centers in north-central Connecticut could continue as the town of Manchester recently received a new proposal for a 42,780-square-foot commercial distribution facility at 700 Parker St.

Jimmy Vindici Jr., an associate for The Silverman Group, the developer that owns the property, said a tenant hasn’t yet been named..

SL 1055 Crossroads LLC recently filed an application with the town’s Planning and Zoning Commission to build the facility on a roughly 4-acre lot on Parker Street. The developer describes the property on its website as being in close proximity to Interstate 84 and next to several industrial buildings.

The move continues a trend of increased growth in Connecticut for warehouses and distribution centers, which Director of Planning and Economic Developmen Gary Anderson called a “high demand market right now.”

The developer “is confident enough in the market that … they feel like it’s worth filing the plans without a tenant in place,” Anderson said.

Based in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, the Silverman Group purchased 700 Parker St., for about $13 million in 2019, according to property records. The real estate company also owns various other industrial properties throughout town, including the 60,192-square-foot commercial building at 80 Utopia Road.

Manchester already has the nearly 2 million-square-foot Winstanley Logistics Center, at 1339 Tolland Turnpike that houses distribution facilities for Amazon and Ahold Delhaize, owner of Stop & Shop. Other industrial growth can be seen in East Hartford, where a developer is proposing to build manufacturing, distribution, and research and development facilities.

There are a number of reasons why distribution centers have become so popular in Connecticut, business experts said. Connecticut is centrally located between the New York and Boston metropolitan areas, and has convenient access to highways. Connecticut also has lower property costs than New York or Boston, another reason to build in the state.

The state has recently become a hub for Amazon, which has opened a handful of distribution and fulfillment centers in north-central Connecticut.

Connecticut Business & Industry Association President Chris DiPentima said Amazon’s takeover is indicative of a larger trend: the growth of the warehousing logistics industry, which involves the storage and movement of goods. According to CBIA data, warehousing logistics was one of the few industries that had higher employment numbers after the onset of COVID-19 than it did before.

Some residents said they would welcome another distribution facility because it would benefit the town economically.

“That area of Parker Street is more industrial anyway, so if it brings jobs and pays taxes, then absolutely by all means,” Siobhan Covill said.

“Distribution centers contribute to the local towns in so many ways,” James Brassard said. “The tax base is a huge benefit for the town.”