CT Construction Digest Monday January 19, 2021
With its newest building, BLT bets on a growing Stamford
STAMFORD — Everything in the lobby of Escape, the newest residential complex from Building and Land Technology, drips with modernity.
The walls are studded with floor-to-ceiling windows as far as the eye can see, and a massive structure, part-sculpture and part-lamp, sits in the middle of the still-unfinished space.
“We started work on Escape in Spring 2019,” said Ted Ferrarone, co-president of BLT, the real estate developer that has remade much of Stamford’s South End over the past decade.
BLT plans to formally open its 435-unit building on Feb. 1, but it has been leasing units for much of January.
The building, which features one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments, along with a handful of four-bedroom penthouses, already has 25 units under contract.
Escape is the latest puzzle piece in the ever-expanding Harbor Point development, which has steadily grown over BLT’s tenure in Stamford. The building emanates the same luxurious energy as BLT’s previous waterfront property, Allure, a building that leased out completely between fall 2019 and late 2020.
The company has seen massive demand for apartments during the COVID-19 pandemic, growth that Ferrarone said shows no signs of stopping.
“This will bring us up to over 3,800 apartments that we’ve built in Stamford in the last 10 years. So, there’s always been good demand, and I think that the demand has gotten better and better every year,” he said. “We saw really strong demand over the summer, especially with people coming out of New York City, and I think they’re coming because you just get good value. You can rent a two-bedroom apartment here for less than you can rent a one-bedroom in the city.”
The pandemic strengthened the market for single-family homes in Stamford, something that is further helping BLT during the long months of the pandemic. Downsizers and empty-nesters are selling their homes and moving to Harbor Point apartments such as Escape, a pattern BLT has seen before, he said.
The pandemic has also played into the calculus of designing Escape, even though the building plans were set far before the pandemic.
The idea of working from home has been popular for the past several years, Ferrarone said, but COVID-19 made it necessary to create an infrastructure for it.
“I think people reconciled themselves with working from home for some portion of the day or for a longer period of time,” he said.
Ferrarone said amenities rooms were previously busy only on the weekends, when tenants wanted to host a dinner party or reserve a space to watch a movie. Over the past year, the extra spaces have become essential for tenants looking to break up the monotony of working all day inside their apartments, he said.
“Now, we build these spaces out,” Ferarrone said, while looking out at the vast space still partially under construction. “They’re almost like work spaces, and this will be all filled with tables and desks.”
While Ferrarone remained focused on the rollout for Escape, he also said he saw a future for Stamford where even more apartment buildings would be necessary, especially with more companies turning to the city as a home base.
“Charter Communications has their headquarters up the street. It’s only the first building they’re going to move into that during the spring,” he said. The Stamford-based telecommunications giant says it expects to move into a second Harbor Point property as well.
“One of the things that enables them to grow their footprint workforce-wise is that there’s more housing here,” Ferrarone said, a point he said he has noticed with other major companies in Stamford.
The growth in Stamford isn’t limited to Harbor Point, either. Ferrarone said he sees it happening in the downtown area, and said that part of the next phase for Stamford is to promote more connectivity between the two neighborhoods, a process he said he has slowly begun to see.
“The state just rebuilt the Atlantic Street underpass, so it’s totally different now. And Washington Boulevard underpass was pretty good,” he said. “So, I think the goal is to connect those areas, instead of having them feel very separate.”
DOT to outline 7 miles of roadwork planned for I-95 in Greenwich, Stamford
Ken Borsuk The Department of Transportation will host an online presentation about proposed improvements along Interstate 95 in Greenwich.
The presentation will be held at 6:30 p.m. Jan. 21 about the state project, which would include doing road resurfacing, bridge rehabilitation and safety improvements along the highway through Greenwich and Stamford. The work would start at the New York/Connecticut state border and continue for nearly 7 miles to Exit 6 in Stamford.
“The purpose of the project is to rehabilitate the pavement, address roadside safety and perform bridge rehabilitation to extend the service life of the facility,” the state said. “The secondary purpose of this project is to provide operational and safety benefits and alleviate congestion in the southbound direction at Exit 3.”
The state says there would be overall improvements to pavement, bridges, storm drains,guide rails and concrete barriers on I-95. The deceleration lane at Exit 3 in central Greenwich would also be widened and extended to “provide operational improvements.”
Under the plan, construction would begin in the fall of 2022.
For more information about the project and the meeting, visit https://portal.ct.gov/DOTGreenwich0056-0316. Members of the public will be able to ask questions and make comments. The meeting will be recorded and posted on the DOT’s virtual public meetings page.
Eversource to start Forestville gas line installation Tuesday
SUSAN CORICA BRISTOL -- Eversource Gas is scheduled to start installation of a gas line on Tuesday, Jan. 19, in the Forestville neighborhood that includes Fair Street, Grove Avenue, Buckley Avenue, Garden Street, Vernon Street and Pleasant Avenue.
“The purpose of the work is to upgrade the existing gas line,” said Mayor Ellen Zoppo-Sassu.
The hours of construction will be 7 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday and occasionally on Saturdays. The work is weather dependent and construction activities are subject to change.
“While there may be minor traffic delays during construction, one lane of traffic will remain open for mail delivery, emergency vehicles, buses, and local traffic at all times,” said Councilwoman Brittany Barney.
For more information regarding the project, contact Chris Tralli at Eversource Energy at 860-302-6024, or Jesse Arsenault, construction superintendent of NPL, which is the contractor hired by Eversource to do the project, at 203-673-8508.
OSHA raises penalty maximums, establishes new debt collection procedures
Kim Slowey
- OSHA has raised its maximum civil penalty amounts for 2021 according to the rate of inflation. The new penalties go into effect Jan. 16.
- The maximum federal penalty for serious and other-than-serious violations is now $13,653 per violation, up from $13,494. The maximum penalty for willful or repeated violations is now $136,532 per violation, up from $134,937.
- OSHA increased its monetary penalties by more than 80% in August 2016 in order to reflect cost-of-living increases since 1990, the last time the penalties had been raised. Since 2017, OSHA has adjusted the fines according to the Cost of Living Index every year.
The agency also announced that it is changing the way it collects citation penalties that have been levied against establishments, which OSHA defines as single, physical locations where business is conducted.
Currently, all demands for payment after the first are issued at 30-day intervals. Moving forward, OSHA will send a series of three penalty payment after an establishment fails to make timely payment based on a final order — one at seven days, the second at 30 days and the next at 60 days. OSHA will also contact those that don't pay their fines on time by phone 14 days after the payment is due.
If an establishment fails to make payment and does not have an affordable payment plan in place, OSHA will put that establishment on a priority list for more inspections. In addition, OSHA compliance safety and health officers will collect employer identification numbers as part of the preinspection process.
OSHA issues citations and levies fines for safety violations as well as for administrative infractions like failure to perform adequate recordkeeping. For instance, covered employers must submit electronically their "OSHA Form 300A Summary of Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses" data by March 2.
OSHA's new payment letter initiative is part of a wider Department of Labor push to maximize collections. The new process also aims to shorten the time in which unpaid debts are referred to the Department of Justice for litigation, according to the Labor Department's final rule as published in the Federal Register.
Baker Carves Up $16.5 Bill Transportation Bill With Vetoes
Chris Lisinski1 Fees on ride-hailing services such as Uber and Lyft will not increase in Massachusetts after Gov. Charlie Baker vetoed a new proposed fee structure while signing a $16.5 billion transportation bond bill on Friday.
Baker gave his approval to almost all of the multi-year spending authorizations, but rejected several major transportation policy proposals that the Legislature packed into the wide-ranging bill.
He shot down proposed hikes on transportation network companies, or TNCs, that would have replaced the current 20-cent flat fee per ride with a higher set of fees as well as a new legislative mandate requiring the MBTA to offer a low-income fare program.
In a letteralongside his signature, Baker said the Legislature's proposed fees for transportation network companies were "complicated" and based on pre-pandemic assumptions about travel patterns.
"Before instituting fees that are aimed at incentivizing certain travel behaviors, we need to understand what ridership and congestion patterns are going to look like after the pandemic," Baker wrote, adding that he would refile provisions aimed at collecting more data from the services.
Lawmakers approved the bill (H 5248) in the dying hours of the 2019-2020 lawmaking session -- after private Democrat-led negotiations on it lasted for more than five months -- and in doing so left themselves no room to attempt to override Baker's now-final vetoes.
The legislation will drive investment in road and bridge maintenance, help fund major projects such as a South Coast Rail expansion and the Green Line Extension, and replenish the state's transportation bonding authority ahead of the upcoming construction season.
Major capital outlays in the bill include $3 billion for "transit system modernization," an umbrella category covering MBTA bus and Green Line upgrades, electrification of sections of the Fairmount and Stoughton commuter rail lines, and extending the Blue Line to the Charles/MGH Station on the Red Line.
Another $825 million will go toward the South Coast Rail expansion project adding commuter rail service in Taunton, New Bedford and Fall River. The under-construction Green Line Extension into Somerville and Medford would get $595 million.
On the roadway side, the bill authorizes $350 million in bonds to improve the roadway approaches and related infrastructure near the Bourne and Sagamore bridges connecting to Cape Cod.
A $1.25 billion Next-Generation Bridge Program will "dramatically accelerate the Commonwealth's bridge investments," Baker wrote.
"This legislation is vital to allowing MassDOT and the MBTA to commence planning on the next Capital Investment Plan, and to continuing this administration's thoughtful and data driven approach to rebuilding, modernizing, and expanding the capacity of the Commonwealth's transportation system," Baker said.
Alongside his signatures and vetoes on the bond bill, Baker rejected another bill (H 5185) that would require the MBTA to use federal funding to restore spending on capital projects and reverse a package of service cuts its board approved in December.
The T, which Baker's administration oversees, plans to keep most of the cuts in place for at least the next few months despite getting an injection of at least $250 million from the latest federal stimulus package. Agency officials opted instead to revive some paused capital projects and set a chunk of money aside to help restore service at a later, still-uncertain date.
Baker has defended the service cuts, arguing that it is "bad public policy" for the MBTA to keep running trains and buses on pre-pandemic schedules with only a quarter to a third of riders.
"I agree that the MBTA should evaluate and deploy additional funding that becomes available, including federal funding, to support sufficient base service levels and -- when ridership and revenue so justify -- begin to restore service that has been reduced and capital projects that have been delayed," Baker wrote in a separate letter. "The amended language sent back by the legislature, however, does not give the Fiscal Management and Control Board the latitude it needs to decide on how and when to deploy federal funds."
Baker also vetoed several other policy sections of the bond bill, including a proposed commission to study congestion pricing systems that use varying roadway tolls to influence traffic and a line item outlining requirements for a major multimodal capital project in Allston.
One section he rejected would have required all proceeds from the Transportation and Climate Initiative, a multi-state compact to reduce carbon emissions, to be deposited into the Commonwealth Transportation Fund. Baker said he wanted some of the funding instead to go toward "flexible emissions reductions and equity investments."
Baker also shot down language in the bill instructing the state's 15 regional transit authorities to study means-tested fares and requiring the MBTA to launch a low-income fare program, a topic that the agency has been studying but has not yet fully implemented.
"More study is needed to understand how transit authorities can implement fare systems that depend on gathering information about riders' incomes and to understand what the revenue loss would be and how that revenue would be replaced," Baker wrote. "No means-tested fares can be implemented until the MBTA and RTAs have a financially sustainable plan in place to replace the lost revenue."
He did give his support to several other policies that Democrats in the Legislature touted as significant achievements, including language that decriminalizes public transit fare evasion and a provision enforcing parking bans in dedicated bus lanes.
Baker kicked off debate about the bond bill a year and a half ago, in a pre-COVID world, with an $18 billion proposal. But the pandemic changed travel patterns across the state, decimating ridership on public transit and pushing millions of workers into remote operations.
The public health crisis also reshaped the political landscape for transportation debate. In March, the House approved a wide-ranging package of tax and fee increases aimed at generating more than half a billion dollars for the transportation sector, but the Senate never took up the proposal and allowed it to die, with leaders arguing that it did not fit during the economic downturn.
House and Senate Democrats appeared poised to revive at least one revenue-generating proposal with their last-minute inclusion of the new TNC fee structure in the bond bill. The compromise legislation that emerged from a conference committee in the final hours of session called for raising the 20 cent flat fee for every ride to 40 cents for a shared ride, $1.20 for a non-shared ride and $2.20 for a luxury ride.
The Metropolitan Area Planning Commission estimatedthat the new model could haul in $56.2 million in annual revenue even if ridership on platforms like Uber and Lyft remained at only half of 2019 levels.
Last year, Baker proposedincreasing TNC fees, but only to $1 per ride rather than the scaled and higher structure the Legislature offered.