Michael Laris and Ian Duncan The Washington Post

WASHINGTON - Dueling proposals to fund the nation's ailing infrastructure network follow decades of timidity in Washington - a period that has seen roads crumble and a warming climate threaten investments of the past.

A line of presidents couldn't make transformational investments in infrastructure, despite big promises and yawning national needs. For those in the trenches, the question in 2021 is whether the nation still can make good on its aspirations - from upkeep of its physical foundations to meeting the challenges experts say will intensify with a changing planet.

"NASA just landed on Mars and we had a big vaccine," said Costa Samaras, who worked as a transportation engineer in New York City and now studies infrastructure resilience at Carnegie Mellon University. "We can do big things - but we should be doing big things in infrastructure, right?"

Biden and his supporters have echoed those appeals in seeking to build support for a $2.3 trillion infrastructure and jobs proposal, which Republicans have knocked as too sprawling and expensive. Biden also set a goal of halving U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, work that would be spurred by his infrastructure plan.

But experts say achieving those ambitions would take a level of creativity and perseverance that have failed a generation of leaders in Washington.

Standing at a union shop floor in Pittsburgh to unveil his proposal, Biden invoked the collective accomplishments of the 20th century as a national muse, citing World War II, the build-out of interstate highways and the space race against the Soviets as inspirations for his approach.

He called for modernizing transportation networks while battling climate change through a vast addition of new jobs targeting both priorities. "A blue-collar blueprint to build America," he called in a joint address to Congress.

Republicans have seized on his broad definition of infrastructure - which includes racial justice issues, worker rights and community colleges - to dismiss Biden's plan as a grab bag stuffed with liberal priorities, backed by job-killing tax hikes.

Both parties say they want action on infrastructure. That's where the consensus starts to fray, as it has many times before. Communities across the nation are looking to Washington's leaders, wondering whether the outcome in this time will be different.

The broader ambitions of Biden's plan reflect those of some local leaders, transportation experts and environmental advocates outside Washington who have spent decades pushing for aggressive action on infrastructure.

After Biden won the election, Pittsburgh joined cities in Ohio, West Virginia and Kentucky in calling for hundreds of billions in federal dollars for electric cars and trucks, efficient buildings, clean energy and job training.

Elsewhere, expansive plans would stretch transit lines through traffic-choked Los Angeles, electrify passenger ferries in Washington state and dig a new train tunnel into Manhattan. A partner in the nation's capital could fuel major accomplishments, advocates say, with some calling it an Eisenhower-esque opportunity.

Transportation experts, mindful of the interstate highway system's launch in the 1950s, are calling for undoing the polluting and community-bulldozing practices of that earlier national push, ideas embraced by Biden and his team.

"It won't have that same kind of concrete quality, so to speak, of something like the interstate highway network," Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in an interview with The Washington Post. "It's got a different shape because the investments are distributed. So this is often playing out one community at a time."

As the biggest source of U.S. emissions, transportation is at the center of Biden's climate plans. For many, the challenge is clear: how to cut the annual tally of more than 1.9 billion metric tons of emissions from the transportation sector to zero, improving quality of life and helping to stave off severe environmental consequences.

The scope of the endeavor is significant.

Samaras compared the scale of improvements needed to address climate change in the infrastructure realm to the equivalent of building Boston's Big Dig in nearly every American community. That massive and disruptive tunnel-and-bridge project took a quarter-century and cost nearly $15 billion.

Reflecting a view shared by many climate and infrastructure experts, Samaras urged a shift from gasoline and diesel to electric vehicles, and a vast expansion of public transit. He also called for redesigning roads to make them safe for widespread biking and walking. And, he said, that must be done while rejecting racist development practices of the past, such as routing highways through Black neighborhoods.

Biden's plan calls for spending $115 billion to rebuild highways and bridges, reduce congestion and cut emissions, but even more - $174 billion - to spur electric vehicles. Tens of billions more would support clean energy and climate research.

"We're in a crunch here. We've got to reduce emissions and we need to do it quickly," said Robbie Orvis, a modeling expert at San Francisco-based Energy Innovation, which advises policymakers on climate efforts and helps tally the effects of potential policies.

During the campaign, Biden set a goal of reaching net-zero emissions from all sources by 2050, and his targets at an April climate summit would be a major step along that path. His infrastructure plan embraces some of the policies experts say are needed to get there, but do not go far enough to meet the most ambitious goals.

It makes sweeping commitments, promising that "every dollar" spent on rebuilding infrastructure "will be used to prevent, reduce and withstand the impacts of the climate crisis." And 40% of the benefits of that spending will go toward disadvantaged communities, according to his plan.

Although efforts to calculate the effects of Biden's proposed policies are ongoing, Orvis said the president's push for installing 500,000 charging stations, offering rebates for electric vehicles and doubling federal transit investments would cut emissions. But the part of the plan that could have the biggest effect on transportation-related emissions is the proposed clean energy standard, which would require utilities to transition from fossil fuels to clean technologies.

"The more you decarbonize the grid, the more benefit you get from moving to (electric vehicles),"Orvis said. "They're all part of the same story." 

Regardless of efforts to shape emissions, highway construction will be a significant part of any infrastructure package that passes Congress. An existing highway and transit funding bill is set to expire this fall.

Biden has decried research showing 1 in 5 miles of highways and major roads are in poor condition, and he points to tens of thousands of bridges that need work. His plan would modernize 20,000 miles of road, take on 10 of the nation's biggest bridge-reconstruction projects and repair 10,000 smaller bridges.

Republicans say the focus should be on conventional ideas of infrastructure. Dismissing Biden's plan as an "expansion of the welfare state," Senate Republicans offered a $568 billion alternative that prioritizes roads, but also includes spending on broadband and water projects. The Republican plan is hundreds of billions of dollars smaller than Biden's and does not call for raising corporate taxes.

"This needs to be about roads and bridges," Rep. Sam Graves of Missouri, the top Republican on the House Transportation Committee, said at a hearing with Buttigieg. "A transportation bill needs to be a transportation bill," not a catchall or environmental wish list, he said.

Despite calls for shifting priorities, the bulk of government transportation spending in the United States goes toward roads.

According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, in 2018, the federal government spent about $98 billion on transportation, with state and local governments spending another $273 billion. About two-thirds was used for highways, one-fifth for transit and rail, and 13% for aviation.

The need for more funding is great, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers, which routinely surveys the nation's infrastructure needs. Its most recent report card, issued in March, pegged the level of spending needed to bring the nation's transportation networks into a state of good repair by 2029 at $3.1 trillion.

Local leaders also have a vast appetite for money.

A team at Rice University's Kinder Institute surveyed the nation's 100 largest metropolitan areas last year, developing a list of 1,800 proposed infrastructure projects that local officials identified as top priorities. More than a third were transportation projects.

They included a $1 billion investment in the Port of New Orleans and $56 billion for high-speed rail in Texas. But others were far more modest, such as $500,000 for bicycle and pedestrian projects in the Tampa area.

The federal government needs a clear vision for the future it's trying to create, said Adie Tomer, who leads the metropolitan infrastructure initiative at the Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan think tank. For Tomer, that means abandoning the expanding patterns of development that have shaped the nation since its founding.

Meeting the kinds of environmental and social goals the Biden administration has prioritized means looking inward, he said.

"The United States has enough financial resources to invest in infrastructure at any scale that we need to remake the country," Tomer said.

The House last year passed a five-year road, rail and transit funding bill that was designed to get states - which are responsible for spending highway funds - to fix existing roads before building new ones, and to get officials to factor climate change in their planning.

Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., chairman of the House Transportation Committee and the bill's architect, said any new transportation funding legislation can't simply be an extension of policies crafted in the 1950s.

"The Eisenhower program was 'let's link the country with what he saw - the autobahn in Germany,' " he said. "That was a plan for its time and we were the envy of the world for a while."

DeFazio said it's time to move on: "I'm not going to Eisenhower 8.0. That's not how we deal with our problems of the 21st century in addition to dealing with climate change."

Debate over the 2020 bill was bitter, with Republicans accusing DeFazio of upending the committee's bipartisan approach.

Biden returned to the swing state of his birth for his own infrastructure launch. Pittsburgh's riverside steel plants, fueled by coal, helped build the nation but left the City of Bridges thick with pollution as it hemorrhaged jobs and people. Civic leaders have since sought to tap innovations in transportation and energy to make it a model for cleaner growth and new technology jobs.

Biden said his proposed infusion of federal dollars, paid for by partially undoing Trump-era corporate tax cuts and raising other taxes, would be the biggest American jobs investment since World War II. The plan would dig out and replace all lead drinking water pipes, strengthen American manufacturing and spend hundreds of billions of dollars caring for seniors and people with disabilities, part of what his plan calls "care infrastructure."

About $600 billion would go toward transportation, according to the White House.

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, the top Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee, said in an interview before Biden announced his plan that the GOP is open to problem-solving on emissions and building on efforts by automakers to embrace electric vehicles. "There's definitely a willingness to engage," she said.

But in a statement after Biden's announcement, she was sharply critical, calling Biden's plan "a partisan proposal that goes far beyond" the traditional notions of infrastructure and undermines West Virginia's fossil fuel economy.

The nation is saddled with outdated and, at times, vulnerable infrastructure.

Samaras, an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon, and other researchers calculated that 97% of the interstate highway system was built before 2004 - the year the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration started to update rainfall information used to design infrastructure.

"All of those roads were designed for the weather of the 1950s and '60s," Samaras said. If taxpayers are funding new road work, "we need to ensure that the vehicles on that roadway are zero-emissions, and that the infrastructure is built to last so we're not on the hook to rebuild it before we planned."

Tomer said different approaches to overhauling transportation will work best in different parts of the country.

Cities that developed in the 19th century can more easily emphasize bikes and pedestrians. But in large Western cities, the challenge is greater and probably involves promoting denser development, he said.

"No reasonable amount of transit construction can overtake what the built environment tells people to do," Tomer said. "In Dallas - and most of the country looks like Dallas - we have to drive."

In Los Angeles, leaders are bumping up against the limits of car-based development.

LA Metro, the region's transit operator and transportation planning agency, in the fall adopted a $400 billion, 30-year plan to overhaul how the 10 million residents of Los Angeles County get around. The plan aims to more than double the number of daily transit trips to 2.5 million by expanding the rail system and dedicated bus routes. It also calls for 100 miles of new transit lines, nearly doubling the size of the system.

The proposal is explicit about its aim to reduce the number of car trips, but at the same time it would invest billions in highways to try to relieve congestion.

"We are not the enemy of automobiles," said Phillip Washington, chief executive of LA Metro. "What we're saying is you can use both."

Washington served as the leader of the Biden administration's Transportation Department transition team. He said he has briefed Buttigieg on the Los Angeles plan.

The plan is funded, in large part, by local sales taxes, which voters agreed to raise in 2016. Washington said that means his "basket is at least half full" but added that help from the federal government is vital.

The proposal in the nation's second-largest city pays particular attention to what it calls "equity focus communities," those with a large number of lower-income or non-White residents, or where car ownership is low. That work is also a priority of the Biden plan.

Buttigieg said he thinks of the opportunity to remake infrastructure not only in terms of Eisenhower but also President Abraham Lincoln, who established the nationwide train network. When it came time to engineer a highway system, the process did not abolish trains but recognized a more important role for cars, Buttigieg said.

"We're recognizing a new reality, which is that policy shouldn't revolve around the vehicle, it should revolve around the human being," he said. "Sometimes that human being is in a car, sometimes on a train, sometimes on foot or two wheels, sometimes flying - and all of that needs to be incorporated into our vision."

Walking and cycling have not been a focus of federal transportation policy. Road funding has been routed primarily through state transportation departments, which emphasize large projects for drivers.

Karina Ricks, director of Pittsburgh's Department of Mobility and Infrastructure, said the agency identified gaps in the city's sidewalk network that it wants to fill in to benefit transit users and pedestrians.

But using federal money to build a sidewalk in the city means undertaking a lengthy and expensive review process the state designed with major road projects in mind. Unlocking $1 million could cost $300,000 in planning and turn a four-month project into an 18-month project, she said.

"There is not a different process for those six feet of sidewalk than there is for a six-lane freeway," Ricks said. "It is not logical."

Buttigieg said road-building should be shaped by lessons learned over decades.

"There was a period when we didn't know any better, when we thought that if you had a congested road, you just made it bigger," he said. "And it turns out that sometimes that works, sometimes that just gets more people to drive and the road gets that much more congested."

Rail is among the alternatives being pushed by Biden, a longtime Amtrak rider. His administration has thrown support behind the Gateway Program, which would stretch a new train tunnel under the Hudson River, connecting New Jersey and Penn Station. As a young engineer, Samaras helped on the initial route planning and environmental work for an earlier version of the project, and had sent a set of plans by FedEx to the World Trade Center on Sept. 10, 2001.

They didn't make it, and were returned after the towers fell. The effort languished for years, over politics and resources.

"That's just a couple of tunnels. And it's now 20 years later. Imagine what it's going to look like when we need to build massive amounts of clean and resilient infrastructure for climate change," Samaras said.

He sees this moment as an urgent challenge.

"It's like, are we're going to do this or not?" Samaras asked. "Are we going to basically live off of the successes of the space race and the Cold War through the 2050s? Why don't we build our own successes right now?"

Brookfield is looking to expand its greenway and connect with Danbury, New Milford

Currie Engel

BROOKFIELD — The town hopes to secure $229,000 in state funds to complete a study on how to connect the Still River Greenway to neighboring Danbury and New Milford.

The application for a corridor study, which the town submitted last Friday to the Western Connecticut Council of Governments, or WestCOG, was sent along with letters of support from Danbury Mayor Joe Cavo, New Milford Mayor Pete Bass, and the Connecticut Greenways Council. The minimum request for a grant was $150,000 and the project had to be regional.

The $229,000 requested by Brookfield in their application would fully cover a study on existing greenway construction gaps between the three towns.

“One of the things that have held [the committee] up is we never had the money to do a full design,” said First Selectman Steve Dunn of efforts to get a plan in the works for the tri-town greenway expansion.

Only three applications will be selected by WestCOG to be sent to the Department of Transportation for project grant funding, said Community Development Specialist Greg Dembowksi.

Trail usage was up 38 percent across the state in 2020, and local leaders are working together to strengthen and expand existing greenway trails for residents.

So with little notice, several town commissions and leaders worked together to put together what they’re hoping will be a strong application for the grant money. Dunn called up Cavo and Bass to ask for their support.

“You have to put your best foot forward,” Dembowski said. “We took it even a couple steps further.”

With help from one of the engineering companies working on the town’s streetscape project, the town completed a review of all existing studies on the Still River Greenway expansion, including those in Danbury and New Milford, in two days.

According to Dembowski, the commissioned study found in part that New Milford has already completed a preliminary engineering report on the greenway expansion and has an 11-phase plan to extend and connect the greenway into their town. Danbury has had plans in the works for years, too, Dembowski said.

“If we’re awarded the grant, obviously there will be a chance for public participation. There will be updates to see how the greenway is progressing,” said Bass.

This spring and summer, New Milford is working on phases two and three of their own greenway expansion project with the hopes of connecting two portions of the trail together to create a fluid line to the downtown area.

The finished New Milford project will be a 13-mile trail that will follow the Housatonic River south through the downtown area to Brookfield border.

“This is going to be a multi-decade project, so the goal is to chip away at it little by little and use as much grant money as we can,” Bass said.

In what officials hope will add yet more helpful weight to their application, the CT Greenways Council has selected Brookfield to host their annual awards ceremony on June 4 at 10 a.m. A document outlining plans at a recent Still River Greenway task force meeting said hosting the ceremony will “bring strong visibility to the [greenway] and our pursuit of expansion” in part because the 50 or so attendees will include representatives from WestCOG, CTDOT, and the council itself.

After awards are handed out, the town plans to have attendees stroll along the greenway.

“I think it’ll stand a good chance of winning,” Dunn said of the town’s application.

On June 8, an advisory group will review applications and make recommendations to WestCOG. By June 17, WestCOG will have made its selections and will send their decision to the Department of Transportation on July 1.

“It really provides so much in the way of community character for our three towns,” said Dembowski. “I expect to see a lot of support for it.”

Deal is a game-changer for Tweed, and a boon for New Haven, East Haven, officials say

Mark Zaretsky

NEW HAVEN — Get ready for a whole new Tweed New Haven Regional Airport, with a longer runway, a new terminal on the East Haven side — three times the size of the current one — an entrance off Hemingway Avenue in East Haven, a new partnership with its longtime manager and a new airline.

Not to mention 1,000 new construction jobs and 175 permanent jobs.

And while Andrew Levy, CEO of Avelo Airlines, wasn’t prepared to announce destinations just yet, he said at the big announcement Thursday that Avelo is making Tweed its first East Coast base, will begin flights from Tweed in the third quarter of the year and will fly to places local people want to go.

“We’d be crazy not to fly to Florida,” for instance, Levy said immediately after a press conference to announce all the changes. Other destinations he mentioned as possible were “Chicago, maybe D.C.”

Charlotte, N.C., which American Airlines stopped flying to when it temporarily shut down Tweed service a few months ago, also is a possibility, but it’s not Avelo’s first priority, he said.

Tweed’s only service right now is 5-day-a-week American Eagle service to Philadelphia. American currently only is committed to stay at Tweed through September.

Levy spoke immediately after a press conference in front of Tweed’s existing terminal in which airport, Avports and Avelo officials, joined by a host of local, state, business and congressional officials, announced a “major agreement,” described as “a game-changer” that will result in a $100 million project.

Avports will spend its own money — about $70 million to start and $100 million overall — to extend the runway and build the 74,000-square-foot terminal. Avelo will spent $1.2 million toward renovation costs of the existing terminal in the meantime.

All of that would happen while eliminating the $1.8 million in state and city subsidies that Tweed currently receives, which Avports will cover as part of a 43-year agreement, officials said.

The agreement requires additional approvals from the Federal Aviation Administration as well as the New Haven Board of Alders, authority representatives said.

“It took awhile, but we’re doing it right,” Gov. Ned Lamont said. “This is part of something a lot bigger. It’s a really important project in the most important region of the state,” he said, referring to some of the research and new tech, biotech and biomedical industries that come out of Yale University and New Haven.

“This is how you open up a state. This is how you get a state moving again,” Lamont said.

“I took this job 18 months ago with one goal in mind, which was to increase service and to help this airport reach its full potential,” said Tweed New Haven Airport Authority Executive Director Sean Scanlon. “Today, we are proud to announce a comprehensive agreement to do just that.”

The deal announced Thursday will be a benefit “not just for this airport, not just New Haven and East Haven but for the entire region and the entire state of Connecticut,” said Scanlon.

With the help of Mayor Justin Elicker of New Haven and Mayor Joe Carfora of East Haven, “we have come up with a comprehensive community benefits package to make sure that we help the residents of this area and that our prosperity is shared” and “we move together as one community,” Scanlon said.

“We are committed to making this airport both financially and environmentally sustainable,” Avports CEO Jorge Roberts said. “We will invest more than $100 million over the next 40 years so this airport can become a beacon of economic growth both for the City of New Haven and the (Town) of East Haven. As part of these investments, we aim to build a carbon-neutral terminal, develop the airport in an environmentally responsible and sustainable way.”

Avports also plans “to invest in the community through noise mitigation and traffic improvement measures,” Roberts said. “We also are committed ... to ensuring the diverse and inclusive local workforce and service providers.”

Avelo Airlines will make a $60 million investment, including stationing three 737-700 Next Gen aircraft at Tweed by the end of this year and adding more than 100 crew members, officials said.

Those positions will include pilots, flight attendants, technicians and customer support personnel.

Avelo’s investment at Tweed includes $1.2 million to help fund improvements at the airport’s existing terminal on the New Haven side of the airport, the authority said.

Elicker thanked Carfora “for standing shoulder to shoulder with the City of New Haven to make sure that this benefits all of our residents,” as well as the city’s economic development team.

“For decades, the city of New Haven and the airport authority have been unable to come up with a plan that works for everybody, and that plan is finally here,” he said. “...We finally landed on something that works.”

Over the past 20 years, “the city has put in over $22 million” to Tweed, Elicker said. But under the new agreement, “that subsidy will end.”

In the current year’s budget, “there will be $325,000 to the airport. In next year’s budget, there will be $162,000 — and in fiscal year ’24: zero dollars, fiscal year ’25: zero dollars, fiscal year ’26: zero dollars,” Elicker said.

One resident of the city’s Morris Cove section who showed up at the press conference said he didn’t feel as if the city had sought his opinion or those of his neighbors before moving forward — and the first he’d heard about Tweed’s expansion plans was when he read it in Thursday’s New Haven Register.

“You never knocked on my door,” Edward Fitzgerald, who lives on Burr Street — directly across the street from Tweed — told Elicker during a question-and-answer session. He said he was on a Zoom call when the new airport master plan was being discussed in an online public hearing and would have thought the airport would go to residents before announcing the news.

Scanlon told Fitzgerald — who later had a face-to-face meeting with Elicker as the press conference continued — that “what we’ve announced today is that we’ve reached an agreement” and “the next step is to hear from you.”

In fact, “we haven’t even done the environmental impact study yet,” which the Federal Aviation Administration requires before any expansion of the runway or construction of a new terminal can take place.

Fitzgerald could be heard telling Elicker at one point that his experience dealing with Tweed is that “it’s just been one lie after another.”

After months of negotiation with the authority and a federal court decision that makes it clear runway extension can go forward, East Haven Mayor Joe Carfora also was on board.

Carfora said he first got contacted by Scanlon 17 months ago when Carfora was “a rookie mayor coming in ... and 17 months later I feel bad about the way I treated him. I had all kinds of demands, and they were harsh demands.

“.. But this just goes to show you how people can sit down and work out all our differences,” Carfora said at the press conference. I depanded a PLA (project labor agreement.) I demanded an enterprise zone right up until Route 80. I demanded some extra seats on the” airport authority. “I demanded a lot,” he said.

“This is a great project. It’s going to move both communities forward. I am 100 percent on board right now,” Carfora said. Avports is “a top-notch company and they do deserve a big round of applause,” he said.

East Haven resident Paula Dagostino, 75, who lives on Roses Farm Road, emailed the Register after reading an earlier story Thursday and said that while she is in favor of “enlarging and improving Tweed,” she nevertheless worries about the safety of neighbors and she’d like to see officials address those concerns before expansion takes

“On behalf of myself and other neighbors on Roses Farm Road, we love to hear from someone regarding plans for our side of the airport,” Dagostino said.

Other speakers at the press conference included U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3; U.S. Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, both D-Conn.; Airport Authority Chairman John Picard; Joe Toner, president of CT Building Trades; Andrew Inorio, president of Laborers Local Union 455; Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce President Garrett Sheehan; and Jennifer DelMonico, managing partner of the law firm of Murtha Cullina and a past chairwoman for the Connecticut Business & Industry Association and the Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce.

DeLauro called it “a glorious day” and said the agreement “would represent wins for East Haven,” which will derive economic development from the expansion, “and Morris Cove, which will see lower traffic.

“Tweed is one of the top regional airports in the country; a great economic asset to our community,” DeLauro said. “I’m a longtime supporter and ... it’s about time that the greatest small city in America had the greatest small airport in America.”

Murphy offered congratulations and said, “It’s very difficult to overhype how big a deal this, not just for New Haven but for the whole state of Connecticut,” he said.

Blumenthal said Tweed “has had real glory days ... and today marks a return to those glory days,” and “it’s not just about those jobs. ... It is very much about this area and about our state. This airport is going to be an economic driver.”

Picard said Tweed will provide “thousands of temporary jobs and hundreds of permanent jobs — and it will create more of them in the future” because it will allow the state to attract more viable businesses, he said. “... So Tweed is going to be a game-changer and Tweed is going to help in so many ways.”

Toner thanked the officials involved “on behalf of the 30,000 unionized construction workers” in Connecticut, both for what they announced Thursday and what they do every day.

The project labor agreement “ensures that Connecticut workers are going to work on this project with a livable wage, with secure retirement and health benefits. It also ensures ... that local folks are going to work on these projects,” including both New Haven and East Haven residents.

Is the Tweed deal bad news for Bridgeport’s Sikorsky Airport?

Brian Lockhart / Mark Zaretsky

BRIDGEPORT — “Regional airport strikes game-changing deal to build new terminal, expand passenger service.”

That was the announcement Mayor Joe Ganim’s administration was working toward two years ago when it unsuccessfully attempted to finalize a deal with a new airline, Moxy — since renamed Breeze — to the city’s Sikorsky Memorial Airport and expand its offerings beyond business, charter and private flights.

On Thursday Tweed New Haven Regional Airport beat Bridgeport to that goal and then some, with officials claiming their $100 million project to lengthen Tweed’s runway, erect a new terminal and offer Avelo flights would cost no goverment cash.

Bridgeport’s plans, in contrast, have relied on the private market matching a $7 million, still-to-be-released state investment.

So where does the Tweed news leave efforts to have commercial passenger service at Sikorsky?

Ganim’s office Thursday took the position that nothing had changed.

“Similar to the partnership that Tweed has just announced, private investment is also anticipated in Bridgeport based on easy access and preferable location of the Sikorsky airport,” read the statement. “The city is pleased about moving forward with our own current plans which would include new 150-passenger planes that can utilize the existing runway length at Sikorsky.”

But in the fall of 2019 — about six months before the global coronavirus crisis struck Connecticut — Gov. Ned Lamont unveiled a transportation initiative that essentially pit Sikorsky versus Tweed in terms of which deserved attention and investment.

With the Lamont administration’s efforts to answer that question seemingly stalled due to the health crisis, Bridgeport this spring got proactive. The Ganim administration partnered with some Sikorsky tenants to fund a $47,000 study of the airport’s potential by Fred Carstensen’s Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis at the University of Connecticut.

Sikorsky Manager Michelle Muoio at the time told Bridgeport’s City Council the study was in part inspired by the “idea that was initially proposed by the governor’s office in their transportation plan ... to evaluate what would be the better investment between Tweed and Sikorsky.”

Asked Thursday about Sikorsky at the Tweed announcement, Lamont told Hearst Connecticut Media, “It’s not an either/or, but Tweed’s going first because the private sector’s voting with their feet” and supported that facility’s expansion.

“We’ve been talking about (the possibly of expanding) Tweed for 20 years,” Lamont said. “I think it’s going to be ... a shot in the arm” for the entire region and for Connecticut.

That is the same pitch Bridgeport has for the past few years made about its plans for Sikorsky.

The one big difference between Sikorsky’s future and Tweed’s is the runways. Bridgeport has a deal with neighboring Stratford, where Sikorsky is located, not to lengthen its two runways.

Instead the Ganim administration has been trying to get the state to release some of that promised $7 million to overhaul one of Sikorsky’s aged runways, not only to keep it in operation for existing tenants but to help attract a commercial passenger airline.

City officials in 2019 said the Moxy/Breeze deal could not move ahead because of the need for FAA-required airport compliance upgrades which included the runway work.

The city Thursday also said it had not tried to bring Avelo to Sikorsky because the company uses older planes that need a longer runway. Bridgeport is counting on taking advantage of newer technology allowing aircraft to take off with shorter distances.

Carstensen, who is in the middle of conducting the study of Sikorsky’s economic potential commissioned by Bridgeport, said Thursday’s news out of New Haven is “not necessarily” bad for Bridgeport’s airport.

“A smart development strategy, it seems to me, is you want to exploit all the assets you have in the state, and Sikorsky is an asset,” Carstensen said. “To some extent they (Sikorsky and Tweed) may have overlapping and therefore to some degree competitive operations. But Sikorsky is obviously the airport that serves the needs of the Fairfield County corporate and private jet market. ... Kudos to New Haven and the folks at Tweed, but let’s double down on what we also can achieve at Sikorsky.”

However David Faile, head of Friends of Sikorsky, questioned whether Avelo’s deal for flights out of New Haven would dampen any other private carrier enthusiasm for Sikorsky.

“People always think I’ve been against airlines at Bridgeport. I’m not if they can operate on the runways we have,” Faile said. “It’s the financial (question) — who’s gonna build a terminal they need, plus (plane) taxiway and ramps?”

Faile said ultimately whether airlines fully recover from COVID will determine Sikorsky’s future.

“It all depends on how the market shakes out,” Faile said. “If there’s a full recovery and we’re traveling like crazy again, (Sikorsky) could support it. I’d love to see it happen.”

Berlin officials weigh apts., retail, hotel on turnpike

Matt Pilon

Rocky Hill developer’s plan to build 200 apartments, retail buildings and possibly a hotel along a wooded Berlin Turnpike property heads back to the town’s planning board Thursday evening.

BT 2008 LLC, headed by Peter D’Addeo of Rocky Hill-based Commercial Services Realty, is seeking approval to construct five four-story apartment buildings, a gas station and convenience store, a second retail building, and an approximately 100-room hotel on the nearly 36-acre property just south of Deming Road.

The project would be built in four phases, starting with the gas station and residential buildings, which have been named the Beach Hill Riverfront Apartments and feature a clubhouse and pool. Of the 200 units, 40 would be mixed-income.

The hotel would come last, and D’Addeo has pitched planning officials several alternatives — medical offices or 12,000-square-feet of additional retail — should the hotel piece of the project not move forward in the future.

D’Addeo initially submitted a site plan application for the mixed-use project last October, according to town records. After several hearings that concluded in mid-April, the planning board voted to continue its deliberations to its meeting this week.

A $100 million project aims to bring new life to Hartford’s Pratt Street and the surrounding downtown neighborhood. These developers have a vision for life in the city after COVID-19.

Kenneth R. Gosselin

HARTFORD — An ambitious vision for the redevelopment of downtown Hartford’s Pratt Street into a new, $50 million hub of nearly 200 apartments above restaurants, entertainment space and shops is now under construction as the city heads into the uncertainty of life after the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I’m not a fortune teller -- nobody’s a fortune teller -- however, our sense is we are detecting a very positive and strong interest in leasing,” said Michael Seidenfeld, chief operating officer of Shelbourne Global Solutions LLC, of Brooklyn, N.Y., a partner in the project. “We have even seen some serious interest for new retail on Pratt Street that would bring a perfect vibe to street.”

Pratt runs between Main and Trumbull streets and is viewed as a critical “walkable” connection among the North Crossing development around Dunkin’ Donuts Park, the XL Center, new apartments on Allyn Street and Union Station. But vibrancy has eluded Pratt Street for decades, despite the charm of its brick-paved street and sidewalks and late 19th- and early 20th-century structures, many of them architecturally ornate.

The Pratt Street project is part of a larger, $100 million vision for the heart of downtown Hartford, reaching east along Pratt to Main and Market streets. Plans call for adding more than 300 apartments over the next few years, reinvigorating storefront space and replacing a decaying parking garage.

Shelbourne, downtown Hartford’s largest commercial landlord, has partnered with LAZ Investments, headed by parking magnate Alan Lazowski, and developer Martin J. Kenny on the project, a veteran of development projects in the city.

Shelbourne, which acquired much of the south side of the street in 2018 and 2019, sees the addition of apartments, replacing tired, often vacant office space as crucial to paving the way to not only a cool place to live but also to visit.

The pandemic has taken a heavy toll on businesses downtown, as office towers emptied and restaurants and other businesses struggled. New apartments initially saw an erosion of occupancy but have, in recent months, turned around. Rents are, for the most part, stable, but landlords are offering tenants incentives to move in.

As painful as the pandemic is, mid-sized Hartford could stand to benefit from a further migration of employers -- and people -- out of more densely-populated urban centers such as New York, Seidenfeld said.

Southwestern Connecticut -- and to a lesser extent, Hartford County -- already has seen a migration out of nearby urban areas during the pandemic.

“Whereas, in the past, a lot of companies, retailers and people would not even give Hartford a second thought, the pandemic has caused people to rethink, take a fresh look at, everything in life,” Seidenfeld said, during a recent tour on Pratt Street. “And we have seen that in Hartford as well.”

Shelbourne plans to cultivate a “vintage hipster” vibe on Pratt, taking advantage of the historic nature and look of the street. Shelbourne also is pairing those efforts with a 12-month marketing campaign for the capital city at large. The goal is to reposition Hartford as a destination -- lifestyle, arts and cultural center -- in the Northeast.

“Ultimately, Pratt Street, I think, rises or falls to the extent that it is able to draw from and become relevant to the rest of the city, if not the region,” Michael Berne, president of MJB Consulting in New York, a planning and real estate consultant, who has closely followed Hartford redevelopment. “And that’s a challenge.”

Shelbourne also has to contend with owning just the south side of the street, the opposite side controlled by Northland Investment Corp, of Newton, Mass.

So far, Berne said he is seeing positive signs from Shelbourne. The company understands that it will need to “get creative” with leasing terms to cut down on the risk for retailers and other entrepreneurs, he said.

For Pratt to become a success, however, the street also will have to carve out a distinct personality from Front Street near Hartford’s convention center, Berne said. Front Street includes an entertainment district, apartments and the University of Connecticut’s regional campus.

“The key will be -- and to some degree this is a marketing challenge -- can you effectively and convincingly differentiate Front Street from Pratt Street, not just in the minds of consumers -- physically, it’s a very different experience -- but also in the minds of prospective tenants and retailers?’' Berne said. “That’s a little bit of threading the needle, no doubt.”

More rentals downtown

The new apartments on Pratt Street are part of a major wave of new rentals downtown that launched in 2014, whose financing was bolstered primarily by state-taxpayer backed, low-cost loans from the quasi-public Capital Region Development Authority.

So far, about 2,000 rentals have been added to 1,200 that previously existed, with the idea that urban centers need residents and not just 9-5 office workers. The goal is to bring 3,000 new rentals downtown, boosting the residential population in and around the central business district to 5,000.

The larger, $100 million project now kicking off with Pratt Street also includes a revamping of the former student housing behind the Lofts at Main and Temple into rentals and the replacement of the decaying Talcott Street garage. So far, the project has been approved for $14 million in CRDA loans, $12 million for Pratt Street.

The $29 million conversion of 99 Pratt St. will build on Shelbourne’s 32-unit, $5.8 million apartment conversion project at neighboring 196 Trumbull last year. Those “co-living” rentals are tailored to participants in the city’s Upward program, a downtown hub of 21st-century entrepreneurs and innovators.

The project at 99 Pratt St., just around the corner from the Trumbull Street conversion, will add 97 apartments, including 72 studios, 19 “studio-plus” and 6 one-bedroom units.

The units will range in size from 360 square feet to 462 square feet, with rents spanning $1,150 to $1,250 a month, plus parking.

Amenities will include a fitness room, community room, pet washing station, library and “arts room,” a “nod to creative, free-spirited innovators and people who have a creative vision” that Shelbourne hopes will form the foundation of its tenants on the street.

Plans for a rooftop lounge, however, have been scrapped because it presented too many construction challenges, Seidenfeld said.

Built for the Steiger’s department store in the 1920s and part of the downtown destination shopping scene until the 1960s, the 5-story building at 99 Pratt will retain its Art Deco-inspired flourishes outside and contrasting painted medieval beamed ceiling in the lobby.

Construction is expected to run through July of 2022, with apartment pre-leasing beginning at the end of this year.

A second phase in four more buildings owned by Shelbourne just to the east of 99 Pratt could add another 60 rentals on the street.

Berne, the real estate consultant, said COVID-19 has accelerated the move by millennials to the suburbs as they start families, so downtown projects such as Pratt Street will have to focus in on what Generation Z -- future tenants now teenagers through recent college graduates -- will be crucial.

“We have a whole new generation -- Generation Z -- that is really going to drive things in our downtowns and those are the ones whose feelings on downtowns are really front and center,” Berne said.

Berne said it is assumed that Generation Z will want many of the same things as millennials in cities: vibrancy, energy and a population for finding friends and, likely, a significant other.

“But what will that look like?” Berne said. “For instance, among teenagers, gaming is huge. It’s big business. To what extent are the gathering places that Generation Z favors going to revolve around gaming?”

Investing in Hartford

Shelbourne is a relative newcomer to the Hartford market, buying it first office tower, 20 Church Street, in 2014. But it quickly added to its holdings with Metro Center One, at the western end of Church Street; 100 Pearl and One Financial Plaza, the “Gold Building,” partnering on the purchase with Lazowski.

Shelbourne also has purchased properties outside of downtown, including the sprawling, former Fuller Brush complex in the city’s North End.

Seidenfeld said Shelbourne -- in addition to offering special promotions and events with retailers on Pratt Street -- can offer its tenants use of space in its nearby office buildings.

“So let’s say, someone needs conference space, someone needs flex space, if someone wants to use a gym in another place, if someone wants to host a big meeting, we will be cross amenitizing all of our assets downtown for our residents as well,” Seidenfeld said. “We’re not siloing anything.”

Seidenfeld said its entry into mixed-use development is a new step for Shelbourne, which has built its real estate portfolio in the prime, Class A office space.

“But what Hartford as shown us and taught us and we’ve learned that in order for one to thrive, all have to thrive because it’s an ecosystem,” Seidenfeld said. “So you need a strong residential, you need a strong corporate office presence and you need a strong presence of retail. You need all of that.”

How quickly office workers -- a significant component that downtown ecosystem -- return and in what numbers is still not known, but Seidenfeld is upbeat about prospects in Hartford.

“Despite people working from home and learning how to acclimate to the new reality -- humans need humans and people are eager to get back with other people, whether it’s at events, whether it’s on the street and certainly in the office space,” Seidenfeld said.

“COVID was certainly a setback,” Seidenfeld said. “We view it as a temporary setback -- very painful -- and we respect and acknowledge that 100%.”