CT Construction Digest Monday December 11, 2023
Taking to the high seas for an up-close look at South Fork Wind
At 10:30 a.m. on Thursday, about two hours into a day-long, round-trip voyage celebrating the start of operations at the South Fork Wind project site, bundled-up passengers began milling around the open decks of the Julia Leigh, the high-speed ferry whose engines powered through the waters of Block Island Sound.
Just over the horizon, the top of a spinning, 810-foot-tall, 11 megawatt-generating wind turbine that began sending electricity to the mainland power grid the day before could be spotted through the rolling waves.
As the Greenport, N.Y.-based ferry drew closer to the site and Block Island receded to a smudge, details of the first commercial-scale wind farm in federal waters swam into view about 35 miles east of Montauk Point.
As the ferry pulled closer to the working turbine, passengers unholstered phones and began shooting pictures and video of the relatively silent spinning blades.
The rotors of a second completed turbine ― a total of 12 such Siemens Gamesa arrays putting out a combined 132 megawatts are expected to be in place and running by early next year ― stood motionless near an unfinished third turbine tower.
The Aeolus, a lift-ship responsible for slotting the turbine components into circular yellow foundations, floated near the incomplete tower stem ready to add three football-field long turbine blades into place.
The mood inside the warm confines of the ferry was similar to a maritime corporate retreat, complete with guest speakers and sugar cookies embossed with an image of a wind turbine reminding snackers the project was “powered” through a joint venture of the Danish company Ørsted and Eversource.
A pair of television screens played a loop of South Fork Wind promotional videos that highlighted aspects of the work. One segment focused on the turbine component staging being carried out at State Pier in New London. A fourth package of parts left New London for the installation site this past week.
The rotating turbines send power to a nearby floating substation, that in turn funnels electricity to an onshore station in the town of East Hampton, N.Y., connected to that state’s electric grid.
When complete, the project is expected to power roughly 70,000 Long Island homes. The project dovetails with New York’s plan to transition to a carbon-free electricity system by 2040. The Empire State’s plan is to install 9 gigawatts of offshore wind power by 2035.
“New York’s nation-leading efforts to generate reliable, renewable clean energy have reached a major milestone,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said in a Wednesday statement. “South Fork Wind will power thousands of homes, create good-paying union jobs and demonstrate to all the offshore wind is a viable resource New York can harness for generations to come.”
Friendly crowd celebrates power project
The 100 or so ferry guests largely consisted of unabashed project supporters, including New York state officials and representatives of labor, climate and environmental groups.
“We’re coming to the completion of a project many years in the making,” Jennifer Garvey, the head of the New York market for Ørsted, told an applauding ferry crowd. “It’s been an adventure.”
The wind farm industry has faced challenges this year, with Ørsted announcing the cancellation of its large offshore Ocean Wind I and II projects in New Jersey due to problems with supply chains, higher interest rates and a failure to obtain the amount of tax credits the company wanted.
Developers in New England recently canceled power contracts for three other projects slated to deliver 3.2 gigawatts of wind power to Massachusetts and Connecticut, citing financial infeasibility.
But there was no shortage of wind power cheerleaders on the Julia Leigh.
Michael Hanson, a resident of the East Hampton, N.Y., hamlet of Wainscott, attended Thursday’s trip as a member of the “Win With Wind” group, a grassroots organization formed several years ago to support the South Fork project.
Hanson said the group is comprised of concerned citizens anxious to find new ways to power their community without the use of fossil fuels. He said members spend the bulk of their time working to dispel “misconceptions” about the wind project through letter-writing campaigns, interviews with the news media and speaking at public forums.
“It’s just incredulous to me that people don’t support this,” Hanson said. “(Wind power is) so simple and clean and reliable and it’s flowing right now.”
Hanson, 57, said sections of the East Hampton area see their populations quadruple during the busy summer months, putting a strain on existing power systems.
“The wind power will mean we won’t need another natural gas system put in,” he said.
Win With Wind member David Posnett said climate change is his overarching reason for supporting the wind project.
“It’s the number one problem facing the globe, whether you’re poor, rich, on the left or right,” he said. “And this is one little step in the right direction. It’s exciting to me that someone will turn on a switch in East Hampton this evening and a small percentage of that power will be coming from this turbine.”
The project has faced sharp criticism from fishermen over inadequate compensation for lost fishing grounds and from some environmental organizations worried how such a project may affect marine life. Labor unions and business groups have come out firmly in favor of the work.
Amber Hewitt, senior director of offshore wind energy for the National Wildlife Federation, said her group works closely with the project to ensure the installation work doesn’t harm the whales or dolphins that live in that part of the ocean.
She said a 5,000-meter monitoring zone has been established around the work area that includes a 2,000-meter “shut-down” section.
“If a marine mammal enters that shut-down zone, all work stops,” Hewitt said. “This project has received a lot of scrutiny, above and beyond similar projects. Offshore wind is a tried-and-true, 30-year industry, and we’re willing to support it conditionally until there’s a reason not to.”
As the ferry made its return trip though choppy waters on Thursday, the offshore wind industry received another piece of good news, with the U.S. Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council approving construction of a $1.5 billion offshore wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island.
The Revolution Wind project, touted as six times as large as the South Fork Wind, is also a joint venture between Ørsted and Eversource, and is expected to bring a total of 704 megawatts of energy to Connecticut and Rhode Island.
The Revolution Wind pre-installation work at New London’s State Pier will involve the assembly of 65 turbines that will be shipped to two offshore wind stations in federal waters 15 nautical miles southeast of Point Judith, R.I.
In March, the Rhode Island utility rejected Ørsted's proposal to build Revolution Wind's second stage, 884-megawatt Revolution Wind 2, saying it would be too costly for consumers.
City, nonprofit development team eye $65M rail trail from downtown Hartford to Bloomfield
Aplanned six-mile, $65 million pedestrian and bike rail trail stretching from downtown Hartford’s Union Station to Bloomfield’s town center could be completed within five years, the project’s designer said.
This hARTline trail is by far the most modest of three transportation initiatives Hartford-based nonprofit development group The iQuilt Partnership plans to pursue in the run-up to Hartford’s 400th anniversary in 2035.
The other two involve capping portions of Interstates 84 and 91, and eliminating interchanges that cover vast portions of Hartford and East Hartford. The idea is to open up room to develop new neighborhoods; create more vibrant and pedestrian-friendly urban centers; and reconnect Hartford with a riverfront long blocked by flood barriers and highways.
“We used to be a riverfront city, but flooding and freeways changed us from a riverfront city to a riverfront highway, and you can barely see the river anymore,” urban designer and architect Doug Suisman told members of the Capital Region Development Authority board during a Wednesday meeting.
The hARTline comes with a cost estimate of $65 million, compared to tens-of-billions of dollars for the larger highway-capping and reconfiguration envisioned in the award-winning Hartford 400 plan, which Suisman helped develop.
Suisman and other proponents see the trail as an achievable “near-term” objective that could help build a case for the larger-scale highway redesigns.
Suisman estimated the hARTline could become a reality within two to five years.
Reconnected neighborhoods
Hartford officials and nonprofit leaders are currently assembling $2.4 million to fund the design of the trail line. The Hartford 400 plan envisions a spur using expanded city sidewalks past Dunkin’ Park to Market Street, where a pedestrian bridge would carry cyclists and pedestrians over Interstate 91 and into Riverside Park by the municipal boathouse.
An existing pedestrian bridge that crosses the highway is seen as unattractive, intimidating and underused, so the plan is to replace or refurbish it.
The hARTline would connect with a network of trails reaching other communities and, ultimately, could serve as Hartford’s contribution to the planned 3,000-mile “East Coast Greenway” pedestrian and bicycle route stretching from Maine to Florida.
“Construction of the hARTline will reconnect multiple Hartford neighborhoods to each other and to the banks of the Connecticut River, thereby fostering economic development, promoting tourism, and improving mobility within the city for a diversity of users,” Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin wrote in a memo to the city council.
A Hartford city council subcommittee, on Wednesday, endorsed acceptance of a $1.5 million state grant to use for the trail design. This funding will be partnered with a $900,000 federal grant to the iQuilt Partnership.
Jackie Mandyck, executive director of iQuilt, said the proposed trail will create better access to the riverfront for residents in north Hartford.
While a precise timeline has not yet been established, Mandyck estimated trail designs could be completed as early as 2026, with construction starting that year, or in 2027.
Brookfielders oppose plan to expand natural gas compressor station near middle school
BROOKFIELD — Opposition is mounting in town to stop the planned expansion of a natural gas compressor station located near homes and just 1,900 feet from Whisconier Middle School.
“My family and I live literally a mile-and-a-half from this station. … I live down the road from Whisconier Road,” said state Sen. Stephen Harding, R-Brookfield. “So I’m 100 percent against this. I’m one of the neighbors that will be impacted.”
Two steel pipelines enter and exit the compressor station: The Algonquin pipepline, which was built in 2008, comes in from the southwest, and the Iroquois pipeline, which was built in 2009, comes down from the north. The point at which they meet is a compressor station on an 80-acre property at 78 High Meadow Lane. The compressor station is owned by Iroquois Gas Transmission System, L.P.
While no new pipeline is proposed as part of this project, Iroquois wants to more than double the capacity of the compressor station — to receive an additional 125 million cubic feet per day of natural gas, according to an operating permit filed with the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.
Aside from Brookfield, the company is planning to install cooling equipment to its existing plant in Milford and add compression and cooling equipment at existing stations in Dover and Athens, N.Y., according to the company, which declined to comment and directed Hearst Connecticut Media to its website
“There’s an expansion of infrastructure on site, in the station, as well as an expansion of the capacity (of natural gas) going through the pipeline,” Harding said.
The project, called ExC (Expansion By Compression), "wants to ship more gas through the pipelines in New York City. And in order to do that, they're going to expand the capacity of the compressor stations along the pipeline route," said Nick Katkevich, northeast field organizer of the Sierra Club, a nonprofit environmental organization.
Katkevich continued: "Compressor stations burn gas in order to create pressure to push the gas along the pipeline. They're only expanding the compressor stations along the pipeline route."
All new facilities will be constructed entirely within Iroquois’ existing compressor station properties, the company's website states.
Iroquois Gas estimates the cost of the project in all towns to be $272 million, according to its website.
Iroquois is waiting on permits in Connecticut and New York before proceeding with the project, from a permitting standpoint. In Milford, the Planning and Zoning Board approved a coastal area management site plan for its part of the project in February 2020.
“It is actually one big project but each site has independent construction and is hinged on the same set of permits — state and federal,” said Brookfield resident Dan Myers, the chief executive officer and cofounder of Flair, a climate tech startup business. Myers is leading an effort to stop the project from going forward.
Additionally, the Sierra Club, a nonprofit environmental organization, is also working with local residents to oppose the proposed expansion. The opponents have created a campaign to spread awareness, called “Stop the Toxic Compressor Station Expansions in Connecticut.”
When the compressor station was first proposed, residents objected, saying it would be a risk to their health and safety and also posed risks to staff and students at Whisconier school. They’re making that same argument now, as they await a decision from DEEP on a draft permit for the Brookfield project only, Katkevich said.
“When we make a tentative determination to approve or deny, the public will have an opportunity to comment and request a hearing,” said Will Healey, a director of communications at DEEP.
If DEEP moves forward with the permit application, the next step would be for DEEP to issue a draft permit.
"Realistically, if the governor and DEEP understand the true impacts of this project, they can reject the permit," Nick Katkevich said.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which regulates the interstate transmission of natural gas, oil and electricity, approved the initial application for the proposed expansion in 2020, despite objections from the Environmental Protection Agency.
Once the draft permit is received, the next step would be publishing the draft permit in the local newspaper.
"There'll be this process where you can submit public comment on the draft permit. We can ask for a public hearing, which we will do. It sets in motion this process of a second layer of vetting for the permit. At that point, DEEP can still reject it," he said.
Construction would only began if DEEP approves the draft permit. At that point, FERC would issue an authorization for construction. Once construction is complete, FERC would issue an additional permit for operation.
“We are asking DEEP to conduct at least one year of air monitoring in Brookfield before publishing the draft permit, so that the real impacts of the compressor station can be understood,” Katkevich said.
The agency that services the compressor stations in New York is the Department of Environmental Conservation.
“The air permits associated with these are coming from two different state agencies,” Myers said. “So, from an intervention standpoint, on the federal side, we have common ground, but on the state side, those are the pending permits right now, before the federal side will authorize any additional activity.”
Local objections
The Iroquois pipeline comes from Canada and terminates on Long Island, and the Algonquin pipeline starts in New Jersey and ends in Massachusetts. The natural gas compressor stations, such as the one in Brookfield, are used to maintain the flow of natural gas through the pipeline network.
The proposed expansion won’t affect any cultural resources, public recreation areas, “important” wildlife habitat, and will have minimal impacts to wetlands, according to Iroquois' website.
Additionally, the project is anticipated to provide additional tax revenue to each of the towns it involves — including $1.8 million to Brookfield, the Iroquois website said.
However, the project isn’t designed to serve anyone in the local area; it serves customers in New York, the Iroquois website said. The natural gas is used to heat homes.
“No one in the greater Danbury area … utilizes any of the gas that’s flowing in this pipeline. We’re just being used as an infrastructure to get it down to Long Island from Canada,” Harding said. “My constituents and my fellow neighbors don’t benefit from this at all, yet we have the burden of having a higher risk with gas flow coming through the pipeline.”
Myers said he objects to the project for a number of reasons. “Fundamentally, this is an instance of a transnational fossil fuel company taking advantage of a small town who doesn’t have a lot of resources to push back for profits that come with a lot of pollution and a lot of localized risk, with no real benefit to the community,” he said.
“It’s a real injustice to the town of Brookfield that every day you send your kids to this middle school and you might just assume it’s safe. But reality would show that there’s a pretty giant hazard in close proximity of these kids. It’s really concerning.”
First Selectman Steve Dunn said he’s fully against the project as well.
“We as a town need to look at this really, really carefully. It is very close to the Whisconier school. Until we are totally comfortable that this would be operated in a safe manner that would protect our children, we’re not going to support this,” Dunn said.
The town will be hiring an attorney to see whether it can fight against the proposed expansion, he said. “We’re going to fight this,” he said. “My job is to protect the town and its residents.”
Pipeline dangers
The Brookfield compressor station pushes gas into the pipelines at 18,000 horsepower, Myers said.
The project would add two turbines with a combined additional 24,000 horsepower, which would “increase the flow” of the natural gas, Harding said. “You’re going be able to pump more gas at a higher rate at a higher speed, at a quicker, faster, higher capacity.”
Some of the dangers come from the natural gas that can emitted by compressor stations that are linked to blood cancers, lung and kidney damage, damage to the immune system, reproduction, and neural tube defects in infants, according to the National Library of Medicine.
“Gas lines always provide some aspect of danger to it. And you’re within yards of a middle school, in a highly dense suburban residential neighborhoods,” Harding said.
There are additional possible dangers at the compressor station, Myers said.
“Pollution from compressor stations comes primarily from 'blowdowns' and turbine combustion, if not electric compressors,” he added. “Blowdowns release pressure… and carry with them risk of ignition. Combustion of fuel in turbines releases many different types of hazardous byproducts.”
Fairfield envisions transit-oriented development as part of long-range plan
FAIRFIELD — A handful of major developments that opened in recent years, and some others in the planning stages give a clue to the present and future of development in town.
The pattern is known as transit-oriented development, and it's both the manifestation of Fairfield's population growth over the past decade and a sign of where the town could be headed over the next 10 years as part of a long-term planning document that local leaders are debating.
A riverside patch of open land on Ash Creek Boulevard will eventually be the site of a 400-unit apartment complex called The Crossings at Fairfield Metro Center, spread across five buildings that will stand alongside a 120-room hotel. The first building of the eventual housing hotspot already stands with its completed skeleton — four stories overlooking Ash Creek and the Fairfield Metro station on either side.
The Crossings is one of several major developments the town has clustered around its pair of train stations in recent years, a class that includes the 160-unit Alto Fairfield Metro complex on the other side of the Fairfield Metro Center, another 240 residential units in the works for 81 Black Rock Turnpike and nearly 100 units at The Anchorage near Fairfield Station downtown.
"We're trying to find the right balance of needed economic growth balanced by preserving the characteristics of the community that everybody loves so much," Planning Director Jim Wendt said at a recent Board of Education meeting.
The advisory document — known as the Plan of Conservation and Development, or the POCD for short — is the 10-year development blueprint that will largely influence how Fairfield balances construction projects that boost the tax base with the space it preserves amid a growing population. Fairfield’s population rose about 3.5 percent over a 10-year period from 59,400 in 2010 to roughly 61,500 in 2020, according to census data.
The plan, drafted by engineering consultant FHI Studio, looks to continue concentrating "more diverse housing options" around Fairfield's centers of public transportation — Fairfield Station downtown and Fairfield Metro Center near the Bridgeport border. But its bold vision for the next 10 years of growth has raised concerns about the school enrollment and traffic congestion that some worry could swell with added density in what have already become the most developed parts of town.
"We've already loosened our regulations to allow greater height, greater density, etcetera," Town Plan & Zoning Commissioner Kathryn Braun said of the Fairfield Metro Center area in an interview. "I'm not sure how much beyond that I really want to go."
Board of Education members have sounded alarm on the zoning disparities between the town's east and west sides that have resulted in noncompliance with a state racial imbalance law restricting schools from exceeding the district-wide average of minority students by more than 25 percent. Added housing density around the Fairfield Metro Center would likely be built within the school zone for McKinley Elementary School, which has triggered the state's mandate for the board to address a racial imbalance due to the number of racial minority students there.
Board members fear that as the town continues to chart more housing complexes in the neighborhood, repeated developments would exacerbate the issue that they have been struggling to address for more than 15 years.
"Someone needs to step in with a vision or nothing is going to change," board member Jennifer Maxon-Kennelly said at the meeting. "And there will be a future [Town Plan and Zoning Commission] that is going to be getting the slack from a future Board of Ed cursing them for the decision of 2023. And I think we need to step up."
Board member Jeffrey Peterson said he was "taken aback" by the POCD's lack of education planning — the draft lacks a section on education, which had been incorporated into the version that was adopted in 2016 and is currently in effect. He said the likelihood of a 100-unit development bringing 13 children to the neighborhood could still contribute to overcrowding and force additional class sections that would necessitate more hiring — "major" factors behind the board's planning.
"One or two kids can have a major impact," he said. "And we're talking about areas of town — generally if we're talking about Commerce Drive area, the train station, the Post Road, we're feeding into the most crowded schools in town."
Wendt said the number of units that new developments create also don't necessarily correlate to increased enrollment — large apartment complexes like those cropping up around the railroad stations primarily serve senior citizens, young people or divorcees. Wendt added that while housing increased by 1.5 percent from 2010 to 2020, enrollment dropped by 10 percent.
He said although planning and zoning can influence enrollment figures, they're not the sole contributors, referencing the school board's recent resolution to the State Board of Education that cites building utilization and special programming demands as barriers to a successful redistricting solution to racial imbalance.
Commissioner Tom Corsillo said the POCD strikes the right focus in creating housing opportunities that can be affordable for senior citizens, essential workers and young people. But he said the process should consider all who might be impacted by increased density.
"It's critical that the POCD takes into consideration the needs and interests of all stakeholders, and that means, for example, ensuring that the plan includes a discussion of and recommendations to address our schools' racial imbalance and utilization, which is not in the current draft," he said in an email.
Zoning commissioners seem to be in agreement that the town needs more housing options, but "how much is too much" has been a sentiment of concern when it comes to adding density to the neighborhoods with Fairfield's largest complexes.
Commissioners Alexis Harrison and Braun said the town should undertake a traffic study downtown before approving the POCD, which supports increased building height and more residential units along a wider stretch of Post Road in a zone known as the Center Design Business District.
"If we were to expand that Center Design Business District, it would really allow a lot more density, a lot more traffic and it would be really detrimental I think for our town," Harrison said in an interview.
Harrison said commissioners have agreed on holding the conversation about extending the Center Design Business District and instead focus on how to handle any increases to the housing density within its current reach. Wendt said a traffic study would be up to the commission, but he doesn't share the same concerns about congestion.
The POCD proposes decreasing the minimum lot size for 4-family houses from 12,500 to 10,250 square feet, which would free up an additional 15 parcels for potential development, and decreasing parking requirements for developers that increase by bedroom as the number of families in a development climbs.
The plan states that transit-oriented housing accommodates for residents without a car or with fewer cars in "vibrant, walkable neighborhoods near transit infrastructure." The proposal also recommends the town adopt the findings of the 2019 Transit-Oriented Development Study, which assessed the town's capabilities for growth along its public transit corridor. Transit-oriented development can elevate property values and pad Fairfield's tax base in the process of increasing housing options, according to the POCD.
Under the 10-year plan, the town would revise a series of zoning regulations that limit the size and scale of developments and the amount of residential space they can create. Among them, two of Fairfield's planning zones known as the Center Designed Business District and Design Commercial District prohibit residential units on the ground floor and restrict buildings with residential space that exceeds 50 percent of the total number of units. The POCD suggests scrapping these regulations to enable more developments with wider residential components.
The study suggests increasing the density cap from 50 to 75 bedrooms per acre within the Transit-Oriented Development Park overlay, where the town targets such development around "key corridors and gateways" to the metro center, including Black Rock Turnpike, Commerce Drive, and King’s Highway near Route 1 and I-95. Some station-adjacent properties near King’s Highway and Ash Creek Boulevard also fall under the overlay.
The study states that the 50-bedroom cap undercuts the development potential that zoning regulations allowed through floor area and building envelope standards. Increasing the bedroom cap would enable more, yet smaller units instead of more spacious and expensive ones, according to the proposal.
The Town Plan and Zoning Commission will have the chance to decide whether a subcommittee made up of commissioners, other town officials and members of the public will take up the POCD to double down on revisions and potential studies. Wendt said once the redrafting process has been completed, the POCD will move to a public hearing phase before the commission decides on final adoption.
That adoption is not required for Fairfield for nearly three years, with the current plan remaining in effect until the late stages of 2026.
Naugatuck applies for $8M state grant to revitalize Rubber Avenue parcels
ANDREAS YILMA
NAUGATUCK — The town is looking to acquire state funding to revitalize parcels of land on a major connector road, Rubber Avenue.
The borough held a hybrid public informational meeting on Dec. 5 for the Rubber Avenue Corridor Community Investment Fund application through the state Department of Economic and Community Development. The Board of Mayor and Burgesses unanimously approved to submit the application to obtain an $8 million CIF grant where the borough would match it with $400,000 from Tax Increment Financing funds.
Mayor N. Warren “Pete” Hess said the Rubber Avenue corridor, which runs from downtown and the Naugatuck River to past the recently renovated, $80 million Naugatuck High School, suffers from a legacy of blight, vacant and underutilized land.
The borough is near the process of redoing about two-thirds of a mile on Rubber Avenue from the intersection of Melbourne and Hoadley streets to Elm Street through the Local Transportation Capital Improvement Program project. That plan will include a new modern roundabout, drainage improvements, new sidewalks and landscaping along the road.
“In that area, there are neighborhoods on each side of Rubber Avenue and those are older neighborhoods in Naugatuck that have also seen their better days from an infrastructure standpoint and a sidewalk standpoint,” Hess said. “They’re pretty old, dilapidated. The sidewalks are in a state of disrepair and we have some storm water problems there that are creating issues.”
The borough acquired the old Risdon property at Rubber and Andrew Avenues for $400,000. Town officials have received brownfield grants and are almost done remediating that site.
One of the things that borough officials hope to accomplish with the CIF grant is to design a Street Department, Department of Public Works garage and Naugatuck Ambulance building at the Risdon property, Hess said.
“If you go up the street to our high school, you’ll see directly across the street from our high school, our existing DPW building which is extremely unsightly and directly across the street from the entrance to our high school,” Hess said.
Town officials envision selling the DPW building, located 510 Rubber Ave., as they have received quite a bit of interested people who want to be across the high school. The plan is eliminate the eye sore and give DPW a better environment.
More of the proposed plans call to have the borough’s DPW office and Naugatuck Ambulance building sold and put on the grand list to generate tax revenue, Hess said.
“The street has lost its way but we have a gorgeous high school and we want to have a really nice connection from downtown to the new high school,” Hess said.
Naugatuck grant writer Danielle Goewey said the borough worked hard on this budget and made sure that less than 20% of the budget is going to “soft costs.”
“We’re showing a 1 to 1 leverage or even greater than 1 to 1 leverage. So if the state decides to invest in this project, they’d be getting more than a dollar on very dollar they invest in the project,” Goewey said. “So it’d be a good return on investment.”
Hess said prior to the Connecticut Community Challenge and CIF grants, Naugatuck as a small city has never been treated like the big cities regarding state funding but are still happy and thankful for everything the municipality has received.
The borough is consolidating some municipal buildings and designing a new Street Department garage. Town officials will be increasing available commercial space and promoting complete streets in both parts of the Scott and Aenta streets neighborhoods, Some parts of Rubber Avenue have had some extreme flooding that needs to be addressed, Hess added.
“This is a transformative project because all of the Nettleton (Avenue) drainage area as it floods, it flows down into Rubber Avenue on the new roadway that’s being replaced by LOTICP funding, over $10 million in LOTCIP funding,” Goewey said. “So if we address that drainage, we’re actually increasing that state of good repair of that Rubber Avenue roadway.”
“I thought it was a great presentation and a really great project,” CIF board member Kevin Alvarez said.
Hess said the town will be finalizing remediation at the former Risdon site. When the town puts all the funding together, it revitalizes Rubber Avenue corridor and the two adjoining neighborhoods. The borough falls under the criteria and has a very strong project that would progress the town, he added.
“So we’ve already started the effort,” Hess said. “LOTCIP is going to take us a long way to getting our gateway and this project would really take us to a level where we would make a dramatic difference and help the neighborhoods as well as Rubber Avenue and create a true gateway from downtown to our high school.”