State presses ahead with plans for $20 million pedestrian bridge in New London

Greg Smith  New London — The National Coast Guard Museum Association has submitted an application to the city for construction of a 400-foot glass-walled pedestrian bridge to span Water Street and connect the downtown with the waterfront and future Coast Guard museum.

The state has authorized and approved up to $20 million for design and construction of the bridge, which is considered to be a companion project to the $100 million National Coast Guard Museum. The city’s Planning and Zoning Commission is scheduled to consider the site development plan at its Nov. 5 meeting.

The idea of a pedestrian bridge over Water Street has been talked about for decades as a safe way to connect visitors in the downtown area and those parked at the city-owned parking garage on Water Street with the waterfront, train station, bus terminal and Cross Sound Ferry terminals.

Cross Sound Ferry partnered with the city to develop plans for a bridge back in 2001. Those plans never came to fruition, but a 2013 announcement that the National Coast Guard Museum would be built behind Union Station led to a state pledge of up to $20 million for the project.

Plans submitted to the city’s planning office show the bridge connecting the Water Street parking garage with the north- and southbound train platforms and waterfront area east of the railroad tracks.

Once completed, the National Coast Guard Museum intends to transfer ownership of the bridge to the city, which will maintain and operate it.

“The curved form of the bridge reaches north as it spans Water Street, preserving the space immediately around Union Station. The bridge’s form and orientation on the site will enhance the urban fabric of Parade Plaza by giving definition to the north edge of the open public space, while at the same time safely linking the public spaces across the greater site,” the description of the bridge in the application reads.

The bridge’s glass facade “ensures sweeping views of downtown New London,” and the glass includes a “frit pattern” designed to mitigate bird collisions. Louvers and passive fans will help provide natural ventilation in warmer months.

At the urging of Planning and Zoning Commission Chairman Barry Levine and with the commission facing statutory deadlines for review of the project, the commission on Sept. 17 unanimously voted to require a public hearing on the proposal. Levine said site plan reviews don’t always require public hearings but it's been the practice of the commission to require them on big projects.

“What I shared with this applicant during a couple of workshops was putting a bridge over Water Street is a big deal and I think the public should be informed about it and have an opportunity to weigh in,” Levine said at the Sept. 17 meeting.

The commission also granted itself a 90-day extension for review of the project since the 65-day statutory timeline for action on the application would have ended on Oct. 24. He said the commission would have been forced to deny the project or face a default approval without the extension.

The commission additionally has required that the planning department refer the application to the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection for a 35-day window to provide comment.

New London Zoning Official Michelle Johnson Scovish said the referral to DEEP had been a subject of debate between her department and an attorney representing the National Coast Guard Museum Association, part of the reason for the delay in bringing the project to the commission.

Robert Ross, executive director of the Connecticut Office of Veterans Affairs, said he expects the project to clear all land-use approvals by the end of the year, though a timeline for the start of construction is not yet clear.

“Our view from the beginning is that the pedestrian bridge supports the National Coast Guard Museum. These two projects have to advance together,” Ross said.Work associated with the Coast Guard museum on bulkheads at the city’s waterfront is expected to start sometime next year.

Ross, designated by former Gov. Dannel Malloy as the liaison between the museum effort and various state agencies, said it has been a collaborative effort to get to this point. Agencies involved have included the Coast Guard, Coast Guard Museum Association, state Department of Transportation, state Department of Economic and Community Development and state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.

“All of these big state agencies have really come together to figure out how to make this happen,” Ross said.

The bridge plans, Ross said, have evolved through the years to accommodate recommendations, some surrounding its proximity to Union Station.

Mayor Michael Passero said he knows of no other transportation hub with street-level crossings like New London’s.

“We arguably have (one of) the biggest intermodal transportation hubs all here in one place. And yet the pedestrians are on their own,” he said.

Passero said he views the bridge construction as an economic recovery project for the region, an asset to the downtown “and I think it’s going to be a bit of an architectural landmark in its own right.”

“I think this is a great first step to build confidence for the people out there that still doubt the museum is coming,” he said.

In a special session, the real debate is the agenda

Mark Pazniokas  Gov. Ned Lamont issued a call Friday for the General Assembly to return next week for a limited special session, primarily to set new performance-based standards for calculating electric rates and to approve about $500 million of dollars in borrowing for school construction.

The special session is expected to take only two days, but negotiations over the agenda consumed far more time as rank-and-file lawmakers pressed leaders to include favored bills that died without a vote in a regular session curtailed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It’s been quite complicated,” said House Speaker Joe Aresimowicz, D-Berlin. “It feels like Groundhog Day at times, going over the same list of bills.”

The school construction package was reduced after it grew to a level the Lamont administration saw as too generous, given the fiscal uncertainties facing the state as it tries to rebound from the pandemic-induced recession.

“There were some hiccups along the way,” said Paul Mounds, the governor’s chief of staff. “But working in close consultation with legislative leaders we’ve been able to deal with many of the concerns that were raised by our administration on various issues, particularly on the fiscal side.”

Other than school construction, Lamont said he asked that any proposal with a significant budget impact wait to be considered by the next General Assembly, which takes office and convenes on Jan. 6.

“What we wanted to do was really focus on those bills that were timely, we had to do now, couldn’t wait until January,” Lamont said.

Lawmakers would be hard-pressed, however, to argue that all 10 items in the governor’s call require immediate attention, probably including the marquee topic: energy.

Prompted by the widespread outages caused by a tropical storm last month, the energy legislation would freeze electric rates while directing the state’s Public Utility Regulatory Authority to craft new “performance-based regulations” and rates by September 2022.

PURA already had suspended an Eversource rate increase, and it does not need legislative authorization to explore performance-based rate approval.

With widespread anger at Eversource, the bill has a political appeal for lawmakers seeking reelection. They have tabbed the measure “The Take Back Our Grid Act.”

“The Take Back Our Grid Act promises to begin the overhaul Connecticut utilities and ensure the people of our state receive the services they pay for, ensuring that corporations focus on the people they serve instead of the profits they earn,” the Senate Democratic leadership said in a statement.

Lamont said the bill also would address excessive executive compensation.

Other topics included in the call are measures intended to ease the counting of absentee ballots, codify in state law how the prevailing wage is calculated in public works projects, redefine the extent liability for pollution stays with property when it is sold and clarify that condominiums are eligible for coverage under a program to aid homeowners with crumbling foundations.

The elections bill would allow local officials to begin processing absentee ballots before Election Day, but not open or count them. The local officials must check the signature on an outer envelope before an inner envelope is eventually opened and the ballot is fed into an optical scanner to be counted.

For the first time in a general election, any voter can use an absentee ballot — a temporary measure during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“There’s going to be 10, 20 times more absentee ballots than we’ve ever had before, and we want to put everybody’s mind at ease and give the registrars all the flexibility they need and make sure we can count these votes on a timely and accurate basis,” Lamont said.

Sen. Cathy Osten, D-Sprague, the co-chair of the Appropriations Committee, said none of the school projects in the bill requires immediate funding, but Lamont said in a hastily called news conference Friday afternoon that it was important to lock in the size of the school bonding now.

Osten has an item on the list: A measure to codify state rules for hemp agriculture. Temporary regulations are expiring, and businesses must shut down without state or federal legislation by Oct. 31, she said. A farm in Ledyard, part of her district in eastern Connecticut, was the first permitted to grow hemp. About 50 others have followed suit, she said.

“It’s not a booming business yet, but it’s not going to be booming at all if we shut it down in its infancy,” Osten said.

Under a separate call, lawmakers also are expected to confirm the judicial nominations of a Supreme Court justice and three Appellate Court judges. All four are serving on an interim basis after being appointed in July, when the legislature was not in session. A vote before the regular session was not necessary.

The legislature’s Judiciary Committee is expected to meet Wednesday on the four judicial nominations: Christine E. Keller to the Supreme Court and Joan K. Alexander, José A. Suarez and Melanie L. Cradle to the Appellate Court.

The House is expected to come in on Wednesday and the Senate on Friday.

The prevailing-wage measure is a new version of a bill that died from inaction when the General Assembly suspended its regular session in March and never resumed before its constitutional adjournment deadline in May.

It would codify in state law how the prevailing wage is calculated in Connecticut, essentially by giving the state some distance from federal control.

The state Department of Labor updates the prevailing wage rates every July 1st, but they must be finalized by the U.S. Department of Labor. Trade unions and contractors both supported the measure, saying federal inaction has led to administrative delays and confusion.

“It’s not meant to arbitrarily raise wages. It’s meant to simply protect the law as it is in practice today as a preventive measure,” the Berlin Steel Construction Company told lawmakers in written testimony in March.

But the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities and the Council of Small Towns, who complain that the prevailing wage drives up the costs of construction in public works, viewed the measure less benignly.

CCM asked the legislature to complete a detailed fiscal analysis of how the bill would affect cities and towns, and COST declared itself in opposition.

“Under this proposal, prevailing wage rates must be in lockstep with wage rates dictated by union contracts, which will significantly increase costs for state and municipal projects,” said Betsy Gara, executive director of COST.