CT Construction Digest Thursday April 27, 2023
Officials say exit project will bring ‘transformational’ improvements to East Lyme traffic
Elizabeth Regan
East Lyme ―State Sen. Martha Marx, D-New London, welcomed Wednesday’s ceremonial groundbreaking for the Exit 74 reconstruction of Interstate 95 by recounting what she called her always-perilous journeys on the highway.
A group of local and state officials, from First Selectman Kevin Seery to Gov. Ned Lamont, stood in front of an excavator at the former site of the Starlight Inn Wednesday morning. Construction workers watched in their yellow vests and hard hats from the staging area that will become a northbound on-ramp and commuter parking lot by the end of the more than four-year, $148 million project.
“There’s not a person in southeastern Connecticut that doesn’t take a deep breath every time they’re driving onto the highway, scared to death that the first thing they’re going to see is an 18-wheeler,” Marx said. “Do we slow down? Do we go faster? How do I do this?”
She held up her hands like they were white-knuckled on a steering wheel.
“You say a Hail Mary and you get on the highway,” she said.
Behind the officials, cars crept along the northbound lane of the interstate due to an unrelated paint removal project affecting bridges along the span.
Officials have said the first year of the massive Exit 74 project will revolve around moving utility poles along with gas, water and sewer lines on Route 161 which began last month. The more significant traffic impacts are still to come.
State Department of Transportation (DOT) Commissioner Gary Eucalitto said the project will realign on- and off-ramps to give drivers more time before merging or trying to get off the highway.
There were 200 crashes with 50 injuries in the project area – including the interstate and Route 161, the state road that passes underneath it – over the past three years, according to Eucalitto.
The goal of the project, which was referred to by multiple officials as “transformational,” is to reduce congestion and improve safety on the highway and Route 161. The state DOT is picking up 20% of the cost while the federal government, through President Joe Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure deal, is responsible for the rest.
Digital signs have been installed to warn drivers how backed up they can expect their commute to be. DOT spokesman Josh Morgan said the “Smart Work Zone” signs are part of a sensor system to make construction areas safer and reduce delays.
A guidebook from the DOT said the sensors can be used to transmit messages and gather real time data such as traffic volume, speed and how many people are in each vehicle.
The construction project was initially slated to begin in 2021, but the transportation department needed more time for preparations, including coordinating the utility work and acquiring property through eminent domain.
Gone is the Starlight Inn, the neighboring Mobil gas station and a golf range on the other side of the overpass that catered to a clientele from high school students to retirees. The demolitions make room for a whole new layout as crews widen the interstate and Route 161, replace the overpass, and raise the highway in some places while lowering it in others.
Lamont reiterated the safety benefits that will come from “levitating the highway 10 feet” in places, which he said will smooth out hills and cut down on crashes by increasing visibility. Then there are the wider lanes.
“The longer exit ramp and on ramp allows you to speed up and speed down so Martha Marx can relax a little bit as she gets on the highway,” Lamont said.
The officials touted the state’s progress in addressing transportation issues, which has been bolstered by the massive, bipartisan infrastructure law signed by President Joe Biden that promises to deliver $550 billion over four years for the nation’s roads, bridges, mass transit system, water infrastructure, resiliency efforts, and broadband capabilities.
Eucalitto pointed to a report released last week by the libertarian Reason Foundation, which ranked Connecticut’s highway system the fifth most high-performing in the United States in terms of cost-effectiveness and condition.
“That shows we’re moving in the right direction,” he said, citing a 26-spot jump from the previous years’ report.
The report also included Connecticut in a list of nine states – including New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts and Rhode Island – where commuters spend more than 30 hours annually stuck in rush hour traffic.
Connecticut State Building Trades Council Vice President Nate Brown touted the federal infrastructure funding and a labor union agreement that promotes workforce training as part of the project.
He said the labor agreement ensures “apprentices, minorities, veterans and local residents are on the project.”
State Rep. Holly Cheeseman, R-East Lyme, invoked Rodney Dangerfield’s “I don’t get no respect” mantra to describe the feeling among people east of the Connecticut River who feel they don’t get enough attention from officials who assign priorities and dole out funding for the state.
“I sometimes feel we in Eastern Connecticut have a sort of chip on our shoulder,” she said. “Today, we not only feel respected and appreciated, we feel loved by the attention we’re getting.”
Lamont at the ceremony addressed Seery, the first selectman.
“Kevin, I got to tell you, East Lyme is happening,” the governor said. “Did you see the headline in the New York Times?”
The article had been posted the same day in the Real Estate section of the Times website with the headline: “East Lyme, Conn.: ‘Clean, Safe, Peaceful and Quiet.”
Lamont added the town also has great schools and is “a hell of a lot of fun.”
“And we’re making it easier and easier to get here,” he said.
Officials Kick Off 4-Year Construction at I-95 Exit 74, Lamont Talks High-Speed Rail
Cate Hewitt
EAST LYME — Infrastructure was the buzzword on Wednesday as officials pushed ceremonial shovels into the ground to kick off the I-95 Exit 74 reconstruction project that will realign interchanges, widen lanes and replace the bridge at Route 161. The $150 million project is expected to be completed in Spring 2027.
“It is just transformative for a state like Connecticut that has an awful lot of old infrastructure,” said Gov. Ned Lamont. “[The project] is going to be just the first step in a long march as we upgrade our transportation” that will make it easier to travel to destinations in the southeastern portion of the state due to 80 percent funding from the federal infrastructure bill, he said.
As he addressed the crowd of construction workers, press and state officials, Lamont pivoted to rail infrastructure, thanking the state’s federal delegation for supporting the expansion of rail lines to speed up train service between New York and Boston.
“Senator Chris Murphy made specific emphasis on Amtrak and you’re gonna see an hour taken off that commute over the next five to 10 years between Boston and New York and just getting started,” he said. “Thanks to Joe Courtney and our other delegation, we’re going to be going to 40-40-40, 40 minutes down to New Haven, 40 minutes to Stamford and get that eventually down to 30-30-30.”
He said Connecticut’s greatest strategic advantage is its location, “but it only works if you can get there.”
Garrett Eucalitto, state commissioner of transportation, said the project will alleviate bottlenecks in an area with a high rate of crashes due to inadequate design, especially in the on- and off-ramps.
“Over a three year period, we had nearly 200 crashes on I-95 and route 161, resulting in over 50 injuries,” Eucalitto said.
He said the project will help improve safety for people traveling on I-95 as well as those walking or riding bikes on Route 161, where lanes will be widened, and sidewalks and shoulders will be added.
The state has also attached a Project Labor Agreement, or PLA, to the project, Eucalitto said, “which means that workforce training will occur right here on this job site.”
“PLA’s help ensure the next generation of trades people get the hands-on training they need to help deliver the infrastructure of our future,” he said.
After a number of short speeches, state and local officials grabbed their shovels and tossed ceremonial dirt into the air to officially mark the commencement of the project.
The project was presented in 2019 and slated to begin in 2021, but was delayed two years due to COVID. The project includes improving the vertical geometry of the highway, extending on- and off-ramps and adding auxiliary lanes between Exits 74 and 75. The bridge at Route 161 will be replaced and widened. Route 161 will be widened, with sidewalks, shoulders and travel and turning lanes added.
East Lyme Chief of Police Michael Finkelstein said that the state’s department of transportation and the its engineering consultant on the project, GM2 Inc., have worked to coordinate issues of handling traffic throughout the project, using lessons learned from the 2019 Costco construction project.
“I think we’ve learned a lot from the Costco job on problems that happened here. This job has a tremendous amount of limitations in it where they can’t work certain times and in certain ways,” he said. “It just makes the project longer, but it actually makes it easier for us, because it limits the number of times we’re gonna have, or we anticipate having larger backups.”
He said there would be limited closures of Route 161 and no highway closures at all, barring an emergency or a very short term construction need.
He said Route 161 will only be closed when the new bridges, which will be preconstructed, are put into place.
First Selectman Kevin Seery said most of the work on I-95 will be done at night, and construction hours on Route 161 will be limited from approximately 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
He said that his office and CTDOT have communicated with the neighborhoods in East Lyme that will feel the impact of drivers using side roads to bypass the construction. He said the project’s website and social media will have updates on traffic conditions.
Bob Obey, resident engineer with GM2, told CT Examiner that throughout the project there will always be two lanes going north and south on I-95.
“There will be barriers and we’ll be widening behind the barriers, and then it’s just a matter of shifting those barriers perpetually over the next three, four years to move traffic so we can establish a new work area,” he said.
He said the new bridge will be built in pieces alongside the old one and traffic will be shifted as each phase is completed.
“We have probably seven or eight stages. It literally is a puzzle and these puzzle pieces go in, they come out and some stuff is temporary, some stuff is permanent. We’re constantly moving and adjusting to maintain all the traffic and really build the whole job underneath everybody. That’s not easy and that’s what takes so long,” Obey said.
Farmington town budget, high school building project, road improvements up for vote today
Steven Goode
FARMINGTON — Town budgets don't often generate a lot of interest among voters, especially when the town council has adopted a budget for the next fiscal year that calls for no increases in spending over the current year's $121.26 million, as is the case in Farmington.
Regardless of the zero percent increase in spending, homeowners will see an average increase of 9.75 percent in their property taxes due to state-required revaluation that happened to coincide with a meteoric rise in property values as commercial property values dropped slightly or remained flat.
But there is another item up for a vote on Thursday that might have more interest among residents. The town is asking residents to vote on spending $16 million to save the original 1928 Farmington High School building. The cost of that project would be offset by $7 million in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds from the federal government, making the total price tag for the town $9 million.
If approved, the town would convert the building into a new town hall, with offices for multiple municipal departments, meeting space and a 3,600 square-foot gym for community use. The town clerk, tax collector, tax assessor and registrars of voters would also move into the building.
Town officials have said the time to decide is now because doing the renovations at the same time the old high school is torn down would result in construction savings.
If voters don't approve the referendum. the 1928 building will be torn down along with the rest of the high school when the new high school opens next year.
A survey of about 1,000 residents last year found that 78 percent of those polled were in favor of retaining that section of the high school when the rest is demolished.
The third question on the referendum ballot is whether the town should spend $4 million to improve and reconstruct roads around town.
Voting will take place at all the towns polling places from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Orange-based Avangrid vows to restart hydro line construction after winning jury decision
Avangrid confirmed Wednesday it plans to restart construction of its planned New England Clean Energy Connect transmission line in Maine to tap hydropower in Canada after a jury verdict that the Orange-based company could proceed despite a 2021 voter referendum to block the project.
It is a major win for renewable energy advocates in New England, with the lines designed to carry half as much more power than Avangrid's Park City Wind farm that will be staged out of Bridgeport.
Avangrid attorneys argued successfully that it had already poured substantial funds into the project when the referendum was held, saddling Avangrid with an unfair financial burden. Speaking Wednesday morning on a conference call, Avangrid executives said the verdict could still be appealed but that they were communicating with contractors and dam operator Hydro-Quebec about a timeline to recommence construction.
Maine voters had been swayed by arguments that the project would cause environmental harm by clearing trees to erect towers for the transmission lines running 150 miles through Maine wilderness, including mountain terrain and a stretch of the Kennebec River valley.
Avangrid and its allies noted the company is using an existing line corridor for more than half of the route and maintained that the benefits to New England's emissions targets outweighed the downsides of removing additional trees to extend and widen the corridor and the impact of 95-foot-tall towers spoiling scenic vistas going forward.
"We think it's the best project to build for New England in order to help Massachusetts, Maine and all of New England meet its clean energy future," said Catherine Stempien, CEO of Avangrid Networks, speaking Wednesday morning on a conference call. "We're excited to restart construction."
A Canadian official told the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy & Natural Resources last year that Quebec's electricity costs are 30 percent less than other G7 nations and that they have been immune to the price spikes New England has seen as natural gas markets have been disrupted during Russia's military campaign in Ukraine.
Through its Avangrid Renewables subsidiary based in Oregon, Avangrid is one of the nation's largest developers of renewable power generation spanning wind and solar. The company is readying to drive the first monopile foundation this spring for Vineyard Wind off the Massachusetts coast, which will be the first utility-scale offshore wind farm in the United States. Construction of Park City Wind will follow next year to supply renewable power for Connecticut.
In Connecticut, Avangrid subsidiaries include United Illuminating, Connecticut Natural Gas and Connecticut Southern Gas. The company is spearheading the New England Clean Energy Connect through its Central Maine Power transmission subsidiary.
While Massachusetts homeowners and businesses will purchase electricity from the Maine transmission lines — it will be sufficient for the energy needs of a million homes — the project will provide another major source of renewable power in the territory of ISO New England, the nonprofit that coordinates the supply of electricity in Connecticut.
Gov. Ned Lamont's administration is backing a separate project to build a hydropower transmission line between Quebec and Vermont to benefit the New England grid.
NORTH HAVEN — East Haven Mayor Joe Carfora walked out of a meeting of Greater New Haven's regional Council of Governments Wednesday before it unanimously approved, with two abstentions, a resolution supporting Tweed New Haven Regional Airport expansion and an associated draft Environmental Assessment.
Carfora and two staff members walked out after his motion to table the South Central Regional Council of Government resolution for a second straight month failed by a 5-4 vote. Bethany First Selectwoman Paula Cofrancesco, the council's secretary and acting chair, cast the deciding vote.
"It's a joke! It's a total joke," Carfora said after leaving the room. "How can you vote on something you didn't read?"
He said he had hired experts who "totally annihilated" findings in the Environmental Assessment, which among other things found that extending Tweed's runway and building a new terminal on the East Haven side actually would improve the airport's impact on the environment.
Carfora earlier had asked who in the room had read the EA. Just two people, both bystanders, raised their hands. One of them was Lorena Venegas, an East Haven resident and Tweed expansion opponent who is a member of the 10,000 Hawks community group.
"I'm fighting for my town," Carfora told the council before walking out. He said it would be "a travesty" if the COG supported the resolution of support for expansion and the EA's findings.
"I was elected to fight for my town" and "I hope all of you vote again to table this," he said just before the COG voted against tabling it.
He called it "sickening" that the COG was considering going on record in favor of the EA's findings while the FAA review process was underway. and said, "it makes me want to vomit."
At one point, New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker, who attended the meeting remotely via Zoom and voted against tabling as well as casting the only vote against a proposed amendment told Carfora to watch his language.
On the vote to table, Carfora was joined by North Haven First Selectman Michael Freda, Wallingford Mayor Bill Dickinson and Branford First Selectman Jamie Cosgrove. Hamden Mayor Lauren Garrett, Madison First Selectwoman Peggy Lyons, Guilford First Selectman Matthew Hoey and Elicker all voted not to table.
Woodbridge Deputy First Selectwoman Sheila McCreven, proxy for First Selectwoman Beth Heller, abstained.
Moments after Carfora left, the Council approved by a 6-1 margin, again with two abstentions, a motion to amend the resolution to state the COG would support a full-blown Environmental Impact Statement should the Federal Aviation Administration deem it appropriate. Elicker cast the one "no" vote.
Soon after, the COG unanimously approved the resolution supporting expansion and the findings of the EA, again with two abstentions.
In the second two votes, Freda and McCreven abstained.
Elicker, explaining his vote against the amendment, said later, "The amendment effectively says if the FAA makes a determination, we support it. That language seemed hollow and unnecessary to me. I don't see the need to make unnecessary statements.
"The bottom line is, the proposal for the airport changes is a good thing for the communities that are served," including both "New Haven and other communities," he said. "There's an interest by a small group of people to delay it in anyway possible."
Cofrancesco was acting as chair because Chairman Matthew Hoey, first selectman of Guilford, is on the Tweed New Haven Airport Authority and Vice Chairman James Zeoli, first selectman of Orange, was absent.
"This is very difficult," Cofrancesco said. But she said she agreed with an earlier statement by Madison First Selectwoman Peggy Lyons that "it's about the process" and decided "I'm going to let the process play out. I'm going to say, 'Yea.'"
While Hoey did not sit as COG chairman for the meeting, he did vote on all three resolutions. Hoey was the one who proposed the amendment that said the COG would support an EIS if the FAA deemed it appropriate, which he said came after a number of discussions with Carfora.
The draft Environmental Assistant initially had a 45-day comment period that would have ended April 16. The FAA in March extended it for 15 additional days through May 1. The EA is posted at a link on Tweed's TweedMasterPlan.com and FlyTweed.com websites.
The Connecticut Housing Finance Authority’s Mortgage Committee unanimously endorsed $36.5 million in loans to affordable housing projects in Newington, West Hartford and New Haven Tuesday.
The full CHFA Board of Directors is scheduled to take up the requests Thursday.
The loan proposals include $3.17 million for the second phase of Massachusetts-based Dakota Partners’ “Cedar Pointe” development of a 7.7-acre former car dealership property at 550 Cedar St. in Newington.
The first phase consists of 72 apartments in three buildings and a one-story clubhouse. With an estimated cost of $14 million, this second phase will include a mix of 36 one- and two-bedrooms apartments, 28 of which will be offered at affordable rates. Construction is anticipated to launch this spring and conclude in summer 2024.
Dakota has applied for a loan of $2.39 million at no more than 7.25% interest yearly over 35 years and a $951,000 loan at no more than 1% interest over 25 years.
On Tuesday, the CHFA subcommittee also endorsed an $11.7 million construction loan and a $2.1 million permanent loan for the first phase of West Hartford Fellowship Housing’s plan to replace 23, 1970-vintage buildings containing 168 units with six buildings containing 300 apartments for the elderly and disabled.
The nonprofit housing provider got its start about 50 years ago, when area churches and synagogues came together around a mission to provide affordable housing. Today, the nonprofit is run by a volunteer board, operating the aging housing complex on a 2.9-acre town-owned site.
West Hartford’s Town Council approved a 99-year extension of the land-lease late last year.
The planned first phase of development, estimated to cost $25.6 million, will see three buildings containing 22 units replaced with two, three-story buildings with elevators serving 65 affordable units restricted to people ages 62 and up or disabled.
The $11.7 million construction loan is proposed at no more than 7.34% interest over 24 months, with the $2.1 million permanent loan at rates of not more than 6.53% over 35 years.
Haynes Construction has been named as the builder for this first phase of construction, which is expected to launch this summer and conclude in winter 2024.
The CHFA Mortgage Committee also endorsed $19.53 million in loans for rehabilitation of 66 apartments and construction of 26 more at the McConaughy Terrace complex in New Haven.
The development at the corner of Genesee St. and Harper Ave. is anticipated to launch this summer and wrap in fall 2024.
Under the subcommittee action Tuesday, a $5.23 million construction loan would be offered to the Glendower Group Inc. at no more than 5.88% interest annually over a two-year repayment term. A permanent loan of up to $14.3 million would come at no more than 6.68% interest over a term of 40 years.
McConaughy Terrace was built in the 1940s.
Glendower plans to convert the complex to a project-based voucher model, with construction over two phases. The anticipated second phase would rehab 130 existing units, 26 of which would be offered to tenants without income restrictions.
The 92 units involved in the first phase will all be offered as affordable housing.