CT Construction Digest Monday March 6, 2023
New Milford quarry is sanctuary protecting 340 hibernating bats from deadly white-nose syndrome
NEW MILFORD — Inside of a quarry near the Housatonic River, hundreds of hibernating bats are kept safe from winter temperatures and the spread of a deadly fungus that's threatened their population.
Built inside of O&G Industries' New Milford quarry seven years ago, the habitat has a population of around 340 bats. The warmer temperatures and enclosed space are meant to prevent the spread of "white-nose syndrome," a disease that infects bats during the cold weather hibernation season, according to the National Park Service.
“There’s a species that has a residence on our property, and we would like them to stick around and we want to provide a suitable place for them to live on our property while we conduct our operations,” said TJ Oneglia, vice president of O&G Industries, a Torrington-based construction company.
Quarry hibernaculum keeps bats warm, safe
The hibernaculum — a replacement habitat consisting of tunnels and a chamber — in the quarry provides underground access for hibernating bats and shields the bats from “the dramatic swings in temperature” during winter, said Brian Heff, a wildlife biologist for the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (CT DEEP). Because the quarry is a protected and enclosed space with no public access, Heff said the bats won’t be disturbed by people on the property.
“I really do give a lot of credit to O&G,” he said. “They’ve been great conservation partners and really care about how the bats are doing and that they’re safe.”
Heff said the temperature inside the hibernaculum is in the “upper 30s, low 40s,” which he said comes up on “the low end of what bats can survive” as well as reduces the growth of the “white-nose syndrome” fungus.
Heff said the big brown bats that live in the quarry’s hibernaculum have been relatively “more secure” than other bat species from the fungus, but still encounter a decline in their population. He said CT DEEP has been counting bat populations before the “white-nose syndrome” fungus arrived in the United States in 2006 and in the years after, adding they’ve seen a 50 percent decline in bat populations as a direct result of the fungus.
'White-nose syndrome' fungus
The white-nose syndrome has killed millions of bats across the United States and Canada since it started in New York in 2006, according to the National Park Service, which notes that scientists predict some bats species will become extinct in certain regions.
Heff said the “white-nose syndrome” fungus is a soil-born fungus that can be acquired in caves and spread from bat to bat. He said the fungus is sensitive to ultraviolet light, so DEEP believes the bats are acquiring the fungus during the summer months.
Heff said the fungus can irritate and infect the bats’ membranes and the skin on their wings; in extreme cases, he said the fungus can cause holes in the bats’ wings. Yet Heff said the “real danger” is that the fungus irritates the bats’ skin in a way that causes them to wake up during hibernation. He said the bats’ body temperatures warm up as they come out of hibernation, causing them to expend energy they have stored for winter.
“It really does affect their survival if they’re waking up a lot more,” Heff said. “If you go underground and you have a certain amount of fat stored up and this fungus is forcing them to spend that fat reserve early, then they’re going to run out of energy by the end of winter… essentially starving them.”
Heff said there’s been a lot of studies and experiments on treating the fungus as well as chemicals used as treatments, but the problem is “the population level on which this is happening.”
“To this point, there’s been no treatment or management technique that’s found to be effective, that’s feasible to be applied at the massive scale that it would need to be for,” Heff said.
Building the quarry hibernaculum
Oneglia said the company’s former land use officer Ken Feroni came up with the idea of creating an alternate site on the property where the bats could hibernate in 2012.
“We want to operate at the highest standards and certainly be cognizant of environmental issues,” Oneglia said, “and we’re interested in coming up with solutions to problems… if we can contribute to the solution, we’re more than happy to do it and maintain that healthy population for the species and the region.”
Oneglia said he believed Feroni, who has retired from O&G Industries, worked in consultation with CT DEEP to identify a site on the New Milford quarry property for the hibernaculum.
The process of building the hibernaculum started in the late spring of 2016 and was completed in July 2016. The mining company Cowin & Company, based in Birmingham, Ala., performed the underground excavation work, and O&G Industries drilled holes for ventilation and performed other site work related to moving earth. Oneglia said the work performed by Cowin & Company took six to seven weeks, while O&G Industries conducted its site work in about two to three weeks.
Oneglia said the total project cost was around $255,000 – all of which was paid for by O&G Industries.
O&G Industries received DEEP’s Green Circle Sustainability award for Innovation in June 2017. Green Circle Sustainability awards are given in recognition of businesses, organizations and individuals in the state that have had a positive impact on the environment.
Heff said that, while bats aren’t “really habitat limited,” DEEP is working to provide additional, safer options for bats. This includes encouraging residents to reduce their use of insecticide if they have bats on their property and install bat houses at their homes.
“Those can be really helpful things to help the bats survive and proliferate,” Heff said. “It’s encouraging in a way: while we have seen massive declines in bats, they haven’t hit rock bottom, they’re still here…They really are true survivors and what we’re trying to do is make sure those survivors continue to persist as well as they can.”
NY mover that withdrew Danbury warehouse plans after public outcry seeks OK on modified blueprints
DANBURY — A New York moving company that pulled plans for a west side warehouse one day after 200 residents shouted objections at a 2022 forum has resubmitted modified blueprints to satisfy water-treatment concerns raised by city staff.
The re-application by Clancy Moving Systems to build a 210,000-square-foot warehouse and separate office-maintenance building connected by a 28-foot-wide road on 29 acres off Saw Mill Road means last year’s most controversial commercial development in Danbury is back for a second round of review.
“I’m not a property owner — I’m a renter — but I do find it appalling that you have one zillion people walking up and down Saw Mill Road and you are going to have all these moving trucks going up and down,” said Carolyn Witthoft, a resident of nearby Crown Point apartments. “I find it really sad for this little neighborhood.”
Witthoft is not alone. Scores of Danburians signed petitions and criticized city leaders over Clancy’s proposal late last year, culminating in a loud crowd of protestors at a forum called by City Hall where residents shouted over each other in anger to the point where Mayor Dean Esposito grew exasperated, throwing his hands up and walking away.
Residents claimed there had not been enough public vetting of Clancy’s plans, which are part of an approved master plan governing land use of the 100-acre campus owned by The Summit, a 1.2-million-square-foot development of offices and commerce, where 400 apartments are planned.
Aside from a public hearing before the city’s Environmental Impact Commission, which issued a wetland permit to Clancy in early 2022, the rest of Clancy’s blueprint review was being conducted in-house by the city’s professional planning staff before Clancy withdrew its application in late November.
The reason: an outside engineer hired by the city to vet Clancy’s plans raised concerns that stormwater treatment proposed for the warehouse was inadequate and recommended stronger measures.
Three months later, Clancy says it has addressed those concerns and followed the outside expert’s recommendations to better trap grit, metals, sediment, and other contaminants.
“There are modifications that have been made to the storm drainage and retention pond designs,” said Thomas Beecher, an attorney representing Clancy, in a March 1 letter to the city’s wetlands commission. “[T]these modifications include regrading and remodeling of the site retention ponds…the addition of perimeter bioswales; an improved design beneath the wetland crossing to provide open bottom culverts; a reduction in the (paved) area proposed for that site; and the introduction of additional water quality structures….(including) a more robust planting plan.”
Because the water treatment plan has changed, Clancy must apply to the city’s Environmental Impact Commission to modify the wetlands permit Clancy received in February 2022.
It was not clear on Friday whether Clancy’s application would be taken up by the Environmental Impact Commission at its Wednesday meeting or at its March 22 meeting.
Nor was it clear whether Clancy’s permit modification request would trigger a new public hearing by the wetlands commission, or whether the request could be decided among wetlands commission members without allowing public comment.
“I don’t know about the public hearing because I haven’t seen the application yet,” said commission Chair Bernard Gallo on Friday.
Meanwhile everything else about the Clancy application that doesn’t deal with the impact on wetlands would continue to be reviewed administratively, because it is part of an already approved master plan that was the subject of public hearings in 2021.
“We believe that the plans, reports, and documents filed with this application satisfactorily address all prior comments that we had received relative to the project,” Beecher wrote in a March 1 letter to the city planning department.
The outcry against Clancy’s plans is similar to an unrelated development on 100 acres near Interstate 84’s Exit 9 in Newtown, where residents objected and protested so forcefully against plans by a New York investor to build an 8-acre trucking warehouse that it was voted down by the town’s Planning and Zoning Commission, even though it had the backing of two other land use boards.
Unlike Clancy in Danbury, the New York investor has not come back to Newtown with a modified plan.
For $19M, Greenwich's Western Middle School field cleanup means synthetic turf to replace toxic dirt
GREENWICH — Plans to restore the playing fields at Western Middle School — six years after they were closed because of high levels of contaminants in the soil — now include scraping off the toxic dirt and replacing it with synthetic turf.
Greenwich Public Schools recently submitted an application to the town planning department for approvals on the roughly $19 million remediation plan, which has been eagerly awaited by the school community in the west end of town.
Dozens of speakers who attended a public hearing on the clean-up at the athletic fields at Western Middle School urged a fast-paced construction process after lengthy debates and delays.
The plan, drafted with the Langan Engineering consulting group, will scrape off a two-foot layer of soil at the fields, add a layer of man-made material and cover the restored area with a synthetic turf.
According to the memorandum filed by Langan to the Planning & Zoning Commission, "The project consists of the remediation/removal
of impacted fill material beneath the existing athletic fields and the construction of new synthetic
turf athletic fields with associated field, site and drainage improvements."
The plan, the engineering firm said, was the best one to have emerged during a lengthy review period among public officials and consultants, "due to its level of protection of human health and the environment, its compliance with regulations, long and short term effectiveness, reduction of toxicity, ability to implement and its cost effectiveness relative to other potential alternatives."
Depending on a number of factors, the goal is to have the planned clean-up could starting in June and running 144 days, according to the engineering firm.
A "public communications program" will accompany the site work to keep the public informed, the engineering firm says. Specifics about the outreach program were not provided in the initial application.
Some trees around the fields will be cut down for the projects to move forward. Once completed, the fields will offer space for soccer, football, baseball, softball and lacrosse, according to the site plan application.
When the fields were laid in the 1960s, poorly examined fill was used at the school campus that included old construction debris and other improper material loaded with chemical contaminants, the engineers found. In 2016, when tests were taken as part of a larger concern in the community over waste materials in the west end of town, high levels of contaminants, principally PCB's — a commonly used industrial chemical — were found, along with other toxins.
The fields were blocked off by a chain-link fence in 2016.
First Selectman Fred Camillo said he was in "strong support" of the remediation plan when it was put up for a public hearing earlier this year.
The site-plan application has not been scheduled yet at the P&Z Commission.
Developer of Enfield All Sports Village proposal has complex history
Alex Wood
The developer who wants to build a regional tournament center for youth athletic teams in Enfield after unsuccessfully pursuing a similar plan in Windsor Locks has clashed with fellow investors in at least two similar projects in the past.
The developer, Andrew Borgia, who has spent the last few years pursuing the All Sports Village proposals in Connecticut, also has filed for personal bankruptcy twice.
The first of those cases ended in a discharge of his debts by a federal bankruptcy court in 1997. But the other was dismissed in 2006 after he reached a settlement with fellow investors in the Baseball Heaven complex in the Long Island community of Yaphank, New York.
A 2017 lawsuit against Borgia remains pending in a New York state court. It stems from his efforts to build a sports complex in the southern Long Island community of Islip, New York.
Three individual investors in the Islip project and a company associated with one of them allege in the suit that Borgia “embarked on a campaign of fraud, enterprise corruption and a Ponzi scheme” and unjustly enriched himself at their expense.
They claim $2 million in damages in one of their 10 “causes of action” and lesser amounts in the others.
In a telephone interview with the Journal Inquirer, Borgia called the suit “frivolous” and said it is essentially over distribution of proceeds from the sale of the Islip project to a Long Island soccer organization known as the SUSA Academy. He said the argument is over 5% of the proceeds of the sale because he owned a 95% interest in the project.
He has also filed a counterclaim alleging that the plaintiffs in the suit defamed him by accusing him of fraud in statements to Islip town officials and the prospective buyers of the project. He said in the counterclaim, filed in December 2017, that he believed he was entitled to compensatory damages of more than $1 million and punitive damages of at least $500,000.
Windsor Locks voters not deterred
Early in the consideration of the Windsor Locks proposal, then-First Selectman Chris Kervick briefly suspended negotiations over the project after news of the lawsuit broke.
But, despite the lawsuit, Windsor Locks voters ultimately approved creation of a Tax Increment Financing District for the area of the project by a 969-719 vote in a 2019 referendum.
As to Baseball Heaven LLC, the subject of the 2006 settlement, Borgia at one time was its chief executive officer and had a 40% ownership stake, the largest among the company’s four members.
Developer withdraws sports complex plan; residents voice opposition
The company became mired in disputes among the members and others. One thing they all agreed on in the 2006 settlement was that “the dissention, distrust, disagreements and contentious litigation among and between the members of Baseball Heaven have had and will continue to have a detrimental impact on the operations of Baseball Heaven.”
In the settlement, Borgia gave up several posts in Baseball Heaven and received a payment of more than $1 million.
“I built a great project in Yaphank, Baseball Heaven, which I sold,” he told the JI, adding that it has been “flourishing for 17 years.”
More recently, the All Sports Village proposal had all the land-use approvals it needed to be built in Windsor Locks. But the plan didn’t go forward there.
What happened?
To Windsor Locks First Selectman Paul M. Harrington, the answer is simple.
“The financing ultimately fell through,” he said.
When the development company backing the proposal went to the bond market, interest rates were starting to climb, Harrington said. Meanwhile, the company’s options to buy the land needed for the project expired, and it wasn’t granted new options, the first selectman explained.
Enfield Town Manager Ellen Zoppo-Sassu gave a similar account, but added some details. She said the bond market became “very volatile” during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the developer couldn’t get the interest rates needed for the project.
But Borgia denied that he had financing difficulties in Windsor Locks. He said his company’s contract to buy the land wasn’t renewed due to COVID-related delays.
There is at least one major difference between the Windsor Locks and Enfield proposals — cost.
Where the financing authorization for the Windsor Locks project was to sell up to $200 million in bonds, Borgia said the cost estimates for the Enfield project are in the $90 million to $125 million range.
Head start on development
A big difference between the sites, Zoppo-Sassu added, is that the Enfield site is already developed with buildings originally constructed for the Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co.
MassMutual still owns the site and has a contract to sell it to Fast Track Realty LLC, the All Sports Village development company. Borgia is the sole member of Fast Track Realty, according to the Connecticut secretary of the state’s business records.
The plans call for reusing the MassMutual buildings, including a parking garage with 1,400 spaces that Zoppo-Sassu said is in “phenomenal condition.” The site on Bright Meadow Boulevard — near the Massachusetts border and fronting on Interstate 91 — is already served with water, sewer, and power utilities, she said.
By contrast, the Windsor Locks site was open farmland that would have to be developed from scratch.
Zoppo-Sassu said the developer can convert some of MassMutual’s “very vast parking lot” into fields. But the proposal also calls for the All Sports Village’s artificial-turf soccer fields to extend into the town’s Agnes M. Brainerd Park.
Zoppo-Sassu and Borgia both said the proposal is changing to reduce the use of Brainerd Park land. At one point, it called for use of “upwards of 20 acres” of the 32-acre park, Zoppo-Sassu said, but it is now down to about 12 acres. Borgia said it might even be less than that.
A conceptual plan distributed by the developer at an earlier stage of the project showed six of the 11 artificial turf soccer fields on the Brainerd Park property along with a small part of another field.
Borgia said the current plan is for a total of 12 fields, with five on the leased section of Brainerd Park. Part of the reason he was able to make those changes, he explained, is that his company has a contract to buy an estimated 3 to 4 acres of farmland by the southeast corner of the MassMutual property.
Steep hills, stream
A walk through the wooded western section of Brainerd Park shows that some of the land near the fence of the MassMutual complex slopes steeply down to a small stream. Zoppo-Sassu said that “terrain is not something current park users use.”
She said part of the purpose of the changes being made in the development plan is to “stay out of wetlands” and away from neighboring land belonging to the Connecticut Water Co.
Borgia agreed that a goal of the design is “to get as far from conservation land as possible.” He added that his company plans to donate more than 14 acres on the north side of the MassMutual property as conservation land.
Borgia also said part of the design task will be to repair erosion problems in Brainerd Park that cause flooding of Route 5.
Zoppo-Sassu made clear that a significant part of the reason she is favorably disposed to the All Sports Village project is that, in the current market, it would be difficult to fill the former MassMutual office buildings.
“We do not foresee a path in trying to find a large-scale office tenant,” she said.
Replacement fields
One similarity between the Enfield proposal and the Islip project is the offer to build new public athletic fields to replace fields displaced by the construction of the private sports complex.
The All Sports Village plan calls for replacing two deteriorating baseball fields in Brainerd Park with new softball fields at the Enfield Annex, the former Enrico Fermi High School, at no cost to residents.
Before the sale of the Islip project to the SUSA Academy, Borgia was involved in building softball fields for the town to replace fields that had existed on the site of the sports complex. He said the town later complained that the new softball fields weren’t draining, which he attributed to the town’s lack of maintenance of the fields.
He said the town of Islip had approved drawings for the fields and issued a certificate of occupancy when they were completed. When he closed the sale of the sports complex to SUSA, he added, he donated $250,000 to the town to repair anything it claimed was wrong with the fields.
Joseph F. Hennie, the president of the Little League in Islip, blamed a past town administration for inadequate oversight of the construction of the fields, saying they “basically didn’t have any drainage.” He said the town is currently installing artificial turf on one of the fields, which he said will be “a great thing for the Central Islip community.”
Pond dredging project planned for Hubbard Park moves forward
Michael Gagne
MERIDEN — The Inland Wetlands and Watercourses Commission has approved city parks officials’ plans to dredge the lower pond at Hubbard Park.
That dredging will allow officials to restore the pond’s previous aquatic habitat, which was impacted by ongoing sediment erosion that over time has decreased the pond’s water depth and led to algae growth.
The waters of the man-made pond, which is located near Hubbard’s Park entrance on West Main Street, are fed by two watercourses, according to SLF International Corporation, the Cheshire-based firm contracted by the city to advise the provided services related to the dredging project. Those watercourses include Crow Hollow Brook, which flows from Mirror Lake, and another unnamed watercourse, which SLR stated originates from Merimere Reservoir.
According to officials, the pond should have a water depth of around four to five feet. Instead, that depth has decreased to less than three feet, due to sedimentation. In some areas, the pond’s water depth is less than one foot deep. The sedimentation has also blocked the line to the pond’s gravity-fed water fountain.
Chris Bourdon, the city’s director of Parks and Recreation, said one of the goals for the project is to restore that fountain to working order, by clearing the line that feeds it and adding traps to collect sediment.
The plans described by SLR to improve the pond’s conditions, include draining it with temporary sump pumps, gravity-fed piping and cofferdams. Those plans then state the sedimentation will be removed from the pond and eventually moved to the park’s maintenance facility.
The last major work done at the pond was in 2006, when its existing retaining wall was built.
Bourdon described a pond that has been overtaken by invasive species which have negatively impacted both the pond’s wildlife ecosystem and its aesthetics. That ecosystem at one point included wildlife, like turtles and fish. But the pond’s now shallow depth has led to increased water temperatures, making the pond inhabitable for most wildlife.
Bourdon said the project, if it moves forward, should be completed in August, which he described as the driest time of the year. The project is expected to cost between $45,000 to $50,000, which would be funded using the Parks and Recreation Department’s capital improvement plan funds.
Will sewer capacity limit shut down development in East Lyme?
Elizabeth Regan
East Lyme ― The Water and Sewer Commission in the course of its regular duties is being asked to answer a question crucial to the town development.
Will the town remain open for business or will it close its doors?
The introspection is being forced by the prospect of one of the largest developments in the town’s history. Plans for the 454-unit Niantic Village senior housing complex come at a time when town utilities engineer Ben North said there’s little, if any, capacity remaining in the system designed to send 1.5 million gallons per day of sewage to New London’s Piacenti Water Treatment Facility.
Officials said the choice is either halt all large development or figure out how to add capacity to the system.
North at a Water and Sewer Commission public hearing Thursday said the project, if approved, would likely be “one of the last major developments” in town until the capacity issue is addressed.
Pelletier-Niantic LLC earlier this year filed a request to secure enough access to the sewer system to accommodate 160 condominiums, 144 apartments, and a 150-bed assisted living section, as well as urgent care and radiology facilities open to the public.
The proposed site is made up of several parcels along Pennsylvania Avenue, about a half mile north of Town Hall. The cost of running a sewer line from the existing one on Main Street up to the proposed site would be paid by the developer.
New London attorney Bill Sweeney represented the New York-based senior housing developer at the hearing. He framed the capacity issue as one much larger than the development itself.
“The town cannot just simply close its doors. You need increased sewer capacity one way or another to fuel future growth and the success of the community in the years to come,” he said.
He suggested the commission can approve the request now and use the next two years to create a strategic, long-term plan for ensuring enough capacity going forward.
“A project of this nature and size does not get built nor does it go online overnight,” he said. “This is a multi-year, phased development that still needs local zoning and state traffic approvals before construction can even start, let alone be completed.”
He estimated construction would start two years from now, with peak demand realized in three or four years.
“Obviously, though, we need an allocation now to move forward with final design and permitting of the project,” he said. “This is a multi-million dollar effort and we need some assurance from the town that there is an allocation that’s been provided.”
North said there are 255,000 gallons per day of capacity not being used. But there are 312,249 gallons per day being saved for projects in various stages of completion that are either under construction, haven’t been built or haven’t yet opted to tie into the system.
That means the system has no capacity – or 57,249 gallons per day less than none – to offer to Pelletier-Niantic or a future applicant.
Oswegatchie Hills has much of the remaining capacity
Charles Ambulos, a longtime resident, asked how much flow was being reserved for a proposed development in the Oswegatchie Hills that has been fought at the local commission level and in state court for more than two decades.
The commission in 2018 granted Landmark Development its request for 118,400 gallons per day of flow after a protected legal battle. That’s how much developer Glenn Russo said he needed at the time for a proposed 840-unit affordable housing development, where 252 of the units would be offered at reduced rents for households with lower income levels.
At Ambulos' request, officials repeated the 118,400-gallon-per-day figure several times.
“Thank you,” Ambulos said. “I was a little hard of hearing. I just wanted to hear it again.”
Town officials and Sweeney had avoided mentioning the Landmark Development project to that point.
Landmark in 2020 filed a lawsuit against the commission to overturn a regulation giving developers four years to obtain necessary land use permits and tie in to the town’s sewer system before a sewer capacity allocation expires. The developer argued the regulation could prevent the company from accessing greater sewer capacity in the future. But the court last year threw out the case because Landmark hadn’t been harmed by the regulation and had no right to sue.
Landmark’s court-ordered allocation, which was requested before the regulation was changed, will remain available indefinitely.
The developer as of last year was preparing a final site plan application for submission to the Zoning Commission, according to court documents. A Superior Court judge in 2021 ordered the commission to take another at its denial of the project after Russo appealed.
First Selectman Kevin Seery on Friday said no plans for the project are being reviewed by the land use department at this time.
“How communities die“
Officials at the public hearing said options for increasing capacity could include renegotiating agreements with New London and Waterford or working with the state to access unused capacity at sites like York Correctional Institution, Camp Nett and Rocky Neck State Park.
Based on a 2021 tri-town agreement through which East Lyme and Waterford’s wastewater flows into New London’s treatment facility, the towns have to wait until 2026 to open negotiations for more capacity.
The two smaller towns last year agreed Waterford gets 30% of the 10-million-gallon treatment capacity of New London’s treatment facility while East Lyme gets 15%, or 1.5 million.
The issue of capacity came up shortly after the Water and Sewer Commission was forced to reserve a large amount of capacity for Landmark Development in 2018. At the same time, several large-scale developments were nearing completion: Costco, hundreds of nearby luxury apartments and 40 townhouses known as Rocky Neck Village.
Former utilities engineer Brad Kargl told The Day at the time that there would be “very little ability to allocate additional capacity.”
"But I just see that really running out in a fairly short time and then what do you do? Do you have to hold off on development until we figure this out? There is no real easy answer,” Kargl said.
While then-First Selectman Mark Nickerson suggested renegotiating capacity as part of the tri-town agreement set to expire in 2020, that’s not what ended up happening.
North on Friday said it’s his understanding negotiations did not result in additional flow for East Lyme because buying capacity without a plan to pay for it would have placed an undue burden on ratepayers. He also said there were no large developments looking to tie into the system at the time.
Seery, who serves as chairman of the Water and Sewer Commission in his role as first selectman, acknowledged there are going to be more developments that want to come to town.
“We’ve really tried to deal with this capacity question for quite a while and we realize there’s going to be a need to expand and request more,” he said.
Commission members are scheduled to deliberate on the Pelletier-Niantic LLC request March 28. According to Town Attorney Mark Zamarka, state statute requires the commission to make a decision by the end of the month unless the applicant agrees to an extension.
North after the public hearing said it appears clear to him the town does not have enough capacity to accommodate the development at the volume being requested.
“It’s really a discussion on what’s the path forward now,” he said. “Do we stop all large development and just hold onto what we have, or do we go to New London or Waterford and try to get more? Do we go to the state and see what they would want to do?”
Sweeney after the hearing put it this way: “What it’s really about is, communities that are successful and continue to grow have to have sewer capacity to allow for reasonable growth. You can’t just say ‘well, we’re out.’ It doesn't work. That’s how communities die.”
Massive Rentschler Field logistics center development inks two major tenants
Home-improvement giant Lowe’s and online home-goods retailer Wayfair will occupy two massive logistics buildings under construction in East Hartford, various sources have confirmed to the Hartford Business Journal.
Massachusetts-based National Development bought 300 acres at the former Rentschler Field airport site from Raytheon Technologies in a $78.47-million deal sealed in January.
National Development spent more than a year working with local officials to design and permit two logistics properties — with a combined 2.5 million square feet — and two, 100,000-square-foot advanced manufacturing buildings.
Wayfair confirmed it’s planning to occupy a 1.2-million-square-foot facility in East Hartford in late 2024. Lowe’s issued a statement confirming it will occupy a 1.3-million-square-foot bulk distribution center by fall 2024.
A formal announcement is expected during a March 6 groundbreaking ceremony at Rentschler Field.
Wayfair said its East Hartford distribution center will help the company scale its fulfillment offerings for suppliers and strengthen the shopping experience for customers in greater New England.
Lowe’s said its new facility is part of a distribution network expansion announced in 2020. The center will provide daily shipments of bulky items, like riding mowers, and replenish more than 119 stores across the Northeast, the company said.
National Development Managing Partner Ed Marsteiner confirmed the two companies have signed long-term leases at the Rentschler Field site. The logistics buildings are part of the project’s up to $300-million first phase.
National Development is still wooing high-tech or specialty manufacturing tenants for the project’s second phase, Marsteiner said.
Construction of those smaller, but more complex properties could cost between $40 million to $50 million, he estimated.
Economic catalyst
Site work on the logistics properties began shortly after National Development’s land purchase with construction of both buildings expected to be completed in summer 2024, Marsteiner said.
National Development typically uses equity to finance a third of its project costs, and borrows to cover the rest. Santander Bank and M&T Bank are helping finance the East Hartford project, he said.
“Those relationships were extremely helpful and important in getting this project to move forward because the capital markets essentially shut down in the latter part of 2022,” Marsteiner said. “So, we are very grateful to these groups for stepping up and helping get this project financed.”
Missouri-based ARCO National Construction was hired to build out the first-phase logistics properties. Foundations will be poured in March, with vertical construction beginning two to three months later, Marsteiner said.
National Development predicts the first phase of construction will support up to 400 construction jobs, while Wayfair and Lowe’s will eventually employ more than 1,000 people.
“This project from day one has been a catalyst for economic development and really the rebuilding of an ecosystem out here for the town of East Hartford,” Marsteiner said. “You need an employment center to encourage residential development, to support amenities.”
Marsteiner praised East Hartford Mayor Michael Walsh, along with local and state officials who welcomed the project. The trust created during the planning process has primed National Development to seek additional projects in the area, he said.
“It’s been a great experience for us down here,” Marsteiner said. “Once you establish that trust, it sets the stage for it being easier to accomplish future projects. So, our goal would be to find opportunities certainly in East Hartford … and the surrounding area.”
GROTON – Electric Boat hired 3,700 shipbuilders last year. It wants to hire more than 5,000 this year and just as many every year for decades into the future.
Last spring, it hired a fifth of UConn’s engineering grads. At the other end of the education pipeline, it is promoting shipbuilding careers in elementary schools, setting its sights on second graders who will join the workforce when EB hopes to hit its peak employment target in 10 years.
“My first words to you this morning,” President Kevin Graney deadpanned last week to a roomful of political, government and military officials at a breakfast meeting at the Mystic Marriott. “EB is hiring.”
The nation’s foremost builder of submarines is, Graney said, in the midst of a “once in generation expansion,” producing for its principal customer, the U.S. Navy, the ships that will form the front line in a scramble by the U.S. and its allies to catch up with and contain Chinese expansionism.
But one of the challenges emerging from a new shipbuilding boom is a shortage of shipbuilders.
The country is spending more than $13 billion a year on the two new, lethal and virtually undetectable classes of nuclear-powered submarines Electric Boat is building for the Navy, Virginia class attack submarines and the Columbia class ballistic missile submarines.
As construction gears up, there is concern over whether Electric Boat – and the thousands of other manufacturers in the supply chain known as the submarine industrial base – can hire and begin production quickly enough to meet the aggressive construction and delivery schedule on which the Navy says U.S. security depends.
An Australian Connection?
Decades of relatively flat, post-cold war spending that shrunk the U.S. Naval fleet by half has also depleted the ranks of welders, shipfitters and riggers who build ships, as well as the companies that supply them. America hasn’t built submarines since 1995 when, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and China not yet a concern, Congress killed the 29-boat Seawolf class after EB built only three boats.
Lay-offs, retirements, industrial outsourcing and the trend toward college also contributed to labor and supply chain shrinkage. Between the 1980s, when EB was booming with work on dozens of Los Angeles and Trident class submarines, and today, the Navy says the manufacturing segment of the U.S. workforce slipped from 35 to 12 percent.
By scouring the northeast for tradesmen and engineers, Electric Boat says it is meeting and will continue to meet the Navy’s ambitious delivery schedule of two Virginia and one Columbia class submarines a year.
But the labor pool and supply chain could get another test later this month. After more than a year of talks, Australia, the United Kingdom and the U.S. are expected to roll out details of their September 2021 agreement known as AUKUS, a trilateral security pact in which the Americans and British are committed to helping Australia build a modern, nuclear-powered submarine fleet as another component of the allied effort to contain China.
Australia wants eight, state-of-the-art, nuclear-powered submarines to replace its obsolete fleet of Collins class diesel boats. It has a number of options to do so under AUKUS, while starting the daunting work of opening shipyards and Navy bases and creating its own supply chain and submarine industrial base. One of the more likely options involves buying Virginia class submarines, known as SSNs, from the U.S. EB would make billions on the sales, but experience greater pressure on its construction capacity.
Late last year, two influential members of the Senate Armed Services Committee – Rhode Island Democrat Jack Reed and then soon to retire Oklahoma Republican Daniel Inhofe – warned President Joseph Biden against giving submarines to the Australians. In a private letter that was later leaked, the two wrote that given its limited industrial capacity, the U.S. cannot build enough submarines to both defend itself and arm allies.
“We are concerned that what was initially touted as a ‘do no harm’ opportunity to support Australia and the United Kingdom and build long-term competitive advantages for the U.S. and its Pacific allies, may be turning into a zero-sum game for scarce, highly advanced U.S. SSNs,” they said.
U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, a leading AUKUS supporter whose district, like Reed’s, includes an EB shipyard, pushed back with a letter co-signed by eight bipartisan colleagues on the Seapower subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee. They argued that a transfer is needed not only to contain China but as a means of forcing an expansion of U.S. shipbuilding capacity.
“These realities should not be viewed as a reason not to pursue US build submarine options in AUKUS but rather as a unique opportunity to leverage the support and resources possible under AUKUS to grow our industrial base to support both US and Australian submarine construction, recognizing that the full fruition of AUKUS over many decades will result in Australia’s ability to domestically produce nuclear-powered submarines,” Courtney and the others wrote..
The Columbias and Virginias
The Virginia as well as the Columbia class submarines are the most sophisticated weapons platforms ever designed. Both classes have such highly evolved quieting technology that they are all but invisible to enemy sonar, allowing them to approach targets or launch points without detection. Their nuclear plants give them unlimited range and ability to remain submerged.
A senior manager on EB’s Columbia program called those submarines more technologically complex than NASA’s space shuttle. At about $9.15 billion a piece, they cost more than five times as much.
The Columbia is designed as a submerged missile platform. It is 560 feet long, displaces nearly 21,000 tons and launches Trident II missiles from 16 launch tubes. Because of its mobility and ability to conceal itself in the ocean depths, it is considered the most survivable leg of the nation’s nuclear triad of land, air and sea-based missiles.
It takes about 84 months to build a Columbia. The Navy says it needs 12, which, when complete, will carry about 70 percent of the country’s nuclear arsenal.
The Navy wants to build at least 60 of the smaller Virginia class boats, hunter-killers designed to destroy enemy submarines and surface ships, deliver missiles to land targets, deploy special operations teams, support naval battle groups and carry out intelligence gathering missions.
Early ships in the class were 377 feet long, but follow-on boats are being extended 84 feet to accommodate four vertical launch tubes capable of firing 28 Tomahawk missiles. They take five years to build and cost about $2.8 without missile tubes and $3.5 billion each with them.
Electric Boat designed both classes, but shares about half the Virginia work and a much smaller portion of the Columbia work with the country’s other submarine builder, Newport News Shipbuilding, a division of Huntington Ingalls Industries.
EB’s work is done at its shipyards at the mouth of the Thames River in Groton and at Quonset Point, RI. Between both locations, the company has invested $2 billion in high tech manufacturing improvements, some of which were needed to accommodate the massive new Columbias.
At Quonset Point, hundreds of tons of steel are shaped into cylindrical hull sections, packed with equipment and shipped by barge to Groton, where the sections are completed and welded together.
To assemble the Columbia, EB built a 200,000 square foot structure that sits over the Thames River on more than 500 massive concrete pilings driven into the granite riverbed. Just yards away is a new structure where the modular ship command and control centers will be tested before installation.
EB began work on the first Columbia, the District of Columbia, last year. Graney said it is 30 percent complete and on schedule for delivery to the Navy in 2027. Work on the second, the Wisconsin, starts next year.
Last week, there were four Virginia boats at the Groton yard, either already delivered to the Navy, awaiting delivery or near completion – Vermont, Iowa, Idaho and Hyman Rickover, named for the U.S. Admiral credited with developing the Navy’s nuclear powered propulsion system.
Between the two classes, the Navy expects delivery of three boats a year from EB and Newport News. As a measure of the complexity of the new submarines, Electric Boat launched 74 diesel submarines during World War II.
Electric Boat said it is meeting the delivery schedule and will continue to do so, although there was a slippage in the Virginia work after a portion of its tight workforce was shifted to the Columbia program when the Navy designated that as the nation’s top defense priority.
“The Columbia class remains our top priority,” Adm. John Richardson, the Chief of Naval Operations, has said. “It is foundational to our survival as a nation.”
AUKUS
EB is not talking about how its delivery schedule could be affected if, under AUKUS, its workload increases by a U.S. commitment to provide Australia with Virginia class submarines. Delivery schedules have become increasingly important in the rush to keep up with China, as well as developments in Russian submarine technology and armament.
“The question is, can we actually pull it off and how quickly can we pull it off,” said Charles Edel, inaugural Australia chair and a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Frankly, if Australia doesn’t get any submarines until 2040 that doesn’t do us much good. And when we think about deterring China, particularly from a Taiwan type of contingency, we need things both in the water, under the water and that fly very fast through the air.”
Australia developed the concept behind the AUKUS and pressed the U.S. and Great Britain because of concern over Chinese interference in its domestic affairs. Among other things, China – Australia’s largest trading partner – staggered the Australian economy by blocking its exports after Australia supported an international inquiry into the origins of the corona virus. Over the last three years, Australian polling shows that trust in China plunged from from 52 to 16 percent.
The purpose of AUKUS is to bootstrap Australia’s outdated diesel submarine force into a credible barrier to the Chinese chiefly through the sharing of closely guarded American nuclear propulsion technology. The U.S. has shared that technology only once before, more than 40 years ago with Great Britain.
The plan, in the long term, is for Australia to create and support its own nuclear fleet by building shipyards, naval bases and the industrial infrastructure for both. In the interim, the U.S., England or some combination or the two would give Australia the range to patrol the western Pacific by providing it with state of the art submarines propelled with U.S. nuclear propulsion systems.
Biden signed AUKUS 18 months ago. Sometime this month, on a date yet to be chosen, he and the prime ministers of Great Britain and Australia will meet and reveal details of how the agreement will work, among them how Australia gets submarines and from whom.
“We have made the recognition that China has poured billions of dollars into military modernization and it has really shifted the balance of power in the Indo-Pacific region,” Edel said. “And there has been a decision that we have not kept pace with China nor have our allies and partners and the only way that we are going to remain ahead and create a favorable balance of power is if we can turbo charge out closest allies who are most willing and most capable themselves.”
Like everything else concerning new submarine construction, here and in the United Kingdom, questions about who gets to sell subs to Australia have been clouded by who has the capacity to build them.
For months, the Australian press has been dominated by the question. Last week’s headlines suggest a momentum shift from Britain to the U.S. Australian opposition leader and former defense minister Peter Dutton told the Australian Broadcast Corporation that the Virginia is a better boat than the British Astute class nuclear-powered submarines and, what’s more, he doubts the United Kingdom, which requires ten years to build an Astute, has the industrial capacity to build submarines for Australia.
“The beauty in my mind with the American model of the Virginia class was that it is a proven design,” Dutton said. “It gave us interoperability with the Americans and there will be more American subs in the Indo-Pacific than British submarines.”
EB recruitment
Anyone in northern New England playing close attention to a televised Red Sox game over the summer, or a Patriots game last fall, probably got a recruitment pitch from Electric Boat. And the company is not only looking far afield for shipyard workers, but far into the future.
“We have a program called ‘The boat for kids,” said Courtney Murphy, the company’s director of talent acquisition, workforce development and compensation. “ We go into elementary schools with age appropriate activities that help them understand what kind of work we do.
“So we have second graders welding with Cheez Whiz and crackers. We are really trying to capture their interest and help them understand that we are here and build our branding early.”
Graney said the shipyard will spend more than $1 billion over the next five years to support the vendors, machine shops, laboratories and others that make up the submarine industrial base supply network in Connecticut. The Navy is spending close to $1 billion more on industrial base here and elsewhere.
There are recruitment efforts in high schools, trade schools and community colleges across the state with free training for anyone who wants to work.
State government is exploring ways to create housing in the tight southeastern part of the state for shipbuilders hired from out of state. There is work being done to arrange transportation systems for employees who commute. And there is work to establish daycare for children of welders and riggers.
Murphy said EB is confident that it will be able to recruit the workforce it needs to fill its contacts.
“We are pulling in big numbers now,” she said. “But it is going to take a lot of sustained effort over the long haul to continue to attract the workforce we need. There is no alternative. The nation needs these submarines and we need to be able to deliver them.”
Yale to Build New School of Engineering & Applied Science Quadrangle
Over the next 10 to 15 years, Yale University will expand its School of Engineering & Applied Science (SEAS) campus presence through a construction overhaul of lower Hillhouse Avenue in New Haven, Conn.
The prestigious university intends to launch several major construction projects in the Hillhouse area, reported Yale News, the nation's oldest college daily newspaper, on Feb. 26. Yale Provost Scott Strobel and SEAS Dean Jeffrey Brock revealed the school's plans to the university's engineering faculty in a recent meeting.
The project will take place on sites already owned and occupied by Yale and will include the construction of a new SEAS quadrangle on the east side of Hillhouse Avenue. To accommodate the new facilities, the university will demolish Mason Laboratory, Helen Hadley Hall, and the southern portion of Dunham Laboratory. The scheme also will reorganize SEAS faculty offices by research focus rather than department.
The news follows Yale's announcement last year to establish SEAS as an autonomous faculty body with 30 new faculty members. The expansion, which will raise the SEAS faculty size to 122, chiefly aims to add faculty in computer science — the most popular major among engineering undergraduates and an area that has historically lacked institutional support — and materials science.
"We envision something that reflects both the history and heritage of Yale's campus but also makes a bold statement about modern, forward-looking engineering for the future," Brock told the News. "We'll see spaces that are organized around new centers of activity, initiatives and research directions, in addition to things like collaborative spaces and [room] for innovation, makerspaces and entrepreneurship."
Brock said the plan was guided by the 2021 SEAS strategic vision report, which recommended that the university organize campus space by "research and teaching priorities rather than by department." Yale has taken this organizational approach in several other recent facilities projects, including Kline Tower and 100 College Street.
The benefits of reorganization extend beyond facilitating research, biomedical engineering professor James Duncan told the News, in that it may also help SEAS recruit new faculty members.
"The construction/renovation plans will create new and updated space that will greatly enhance both our teaching and our research activities," Duncan wrote in email to the News. "As noted in the announcement, the new lower Hillhouse space will be organized around research priorities, which will help us when recruiting new faculty and working with colleagues across SEAS."
New Construction, Renovations Planned
A prominent feature of the plan is the new SEAS quad, which will be constructed on the eastern side of lower Hillhouse Avenue, where 17 Hillhouse Ave., Mason Laboratory and Helen Hadley Hall now stand. The quad, Strobel explained, will be open to Hillhouse Avenue and ringed by modern lab spaces.
The building project also seeks to modernize existing engineering buildings, including the Becton Center, Dunham Laboratory and Arthur K. Watson Hall, he added. Many such buildings are over a century old and were not designed for engineering teaching or research. For example, 17 Hillhouse Ave. was built to be Yale's health center.
Strobel said that the choice to build engineering facilities in the heart of the campus was not an accident. Rather, it reflects Yale's plan to make SEAS "the engineering school that's most integrated with the rest of its university."
The first step of the plan, which will begin this summer, is to convert Kirtland Hall into flexible classroom space to accommodate classes that would have taken place in the buildings being renovated or demolished. The structure currently houses the psychology department, which will move to 100 College Street.
Next will be to design two new buildings: one at the corner of Trumbull Street and Hillhouse Avenue, the other at the current site of Helen Hadley Hall. Strobel said these projects are "probably still a year or two out."
In addition to the lower Hillhouse construction, the university will simultaneously begin construction of the new physical sciences and engineering building at the north end of campus.
"I would say the motivation is not merely to accommodate growth," Brock told the campus news source. "We've seen a huge increase in [student] demand [for engineering], and, as we've moved to accommodate that, we've realized that we really need state-of-the-art facilities to recruit top faculty and sort of signal to the world that Yale is ready to lead in this area."
He noted that facilities are absolutely central to the recruiting process.
"Being able to bring in top faculty from other institutions or … faculty that are new PhDs requires that we offer them first-rate [labs] that are integrated with the campus."
Students and faculty in Yale's computer science program have long called for upgrades to the "outdated" Arthur K. Watson Hall, which currently houses the department. Several professors have said that the department's sub-par facilities greatly impact its ability to attract world-class researchers and faculty members.
New Quad Could Help Address Broad Challenges
Yale's decision to build the new School of Engineering & Applied Science quad will, it claimed, aid the university's "broad effort to address grand challenges of the 21st century," like climate change and sustainable development.
"To support a generation of researchers focused on mitigating climate change, the growth of the SEAS department[s] must align with more rigorous sustainability goals and designs for infrastructural development," Saachi Grewal, an applied physics student, told the Yale News.
Grewal also noted that as a researcher on campus, she was excited to envision the increased capacity that the investment in SEAS could grant campus labs.