Last offshore wind turbine parts leave New London

Greg Smith

New London ― And then there were none.

Less than a year after the offshore wind industry landed in New London with the delivery of components for the nation’s first utility-scale offshore wind farm, the final pieces of New York’s South Fork Wind slowly made their way by barge up the Thames River on Friday night.

The parts, which include 330-foot-long turbine blades, 520-metric-ton nacelles and pieces of towers that when completed will rise 800 feet in height, were headed 35 miles off the coast of Montauk, N.Y., to the 12-turbine wind farm.

"It has been immensely gratifying to see the assembly and delivery of South Fork Wind turbines come to completion under the intended scenario for the transformed State Pier,” Ulysses Hammond, executive director of the Connecticut Port Authority, said on Friday.

South Fork Wind, a joint venture between Danish wind company Ørsted and Eversource, is on track to be completed by the end of the month, delivering 132 megawatts of power to the East Hampton, N.Y., power grid, enough to power an estimated 70,000 homes. One megawatt can power about 500 homes.

The last barge loaded with components left State Pier at 6 p.m. New London Mayor Michael Passero said he would likely be able to catch a glimpse of the barge moving down the Thames while having dinner at On the Waterfront restaurant.

Prior to his election as mayor in 2015, Passero said he never would have predicted the $309 million transformation of State Pier or that New London would become a centerpiece for the country’s burgeoning offshore wind industry.

Aside from a $1 million annual financial boost to the city through a host community agreement and other revenue-sharing benefits, Passero said there is a certain prestige to being the center of attention.

“It just raises the profile of New London and helps put us back on the map the way the whaling era put us on the map,” Passero said.

Greg Smith

New London ― And then there were none.

Less than a year after the offshore wind industry landed in New London with the delivery of components for the nation’s first utility-scale offshore wind farm, the final pieces of New York’s South Fork Wind slowly made their way by barge up the Thames River on Friday night.

The parts, which include 330-foot-long turbine blades, 520-metric-ton nacelles and pieces of towers that when completed will rise 800 feet in height, were headed 35 miles off the coast of Montauk, N.Y., to the 12-turbine wind farm.

"It has been immensely gratifying to see the assembly and delivery of South Fork Wind turbines come to completion under the intended scenario for the transformed State Pier,” Ulysses Hammond, executive director of the Connecticut Port Authority, said on Friday.

South Fork Wind, a joint venture between Danish wind company Ørsted and Eversource, is on track to be completed by the end of the month, delivering 132 megawatts of power to the East Hampton, N.Y., power grid, enough to power an estimated 70,000 homes. One megawatt can power about 500 homes.

The last barge loaded with components left State Pier at 6 p.m. New London Mayor Michael Passero said he would likely be able to catch a glimpse of the barge moving down the Thames while having dinner at On the Waterfront restaurant.

Prior to his election as mayor in 2015, Passero said he never would have predicted the $309 million transformation of State Pier or that New London would become a centerpiece for the country’s burgeoning offshore wind industry.

Aside from a $1 million annual financial boost to the city through a host community agreement and other revenue-sharing benefits, Passero said there is a certain prestige to being the center of attention.

“It just raises the profile of New London and helps put us back on the map the way the whaling era put us on the map,” Passero said.

South Fork Wind

MASSACHUSETTS

Delivered its first jolt of power to Long Island, N.Y., Dec. 6. When completed this spring, it’s 12 turbines will supply enough electricity to light 70,000 homes.

Cape Cod

RHODE

ISLAND

CONNECTICUT

New London

Long Island

Wainscott

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management wind lease areas are shown in orange

Map: Scott Ritter/The Day | Data: BOEM; South Fork Wind; ESRI

What’s next at State Pier?

With the last wind turbine parts cleared from State Pier, Hammond said work would continue to complete the construction project, which is overseen by the port authority. Dredging is currently underway and on track for completion this month, he said. Work is also ongoing on one of two new heavy-lift platforms.

Hammond said the objective this quarter is to turn over 100% of the site to port operator Gateway Terminal for the next project, Revolution Wind.

As it did for South Fork, State Pier will be the staging and pre-assembly area for Revolution Wind, a wind farm nearly six times the size of South Fork Wind, with 65 turbines situated 15 nautical miles southeast of Point Judith, R.I. Revolution Wind will be the first wind farm to bring renewable power to Connecticut. The joint venture of Ørsted and Eversource will generate 704 megawatts of power -- 304 megawatts to Connecticut and 400 to Rhode Island.

Hammond said Gateway will use the experience gained from South Fork Wind “to continue the smooth operation that Gateway Terminal established over the past several months.”

Downturn in offshore wind industry

Ørsted, which canceled two other planned wind projects in the U.S. last year and announced plans to cut jobs earlier this month, said it remains committed to the Revolution Wind project. The offshore wind industry has been hit by a series of setbacks that offshore wind developers blame on increased costs associated with higher interest rates and supply chain disruptions. Ørsted was among several developers to cancel contracts in the Northeast because of increased costs.

In a statement on Friday, Ørsted said onshore work for Revolution Wind “continues to steadily progress and we anticipate components for the project to begin arriving at State Pier this spring.”

Vineyard Wind

MASSACHUSETTS

Its first turbine began sending power to the electric grid at 11:52 p.m. Jan. 2. Once completed, 62 wind towers will churn out enough power for around 400,000 homes.

Cape Cod

Barnstable

RHODE

ISLAND

CONNECTICUT

New London

Long Island

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management wind lease areas are shown in orange

Map: Scott Ritter/The Day | Data: BOEM; Vineyard Wind; ESRI

Eversource announced last year it was exiting the offshore wind industry and selling its stake in the joint projects with Ørsted.

Eversource has since announced it had an agreement to sell its 50% ownership share in both South Fork and Revolution Wind to Global Infrastructure Partners, exiting the projects while “retaining certain cost sharing obligations for the construction of Revolution Wind.”

Eversource said it expects to enter into a separate construction management agreement as a contractor for Revolution Wind to complete the onshore work that is already underway.

Ørsted has rebid its Sunrise Wind project, also in New York, as part of New York’s latest offshore wind solicitation. As part of the newest proposal, Ørsted has agreed to acquire Eversource’s 50% share of the planned 924-megawatt farm.

By comparison, Dominion’s nuclear power plant, Millstone Power Station in Waterford, generates more than 2,000 megawatts and powers about 2 million homes.

Planning for the next project

For Revolution Wind, Hammond said wind turbine components will come in incrementally and be stored, partially assembled and shipped to the Revolution Wind site -- just as they were for South Fork Wind -- on a continuous rotation of incoming and outgoing vessels carrying components until the project is completed.

The project was originally supposed to make use of the first U.S.-built and Jones Act-compliant offshore wind turbine installation vessel, called Charybis. Construction of Charybis, however, is still underway. Dominion Energy, the owner of the massive, 472-foot-long ship, has announced the vessel will not be ready until the end of 2024 or early in 2025.

Tony Sheridan, president of the Chamber of Commerce of Eastern Connecticut, said it’s exciting to have the region “front and center of a new industry, new to America.” Sheridan traveled to Denmark last spring in hopes of luring wind turbine manufacturers to the U.S. He sees a future in manufacturing tied to the maritime industry.

Sheridan said there are good jobs associated with the industry, and in light of the expense of the cost to develop State Pier, thinks the state and Gov. Ned Lamont are rightly looking ahead.

Revolution Wind

MASSACHUSETTS

Some 65 turbines could be turning by next year. About 400 megawatts of power is expected to flow to Rhode Island; 304 megawatts would be purchased by Connecticut consumers.

Cape Cod

RHODE

ISLAND

Quonset Point

*

CONNECTICUT

New London

Long Island

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management wind lease areas are shown in orange

Map: Scott Ritter/The Day | Data: BOEM; Revolution Wind; ESRI

Hammond also credited the governor and state leaders for “putting the Port of New London and State Pier at the forefront of this new American industry delivering clean, sustainable, domestic offshore wind energy.”

“I came out of retirement to see this project through and I am over the moon about what the citizens of Connecticut and our Partners have accomplished. We are the country's example of what's possible when it comes to the decarbonization of our nation,” he said.

Lamont Launches an Offshore Wind Collaborative

Gregory Stroud

GROTON – It’s almost unfair to frame an interview of the just launched Connecticut Wind Collaborative in a litany of bad news – some might call it a reality check. Not an hour after I began writing this story, the news broke that Ørsted was pulling out of offshore wind markets in Norway, Spain and Portugal – what the Financial Times is calling a “retreat after several years of aggressive expansion.”

That’s quite a change from five years ago, when Ørsted made a splash across the Eastern Seaboard and in New London by venturing into what was then valued conservatively as a 20GW, $70B offshore wind market. Since then, Ørsted share prices have dropped by a quarter, and are off 70% from highs three years ago.

Ørsted which began as a state-owned producer of oil and natural gas, is still the world’s largest developer of offshore wind and controls about a quarter of the world market. Ørsted also remains a big player in Connecticut, where it is doubling down with buyouts of partnering Eversource, and pushing ahead with projects out of State Pier even as it cancels planned wind farms off New Jersey.

Analysts say the company “now needs to execute on various components of its plan,” which for southern New England means completing Revolution Wind, a 704 MW offshore wind farm being staged out of State Pier in New London, and contracted to provide power to Connecticut and Rhode Island.

In an uncertain world these contracts – what the industry calls power purchase agreements or PPAs – provide revenue certainty, a guaranteed price to reassure developers like Ørsted to invest billions of dollars in ports and vessels and turbines before seeing a dime of profits.

But PPAs have lately been a sticking point for the completion of Sunrise Wind, a 924 MW project scheduled for staging out of State Pier, and Ørsted has threatened to pull out of the project without a higher guaranteed price than its original bid.

Avangrid, a subsidiary of the Spanish multinational Iberdrola, has already pulled the plug on the Park City Wind project out of Bridgeport – a result that frankly surprised no one, given what looks now like a highly speculative low bid in 2019 for the energy.  

Exiting that contract cost Avangrid a mere $16 million, a tiny fraction of the project cost, a result that State Sen. Ryan Fazio, R-Greenwich, the ranking Senate Republican on the Energy Committee, compared to a “heads, I win, tails, you lose,” scenario for consumers.

New bids for offshore projects, including Sunrise Wind, once scheduled for Jan. 31 have been delayed in part to give time for the IRS to clarify the availability of substantial federal tax credits, and are expected to come in at a significant premium.

High interest rates, a balky supply chain, the halting availability of tax credits and subsidies – nearly everything that could go wrong for wind energy has gone wrong. And the partisan divide that has overtaken the sprint toward an electrified economy in the United States surely adds a risk premium.

Not backing away 

All that said, Gov. Ned Lamont and the State of Connecticut aren’t backing away from the goal of a 100% zero-carbon electricity supply by 2040.

Instead in October, just as the first wave of really bad industry news hit, the administration was announcing an ambitious 24-page road map for a multi-state cooperative effort to build an offshore wind industry, and the launch of a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit, the Connecticut Wind Collaborative, to help coordinate and implement it.

Paul Lavoie, chair of the Connecticut Wind Collaborative (CT Examiner)

I met with members of the collaborative earlier this month.

The board chair, Paul Lavoie, is the state’s Chief Manufacturing Officer.

Leaving his job at the Connecticut Port Authority, Andrew Lavigne, the co-vice chair for the collaborative, was named last March, manager of the Clean Economy Program at the Department of Economic and Community Development.

Paul Whitescarver, the former Commanding Officer of the Naval Submarine Base New London, is the secretary and incorporator. Whitescarver is the executive director of the nonprofit Southeastern Connecticut Enterprise Region, or seCTer, where the nonprofit collaborative is being incubated.

The Connecticut Wind Collaborative launches with $577,500 of seed funding from the Ørsted and Eversource joint venture in part to fulfill contractual commitments to support supply chain and workforce development tied to Revolution Wind. With this funding in place, the collaborative is expecting to hire a full-time executive director as soon as April, with a longer-term goal of organizational budgets in the low millions of dollars.

Getting serious about offshore wind

Dial it back a year to April 2023.

Lavoie, who had been tapped in late 2022 to lead the state’s efforts on offshore wind, had just hired Lavigne. Not much was happening offshore. Lavoie had been sending reports upstairs through Nick Simmons, Lamont’s newly appointed Deputy Chief of Staff, when by Lavoie’s account, word came down from the Governor that he wanted a strategic plan for offshore wind by August.

Andrew Lavigne, manager of the Clean Economy Program at DECD (CT Examiner)

Here Paul Lavoie narrates how it happened…

PL: We were really just kind of maintaining what we were doing in the offshore wind industry — They’re still working on the pier. Nothing was being marshaled yet. They were talking about some Southfork coming here. Revolution was still not financed yet.

So, you know, it was up in the air.

And then we brought Andrew on board. And right around that time, there was a deputy chief of staff in the Governor’s Office that had a keen interest in offshore wind, that really came through the governor and through him. And I started giving him updates on the offshore wind industry and what was going on.

Andrew was “born” in April and he came to me in late May. Actually, I called Andrew into my office and I said, “I just got a call from the Governor’s Office. He wants a strategic plan on offshore wind, and he wants it by August.”

June, July, August… we had, like, three months. So, Andrew’s comment was, “You mean all the justification that I did, that we should put together a strategic plan?”

So you can throw it away. It’s the Governor. The Governor wants it. Now we’re going to do it.

So you can really look at that as being the date that Connecticut got very serious about offshore wind and the offshore wind industry, when the Governor asked us to do that, under Nick Simmons’ direction, who was the Deputy Chief of Staff at the time.

The roadmap that came together over those three months was based around four pillars: maximizing ports and infrastructure, building the necessary workforce, building a supply chain, and maximizing the state’s research and development capabilities around offshore wind and the “blue economy.”

PL: Building the strategic roadmap was basically putting our stamp saying, “Connecticut is in the offshore wind industry, we’re very, very serious about it, and we’re going to resource it to be able to make sure that we can do four things right.”

State officials launch a privately-funded nonprofit

With $577,500 of private seed money, a number of state officials, including Lavoie and Lavigne, worked with Whitescarver to incorporate the Connecticut Wind Collaborative as a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit.

By all accounts it was an unusual, perhaps unprecedented solution.

PL: We finished it in August and then the Governor didn’t roll out till October. So you can look at October as when Connecticut said, “Okay, you know, here we go.” And part of that plan is the creation of the Connecticut Wind Collaborative, which is a nonprofit organization that will support the offshore wind industry.

We did that intentionally, setting it up as a nonprofit organization. Right now it’s funded with money from Revolution Wind, money that was set aside for economic development that was being unused. So, we repurposed that money to go into the wind collaborative. And we’re going to look at the industry to be able to say, “Listen, we want you to support the wind collaborative as well.”

We’re going to look at this as really being privately funded. And then we’ll look at the public part of it once we get it up and running, because we’re going to need some kind of incentives to be able to grow the industry.

I don’t think anyone ever said, “Connecticut needs another quasi-public,” like the often beleaguered Connecticut Port Authority, but the nonprofit arrangement raises a variety of ethical and legal questions of its own.

Boil it down and we have government officials setting up a nonprofit entity and accepting private money as a vehicle to perform the very same public duties they are paid for by the taxpayers — all outside of the bounds of ethics rules, public meetings law, and Freedom of Information requests.

GS: So, from a cynical press perspective, so we have a lot of public officials sitting around in a nonprofit, and I can’t FOIA them, or have any access to these conversations?

PL: I think the whole idea of a nonprofit is about speed, right? It really is about speed and how quickly we can move, and how we can bring other entities together to look and say, “Hey, listen, we want to do this from a win-win perspective.”

You know, what’s interesting is that we’re looking at, you know, we’re trying to orchestrate a brand new industry.

You’re talking about where’s the tipping point, right? Where’s the point where we’re, all of a sudden, we’re gonna get to a critical mass of installations where it’s no longer economically going to make sense to bring stuff over.

But how do we manage up to that, so that when we hit that tipping point we can capitalize it right away?

I’ll tell you my fear. My biggest fear when I stepped into this role was that we were behind. We were way behind. And we’ve caught up.

GS: Or everything has slowed down.

PL: Well both, right?

Yeah, but it has slowed down a little bit, and we’re playing catch up, but I think we’re at the point right now that we’re going to step ahead of where industry is and be able to look at that strategically and say, “Okay, where are the areas that make sense in Connecticut?”

And, again, regionally too. Where does that all make sense?

So, the idea of the plan is that when we get to that point, we’ve got workforce training in place, we’ve got suppliers ready to take on the work we have. And it really is going to them and saying, “Listen, you know, there’s no work today, but here’s what the work is going to be like. So start planning your organization to take the work.”

And there’ll be some that will, and some that won’t, and we want to be able to, to capitalize on that.

But we want to build out the supply chain here first, and then we can fill the gaps in.

There’s gonna be direct foreign investment. There’s going to be European companies that are out there saying, “Hey, we want to put a plant Connecticut,” because rather than having Connecticut people make it, we want our people to make it and we want to make it Connecticut.

Well, that’s going to be Connecticut jobs, right? Those are going to be Connecticut jobs, Connecticut capital equipment, Connecticut real estate. All of that.

So we’re looking at how we balance all of that. We’re trying to get an entire ecosystem ready for an industry. And the collaborative will be at the center of this.

GS: I think there are two things when the public hears about something like this. One, is they worry that when the government gets involved in these sorts of these things, that they’re picking winners. But it doesn’t really seem like that’s what you guys are are doing, it’s more of a clearing house than picking.

PL: That’s a fair statement.

GS: The other, again, that point of transparency. You know, I’d be more worried about transparency, if you were picking winners, but still, why not a quasi-public? Why not give us that extra measure where we can sit in on your board meeting, where we can potentially do a Freedom of Information request?

Not to use the Port Authority as a model. But, thank God, in that sense, I think the public has benefited from the fact that the Port Authority is a quasi-public. That transparency, ultimately, was a winner. So why a nonprofit? Are there a lot of other nonprofits like this that the state sets up?

PL: You know, I don’t know that I’m aware of any of them. Again, this was really all designed around, “how do we engage with private industry, and how do we get this running as quickly as we possibly can.

It’s easier from a funding perspective. It’s easier standing it up and getting things done. We’re doing an RFP for branding. And we put the job out there already. We’re already getting applicants. About three weeks from now we’re gonna start interviewing candidates.

It doesn’t happen that way. If it was a quasi-public it wouldn’t move that way. So, it gives us that flexibility to do it. And listen, I know, quite frankly, I’m serving as the board chair because, with Andrew, we’re the most knowledgeable people. I serve a year or two, and somebody from private industry is interested in being the board chair, that’s great.

But, yeah, I think that’s an issue of consideration for us to take as the board to say, “How do we become more transparent? How do we make sure that we’re guaranteeing transparency?”

You know, and I don’t have I don’t have any problem with that.

The tipping point

In October, at the initial rollout of the state’s offshore wind roadmap, I was struck by the extraordinarily modest the number of skilled jobs and manufacturing opportunities I was being pitched by state officials — dozens of jobs, screws and fasteners.

By that measure, in the fall, offshore wind was all about low-carbon energy generation.

Paul Whitescarver, executive director of seCTer (CT Examiner)

In contrast on Wednesday, the conversation centered much more on business, supply chains and manufacturing, particularly the idea that the logistical challenge of foreign companies installing thousands of wind turbines off the coast of New England was monumental enough to drive the developers like Ørsted to look to the domestic American market for components, repairs and replacements.

By Whitescarver’s back of a napkin estimation, we’re talking 2,500 wind turbines out of a just a handful of ports on the east coast.

PL: Connecticut has the only pier with unrestricted access to open water to offshore wind farms. New Bedford has the hurricane barriers. But those are the only two ports right now that are that are marshalling offshore wind projects in the country. New York’s building them. New Jersey’s building them. Everybody’s trying to build up for that, but we have the head start.

And you’re right, I mean, all of the the work is coming from overseas, but I’ve had conversations with purchasing folks at Ørsted. Now, they’ve opened up a container, looked at the container, and said, “Every part that’s in that container can be made here.”

So, there’s going to be an economic decision that developers are going to make that says, it’s no longer economically viable to make this stuff in Europe and then to ship it in a container over here, when it can be made here. And so we’ll we’ll be ready to help build out that supply chain.

We’re looking at it not on a state-by-state basis, we’re looking at a regional basis. How do we build a regional economy?

So far it appears that the idea of collaboration appeals most to neighboring Rhode Island. Already a member of Rhode Island Commerce has joined the board, and the collaborative is engaging with the North Kingstown Chamber of Commerce to bring its WindWinRI educational pipeline program to Connecticut high schools and colleges.

PW: Paul [Lavoie] and I were at the same conference, and we listen to this guy talk about the U.K. and their development of offshore wind, and how the developers when you work with the U.K., you don’t have to go to eight or nine different states to figure out how to do things. So this collaborative that the state has started is really an answer to that.

And all the developers when you go to the conferences have complained about the requirements for local content and how going across state lines makes it very difficult. Because Connecticut maybe only has a small power purchase agreement compared to say New York, and you have a New York that’s got a local content requirement compared to a little bitty old Connecticut.

So with the collaborative, when we can unify ourselves with Rhode Island and Massachusetts, you get rid of that local content — it can’t go across state lines, but regionally it makes sense. That is where the collaborative and our association with the other states will make a difference.

What Connecticut does best

But if Lavoie and Whitescarver offered scant evidence, yet, of any significant out-of-state buy-in, or any collaborative counterbalance to the shear weight of neighboring New York, they made a more convincing case that Connecticut’s manufacturing niche — aircraft, engines and submarines — is an especially good fit for offshore wind.

GS: I mean, part of the reason to collaborate is right now we’re talking dozens of jobs, right? We’re not talking hundreds of jobs, or several hundreds of jobs. Part of that is that we’re starting small, right? There’s a little bit of hurry up and wait here.

PW: So, you know, when seCTer did their offshore wind industry cluster development for the [Economic Development Administration] for the Build Back Better regional challenge, we did a REMI study.

And through a course of a decade, if you were to bring the supply chain to Connecticut or Rhode Island, if we could have gotten $60 million, whether for UConn, for workforce investment, for finding pieces of property, you could have an apex of jobs created of about 9,000 over a decade with an equilibrium of about 6000 jobs created. And that was just looking at southeastern Connecticut. So the jobs will come. There are plenty of studies that corroborate that.

GS: So we have a collaboration between the states. Besides a port, what specifically does Connecticut bring to the table? And what should we bring to the table better? Like, when they say, “Okay, you do this, we do that.” What do we do? What do we want to do?

PL: We have one of the most sophisticated supply chains around three areas, right?

Helicopters, jet engines, and submarines.

So when you really look at, “what is a windmill?” It’s a propeller that’s powered by an engine that’s on a really long round thing, right? What we are really looking at is the components piece of that.

Are we going to make the stanchions here? We have the capability to do it, but that’s being done in Europe.

But when you start to take a look at the engine and the components in the engine, and you start to look at wear and tear and breakdown — all of those component parts can be made here and the supply chain is ready to do it. Because they’re making parts right now for F135 engines and commercial engines. And Connecticut is number one in the country in aircraft engine and airplane parts manufacturing. 25% of all aircraft engines and airplane parts are made here in Connecticut.

So you look at that. That infrastructure exists. It literally is a bolt on to that infrastructure. It really is the understanding and the capability to do that.

And then you look at at maintenance and repair organizations. There are maintenance and repair organizations across the state for propeller blades, and for engines, and all of that. So, as we look at the supply chain, right now, we really need to get companies to understand what that’s going to be. And that requires somebody to work with the developers and to work with the tier-one suppliers like Siemens Gamesa. We’re working to get them to understand what they’re going to need for components and connecting them to Connecticut companies. So, that’s Connecticut’s strategic advantage.

Fairfield OKs 5-story mixed use development on Black Rock; contaminated soil still needs cleaned

Jarrod Wardwell

FAIRFIELD — A project to transform the abandoned lot where Fairfield's Bullard Machine Tool Company factory once stood and turn it into a large-scale development with apartments, shops and co-working space has secured zoning clearance from the town.

Zoning commissioners signed off on plans to build a five-story building with 245 apartments, including 30 affordable units, ground-floor retail space and co-working offices for residents at 81 Black Rock Turnpike, tucked between Fairfield Metro Center and the newly opened Elicit Brewing Company location. The zoning approval is a major step forward for the large-scale development, which still faces a state-regulated remediation process to clean up environmental contamination from the old factory at the site.

"I remember going to the train station and driving by this vacant lot with weeds pulled up and knowing the environmental concerns and thinking, 'Well that's going to stay there forever. Who's going to touch that?'" Thomas Noonan, the chair of the commission, said during a meeting Tuesday. "Now we've got a great project that meets the criteria from a local builder who's certainly not rushing through it."

The project dovetails with the town's push to revitalize the neighborhoods surrounding transit centers, like the Fairfield Metro and Fairfield Station stops on the Metro-North line, with more housing and commercial space to promote economic activity, mobility and foot traffic. 

"While there's certainly a need for homes throughout Fairfield — it's not just where density exists — I think we do have a responsibility to add density where we have infrastructure to support it like we do here," commissioner Tom Corsillo said.

The approval from Fairfield's Town Plan and Zoning Commission comes more than a year after Fairfield-based developer Post Road Residential introduced its plans in late 2022. The project has since received a $3 million state grant to cover the environmental remediation work — funding that the town and developer are contemplating rejecting due to its legal  obligations, which involve more affordability and higher wages during construction.

The commission backed the development 6-1, with the sole vote of opposition coming from commissioner Kathryn Braun, who criticized a lack of clarity surrounding the environmental contamination at the site, as did commissioner Alexis Harrison despite voting in favor of the development.

With the developer yet to apply to the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection for the remediation, Braun said the state-governed process could alter project design, which should be cemented before the commission grants approval. She said the commission also received too much information after the closure of the project's public hearing, when commissioners can question the applicant, leaving her with unanswered questions for the Engineering Department.

"I think it is not good for the public or for the commission to not be able to vet out info when it comes in," Braun said.

Noonan rejected Braun's concerns, which he said go beyond the zoning commission's jurisdiction when it comes to environmental remediation that DEEP will oversee. He, alongside a pair of other commissioners, said the state process would vet an exhaustive site cleanup before construction could move forward, and the town zoning body would remain at the ready for any necessary issues that come up along the way.

"I'll repeat my lovely saying — people may want treatises, and they get bullet points — but I don’t really understand what else is expected of our town engineers or other staff other than we approve, we've reviewed this, we've talked and we approved it," he said.

New plan to save The Sherman School would reduce building size by about 30 percent

Sandra Diamond Fox

SHERMAN — School officials have developed a plan to renovate the outdated Sherman School that would reduce the square footage of the building by about 30 percent. 

The proposed square footage of about 59,000 is the most efficient size to maintain a pre-K-8 school, school officials said. A prior $47 million plan to upgrade and reduce the building from about 85,000 square feet to about 68,000 square feet was voted down in October 2023.

The 86-year-old building is in such poor shape that local officials have weighed whether to close it as enrollment declines. There is no plan to close Sherman School entirely, officials said. 

“The request that we all got from the town was to sharpen our pencils. This plan reflects that sharpening,” said Board of Education member Tim Laughlin at a recent meeting. “It is essentially the smallest, most efficient building plan that you can have to accommodate the current educational program for students in pre-K-8 that’s reflected not only in the building plan, but frankly, also in the budget the superintendent proposed.” 

The Board of Education doesn’t have a cost estimate yet of the new plan, Laughlin said, adding it would likely be cheaper than the previous plan.

"We do understand school construction prices have become more stable in recent weeks, based on other projects' bidding results,” he said. “It would be fair to assume that a reduction in size and scope would have a corresponding reduction in project cost and associated impact to taxpayers.”

Sherman First Selectman Don Lowe told Hearst Connecticut Media on Thursday he looks forward “to examining the situation at the school and to working to make The Sherman School whole again in a way that’s acceptable to the Sherman taxpayers.”

At the Feb. 7 meeting, the Board of Education unanimously voted to send the revised space plan to the school building committee, which meets Tuesday. At the joint meeting, which will be held with the Board of Education and the Board of Selectmen who also acts as Sherman’s Board of Finance, next steps will be discussed.

Reconfiguring classrooms, bathrooms

There are about 250 students in grades pre-K-8 in The Sherman School this year and about 130 high school students who attend school in neighboring communities, according to figures presented at the meeting. 

According to enrollment projections from the school, in the 2024-25 school year, there’ll be about 240 students in pre-K-8 and about 140 high school students. Over the next 10 years, however, enrollment in grades pre-K-8 is anticipated to increase by 60 students, with about 100 students in grades 9-12.

Under the new plan, pre-k through fourth grade would be upstairs, while fifth through eighth grade would be downstairs. Fifth graders are upstairs with the younger kids at the existing school.  

“Because the fifth graders would be part of the middle school, they wouldn’t need independent classrooms,” said Board of Education Chair Matt Vogt, who is also on the school’s building committee. “In the middle schools, the rooms are multi-use — more like a college campus where teachers move between rooms rather than having dedicated classrooms.”

Additionally, the plan calls for pre-K students having bathrooms in their own classroom. 

Other changes would include eliminating gym locker rooms, reducing storage and office space, and reducing and combining educational technology and STEAM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) instruction spaces.

“Essentially, everything would be condensed. Really, the thought process was 'What is the minimum size of each program space that can support the student enrollment?'” Laughlin said.

Exploring other options

While the Board of Education has not endorsed any plan other than a modified space program for a local pre-K-8 school, members are analyzing what the costs associated with a pre-K-5 only model are from an operational, tuition, and transportation perspective, Laughlin said.

Toward that end, board members discussed what's involved in sending Sherman’s middle school students to neighboring districts.

Students in the Sherman school district now choose between attending high schools in New Fairfield, New Milford and Region 12, which has students from Bridgewater, Roxbury and Washington. If The Sherman School decides to eliminate its middle school and send children to neighboring schools, there would be no more choice. 

“The logistics wouldn’t make any sense. So if you were to do it, one town would take all of our students from sixth grade to 12th grade,” Vogt said. 

Sherman school officials will be working on the full analysis of cost comparisons in the coming weeks.

"We remain committed to conducting a thoughtful and deliberate analysis to determine if any alternates are viable based on tuition cost information provided by potential receiving  districts," Vogt said.

Laughlin said program needs from a building perspective for a pre-K-5 school compared to those needed for a pre-K-8 school are slightly different as fewer classrooms would be required. 

"However, any potential reduction in square feet would be relatively small in order to still maintain required programming for students in grades pre-K-5," he said. 

He added based on preliminary information and considering all factors, it doesn't seem that a pre-K-5 only model would result in significant operational cost savings, if any at all.  

South Windsor schools unveil details of planned athletic field upgrades ahead of hearing next month

Joseph Villanova

SOUTH WINDSOR — School officials have submitted detailed plans for the proposed athletic field improvements at South Windsor High School ahead of a public hearing scheduled in March.

Though the Town Council decided in January not to set a date for a $7.5 million referendum to fund the plan, the school district is moving forward with an application to the Planning and Zoning Commission. The PZC's public hearing is tentatively scheduled for March 12, the same date that the Board of Education originally requested that the Town Council set the referendum for.

The centerpiece of the plan is a synthetic turf field with field lighting, a request from both educators and athletes that has yet gone unfulfilled.

Chris Hulk, director of design and construction for New England at turf contractor FieldTurf, wrote in a memo dated Jan. 22 that South Windsor is the only high school in its District Reference Group without a lit field.

"This requires students to be dismissed from school early and miss class time at both South Windsor and for visiting schools so that they can have adequate daylight for events," Hulk said.

The new multipurpose field would be placed in the area adjacent to the Wapping Annex, where the high school's tennis courts are currently located, in order to facilitate an increase in the number fields on campus and comply with local zoning regulations for athletic field lighting setbacks.

Hulk said in addition to a new playing surface and lighting fixtures, the new field would come with bleachers, a press box, accessibility improvements, and space for more buildings to support the field in the future, such as a concession stand.

"The new field will address the need for additional playing space with a lit field, and provide opportunity for the existing, heavily dated tennis courts to be relocated and replaced," Hulk said.

Hulk said the high school's six tennis courts, built in the 1960s, are in need of "extensive" repairs and are located at the bottom of a slope far away from parking, limiting accessibility for potential players.

The seven new tennis courts would be located where the high school's field currently sits, joined by four new pickleball courts, Hulk said.

"These new tennis courts will meet the number of courts needed for tennis matches, provide parking adjacent to the courts, accommodate the growing desire for pickleball courts in the community, and will be fully installed within the existing developed area of the site," Hulk said.

Hulk said the proposal includes an extra tennis court in part because the high school's tennis team has seven matches for each event, meaning that having only six courts forces one match to wait for another to finish before it can start.

Hulk said in addition to providing more flexible fields, the project hopes to provide more flexibility in accessing the high school itself. He said the plan proposes a new driveway from the Wapping Annex parking lot to the student parking lot to improve emergency vehicle access, increase parking on campus near the tennis courts, and allow the school more options for student pickup and drop-off.

Before the referendum date was put on hold, construction of the project would have begun this spring and into the fall if approved and funded, though the funding is up in the air. Work would have started with the synthetic turf and driveway improvements, with lighting work projected during September and early October.

Mayor Audrey Delnicki said Friday that the Town Council would likely begin discussing a referendum for the project in June, once budgets are finalized across the board.

Delnicki said the referendum was delayed primarily because "we don't have all the numbers," and due to the new Town Council's unfamiliarity with the plan.

If the town does choose to send the $7.5 million to a public vote, Delnicki said, the question would likely be included on the ballot for the November election. She said a benefit of waiting until then for the referendum is that more people tend to vote on referendum questions during elections, especially presidential elections.

Delnicki said she also hopes that the delay in the referendum means more residents will learn more about the project before voting.

"If there's any groups out there that think this plan is a good plan, they should be advocating for it so the voters have information," Delnicki said.

Bridge construction lawsuit against Stonington is over, for now

Carrie Czerwinski

Stonington ― Though the town is no longer a party in a lawsuit alleging bias and favoritism in the bidding process for a bridge project, it may still face further action by a woman-owned construction firm.

“We’re exploring alternative claims against the town,” Thomas Banas, attorney for Old Colony Construction, LLC of Clinton, said on Friday.

As part of a broader lawsuit filed in March 2023, Old Colony, owned by Michelle Neri, requested a temporary injunction to stop the town from moving forward on a project to repair the South Anguilla Road bridge, but the request became moot when the project was completed before the case could be litigated.

New London Superior Court Judge Angelica Papastavros approved a request by Old Colony to dismiss the claim against the town on Thursday. The rest of the suit is pending.

In late 2022, the town awarded the contract to Suchocki & Son of Preston, the second lowest bidder on the project, for $16,000 more than the $322,334 bid from Old Colony.

The remaining portions of the ongoing lawsuit allege that Wengell, McDonnell, & Costello Inc., a Newington engineering firm hired by the town to do design work and evaluate bids for the project, demonstrated bias against Old Colony, undermined the competitive bidding process and violated state law in evaluating bids.

“Old Colony commenced the underlying action to protect the integrity of the public bidding process, which Old Colony believes has been undermined by the actions of the Town and its engineer, Wengell, McDonnell & Costello, Inc.,” said Banas.

The lawsuit points to two differing estimates for site management the town received from WMC.

In documents associated with the suit, WMC provided a $49,100 estimate in Nov 2022, but in a letter to the town eleven days later, revised its estimate to $115,360, saying it anticipated extra costs for project management if Old Colony was awarded the project.

Suchocki, who is also named in the lawsuit, completed work on the bridge late last year at a cost of $358,655. The town also paid WMC $49,100 for construction management of the project. The claims in the suit do not allege wrongdoing by Suchocki.

In a January decision on a town request to dismiss the claim against it, the court said that evidence presented by Old Colony indicated that, through its actions, WMC may have undermined, or at least called the integrity of the bidding process into question.

The court pointed to evidence that WMC told the town it would double its fee if Old Colony was awarded the contract. It said that increase essentially raised the cost of Old Colony’s bid and that Old Colony had no way of knowing that WMC fees would contribute to the award decision.

The decision also noted that WMC had based the increase on conversations with prior customers, did not contact references provided by Old Colony, and the town and WMC “took no steps to evaluate the experience, skill and business standing of Suchocki before awarding Suchocki the project.”

Banas said that in denying the town’s motion to dismiss the case, Judge James Spallone found that Old Colony showed evidence of acts by WMC that undermined the bidding process. Banas said these actions resulted in harm to not only Old Colony, but taxpayers who had to pay the higher cost of fixing the bridge.

A deposition of Jay Costello, president of WMC, indicates that the company has worked with the town and Suchocki in the past.

Attorneys for WMC did not respond to requests for comment on the company’s defense against the claims, but Costello said at a late 2022 Board of Finance meeting that he called multiple municipalities that had hired Old Colony to do similar bridge work over the past four to five years.

He said that the five municipalities that returned his calls, reported a number of issues that drove up costs, including a large number of change orders, higher than typical administrative costs and numerous requests for information.

But in a 2022 report for the town, WMC said references provided by Old Colony all confirmed that its was of acceptable quality.

During a deposition, WMC Vice President Stephen McDonnell acknowledged that some of unsatisfactory work it cited by Old Colony dated back as far as 2006.

In a memo to the board, Town Engineer Christopher Greenlaw wrote that Old Colony “has a performance history of extended project timelines and schedules that would drive increases for construction, admin[istration], and inspection at a minimum.”

He also said the town’s bid documents state that it reserves the right to not select the lowest bid.

When asked by board members if he had confirmed any of the claims in the WMC report, Greenlaw said he had spoken with a municipality and corroborated the information.

A showdown on a CT airport redevelopment plan looms. Mayor has ‘real serious questions’ on viability

KENNETH R. GOSSELIN

As a showdown on the future of Hartford-Brainard Airport looms in the legislature, Hartford Mayor Arunan Arulampalam isn’t showing his cards just yet, and last year’s consultant’s report didn’t go far enough in helping him take a position on the issue.

“It’s a really significant decision and shouldn’t be made hastily,” Arulampalam said. “I always support further development of properties that we have here in Hartford. But I have real serious questions about the viability of development on the Brainard parcel.”

A consultant’s $1.5 million study late last year concluded that the 200-acre airfield in Hartford’s South End could be used for industrial or mixed-use redevelopment. But it could cost tens of millions to rid the airport of contamination and take years to decommission it before fully reaping property tax and economic development potential, according to the report.

Instead, the Brainard Airport Property Study recommended keeping the airport open and extending one of its runways.

But this alternative — one of four outlined in a final report — calls for the closing of a lesser-used runway and redeveloping the area primarily for warehouse and industrial uses. That would build on what already exists in and around the airport in the city’s South End, according to the report, prepared by BFJ Planning of New York.

A hearing on the study is expected — but not yet scheduled — in the legislature. State lawmakers then would have to decide whether the century-old Brainard should be closed.

The state-financed study, conducted over eight months, has drawn sharp criticism from Sen. John W. Fonfara, D-Hartford, a longtime proponent of closure and mixed-use redevelopment. Fonfara, who unsuccessfully ran for Hartford mayor last year, has said the study relied too heavily on previous studies that assessed environmental clean-up and economic development prospects for the airport.

Arulampalam said he is concerned about the depth of BFJ’s assessment on underground contamination and the impact on the dike along the Connecticut River.

“And then, there is the timeline for deactivating and going through that process,” Arulampalam said. “The challenges are significant. If they are outweighed by the potential for redevelopment, then I would be very open to it. But, as it is now, given the level of information we have, I think serious questions still persist.”

If state lawmakers decided to close Brainard, the approval of the Federal Aviation Administration would still be needed.

Arulampalam’s caution stands in dramatic contrast to his predecessor, former Mayor Luke Bronin, who was a strong supporter of redevelopment and campaigned on the issue prior to the first of his two terms as mayor.

But Bronin also became one of the targets of a lawsuit from businesses at Brainard. The lawsuit argued that all the talk of closure hurt profits and stymied expansion and attracting new customers. The lawsuit is pending.

Decades of debate

The debate over the future of Brainard has resurfaced periodically since the 1950s when half of the airport was taken for redevelopment. The current push for redevelopment of Brainard comes at a time when towns along the Connecticut River in greater Hartford are renewing their focus on mixed-use development along the riverfront.

The most ambitious is a sweeping, $850 million, mixed-use redevelopment of East Hartford’s Founders Plaza into as many as 1,000 apartments over a period of years.

In Hartford, the debate over Brainard also comes as the state examines what should be done with an adjoining 80 acres that will become available with the decommissioning of Hartford’s trash-to-energy plant.

“You have 300 acres on the Connecticut River,” Fonfara said. “Imagine what we could do there for young people who want to stay, who want to work here. But they don’t have much to do in the nightlife. We don’t have anything comparatively.”

In addition to housing, Fonfara’s vision, which would unfold over a period of years, includes entertainment venues, restaurants and other attractions. The development also would provide a sorely-needed boost to the property tax base, Fonfara said.

Fonfara disputes the contention in the BFJ report that there isn’t enough housing demand to support a mixed-use redevelopment of Brainard. He points not only to an aggressive push in downtown Hartford for more apartments amid high occupancy, but also in East Hartford and West Hartford.

“But our proposal — this proposal — makes no sense?’ Fonfara said.

The quasi-public Connecticut Airport Authority, which owns and oversees operations at Brainard, issued a statement, saying it will be watching for any further action by the legislature.

“The recent consultant report speaks for itself, and it is now up to the legislature to decide if it deems it appropriate to act further on this matter,” the CAA’s statement reads. “In the meantime, the CAA plans to continue operating a safe airport for the benefit of its tenants, users and the regional economy.”

Options in the report

The BFJ report said the recommended option would dovetail with the industrial nature of the area surrounding Brainard Airport, which includes a wastewater treatment plant. The alternative also could be achieved swiftly, potentially in one phase, the report said.

The proposed structures under the recommended option include a 100,000-square-foot building split equally between flex industrial and advanced manufacturing spaces; another 100,000-square-foot structure dedicated to industrial or manufacturing purposes, and a 20,000-square-foot retail area.

The three other options are:

♦ Keeping the airport open with limited development with a runway extension, new air traffic control tower, hangars and 94,000 square feet of aviation-related space.

♦Closing the airport and pursuing the addition of 2.6 million square feet of industrial space, 140,000 square feet of office space and 100,000 square feet of “accessory retail.”

♦Closing Brainard for a massive, mixed-use redevelopment that could have 2,700 units of rental housing, 105,000-square feet of retail, 262,000 square feet of industrial space and 255,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor recreation venues.

According to BFJ, total development costs range from $46 million for the recommended option to $1.4 billion for the mixed-use alternative. These numbers do not include the use of public subsidies in the calculations. Typically in the Hartford region, projects such as these receive subsidies of at least 20% of the total project cost in order to be financed due to market conditions and cost of construction, BFJ said.

Organized Opposition to Closing

The latest push to close and redevelop Brainard has spawned significant, organized opposition — giving rise to the Hartford Brainard Airport Association.

The association, whose members include pilots, Brainard tenants and others, have pushed back against airport being cast as a “playground for rich folks” with single- and twin-engine planes. The association also argues that Brainard is crucial for its pilot training schools and should be invested in as an asset to promote economic development in the region. The airport could be a center for developing new aviation and transportation technologies.

The association also predicted the findings in the BFJ report would be no different than a legislative study conducted in 2016 that recommended Brainard stay open. That study never came to a legislative vote, dismissed by those who support redevelopment, including Fonfara. Fonfara has argued the 2016 report was not conducted by those who had the specialized expertise that was necessary.

While the association was happy the BFJ report recommended Brainard stay open, it opposes the closure of one of the runways, a move that the association would hobble further growth.

The association “continues its position of keeping the airport open and growing it substantially to make it an economic benefit for the city of Hartford and the greater Hartford region,” Michael Teiger, a Hartford pulmonologist, who leads the association, said. “We certainly don’t want to decrease the size of the airport by closing a runway. We want to see it grow to its fullest potential. We believe the potential is huge and needs to be encouraged.”

More lanes bring more traffic, folks, not less

Jim Cameron | Columnist

I love doing radio interviews, literally “talking transportation.” 

Of course, having worked in radio for 15 years and then spending 40 years teaching people how to survive media encounters, I’m at something of an advantage. But I do love to turn naïve questions into learning opportunities.

Case in point, this recent exchange:

“So Jim… How do we solve the traffic problem on our interstates and parkways?” asked the radio talk show host. “Is there room for adding another lane?”

“That’s not the answer,” I said. “Adding lanes to crowded highways just makes them more crowded. Maybe not immediately, but within a matter of weeks or months.” The radio host didn’t believe me, but history proves my point: if you build it, more cars and trucks will come.

Planners and economists call it “induced demand.” By increasing the supply of something (in this case highway lanes) you in effect lower the price (time spent driving) and up goes the demand (bringing more traffic, more delays).

Consider this analogy:

A local store is giving away free food. The crowds soon swarm the establishment, muscling out those really in need. If the store is our highways and accessing them is free (no tolls), it’s no surprise they’re jammed. The only real cost involved in driving is fuel and time: the hours you waste in bumper-to-bumper traffic.

Building highways is also really expensive, especially here in Connecticut. The Connecticut Department of Transportation’s plans to rebuild the I-84/Route 8 “Mixmaster” in Waterbury came in at between $7 and $8 billion. Now certainly, maintaining existing roads and bridges in the proverbial “state of good repair” is a must. But expanding the highways isn’t the solution to handling more traffic. 

There are two answers: tolls and trains.

Driving on our freeways at rush hour shouldn’t be free. Charge for the privilege and you’ll moderate the demand. Some may chose to time-shift their travel, but others may take alternatives, like our trains.

Interstates 95 and 91 are both paralleled by robust train lines priced to encourage ridership. Intrastate fares are kept deliberately low (Bridgeport to Stamford is just $5 one way and New Haven to Hartford is only $8.25, not factoring in multi-trip commuter discounts.)

The billions of dollars not spent to widen those crowded highways would subsidize a lot of train rides. But getting to your home station and from your destination station to work/school (the “first mile/last mile” challenge) is an additional expense that should also be underwritten.

That’s how New York City’s impending “congestion pricing” revenue will keep funding the bus and subways. Those willing to pay the price for driving in midtown should see less traffic and a faster trip. Nobody is suggesting widening New York City’s highways.

So, sorry all you talk show experts out there, the solution to our crowded highways isn’t wider highways. The simple mantra “adding one more lane should solve our problems” is just a never ending race to Carmageddon.