Debt ceiling deal would speed environmental permitting

Julie Strupp

President Joe Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy struck an agreement late Saturday to suspend the debt ceiling for two years. The result of their talks, the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023, will cut $136 billion in federal spending and avert a default, and most notably for the nation’s civil contractors, includes measures to accelerate environmental permitting.

Provisions to speed projects such as some highways, bridges and pipelines include designating one lead federal agency to oversee environmental reviews and the use of a single “concise public document” for each project. Environmental reviews would have to be completed in no more than two years.

In addition, the legislation could entice more Americans into the workforce via updates to food stamps and other assistance programs on both the federal and state levels. It raises the age until which most food stamp recipients must seek work from 49 to 54.

Now that negotiators representing the White House and congressional Republicans have struck an accord, both parties must both convince their colleagues to approve it. House lawmakers are expected to vote on the agreement this week, according to the New York Times. Congress must pass the measure before June 5, when Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned that the United States will run out of cash. 

The Associated General Contractors of America praised the agreement.

“The debt limit deal announced over the weekend includes significant reforms to a federal permitting process that has, until now, been one of the main impediments to progress on many vital infrastructure projects,” AGC CEO Stephen Sandherr said in a statement. “The agreement’s new work requirements for some individuals receiving federal assistance should bring more people back into the workforce.”

The deal does not cut Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act money, but the Sandherr said in the statement, “We will remain vigilant in our efforts to protect that funding.” Heads of public construction companies said in recent earnings calls they were watching the debt ceiling talks to ensure Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act funding didn’t get cut.

The deal also approves permitting requests for the long-delayed Mountain Valley Pipeline, a $6.6 billion methane gas project in West Virginia championed by West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin. A joint venture composed of Equitrans Midstream, NextEra Energy, Consolidated Edison, AltaGas and RGC Resources is building the controversial 300-mile pipeline.

Behind the scenes of the Yale Peabody Museum as renovations enter final phase 

Vincent Gabrielle

The Yale Peabody Museum building renovations are nearly done. For the next year, museum curators, staff and construction personnel will put the final touches on the building and re-install exhibits for the reopening in 2024.

“I’ve been working on this for well over 15 years,” said Mark Simon of Centerbrook Architects and Planners, one of the architects on the project. Simon had worked on master plans well before the project started. “Eventually this plan came to be to everybody’s delight and surprise because it’s been so long.”

CT Insider was given a sneak peak at the museum on a tour with the architects and museum staff. In the new lobby, visitors are greeted by an information desk, instead of a ticket counter. The lobby entrance, once a narrow gothic arch congested by school groups has been widened. A new freight elevator, rated for 15,000 pounds has been installed, perfect for moving large objects, or whole tour groups.

“It’s going to change the experience for everybody, not just the students but for all the visitors,” said Chris Renton, spokesperson for the Yale Peabody Museum. “No knock on the old Peabody but it was loud and hard to have a museum experience with hundreds of kids blocking every path.”

The iconic squid will not be returning to the entrance, instead the tower interior will be festooned with climbing pterosaurs, posed as if they are using the interior as a rookery.

To accomplish all this, load-bearing stone masonry from the original French Gothic construction was painstakingly removed. The upper floors of the tower are now supported by newly-inserted steel beams. The polished floor shows the outlines of the old arches, intentionally leaving the history of the museum visible.

The way the architects described it was like they had shored up a standing Jenga tower without knocking it over.

The lobby leads directly into the new central gallery. Formerly a disused courtyard, the gallery is awash in sunlight streaming through skylights. Massive laminate beams support the new ceiling.

A forty-foot long Tylosaurus fossil, a large, predatory marine reptile hangs from wires, posed mid-hunt. In front of it the cast of a massive sea turtle, an Archelon, tries to escape. It’s missing a fin.

“We know it survived the attack because there was a certain amount of healing that is clear in the fossil,” said Renton.

The former courtyard was basically a ghost space, flanked by two separate buildings before. Nobody really used it. The architects left parts of the original exterior wall exposed, polished down the old floor and enclosed the courtyard with a new roof. An additional building was constructed to enclose the courtyard, seamlessly blended with the old building.

“There’s a joint so that the two buildings are seismically separated,” said Andrew Santinello, another architect on the project. He explained that they erected steel supports inside the courtyard while the roof was lifted off of the old building. “We basically build a ship in a bottle here.”

Classrooms, community space and a second-story walkway ring the space. The old walls contain parts of an entirely new HVAC, mechanical and electrical system.

In spite of that, and the massive open space, the courtyard is quiet. Instead of stone, the walls are covered in a sound-dampening plaster.

Building all of this wasn’t simple. The Yale Peabody Museum basically underwent reconstructive surgery while it was closed. The roof was removed for much of the construction.

New HVAC and machine systems were inserted, like implants, underneath it. Thousands of miles of fiber optic cable were strung through the building, enabling centralized, networked, climate, lighting, and exhibit control. New energy-efficient, bird-safe windows were installed.

Specimens and murals that couldn’t be removed were enclosed in their own, climate-controlled spaces, complete with seismometers to monitor vibration. Anything that needed to stay, had to be preserved. That includes the mural in the Great Hall and the full Edmontosaurus fossil attached to the wall.

“They had their own structures and their own mechanical systems to make sure the humidity stayed even,” said Simon. “We had vibration sensors to make sure we weren’t vibrating them in any way because we were moving some heavy metal.

This isn’t uncommon for museum renovations of this caliber. Jason Cadorette AIA an architect with New York City architecture firm Cooper Robertson, who has worked on museum renovations told CT Insider that protective measures had to be installed early for historic parts of buildings, specimens or murals that couldn’t be moved.  

“You try to know ahead of time what you think you’re dealing with but it’s never that simple,” said Cadorette. “There’s always surprises once you start getting into the actual project.”

The Peabody wasn’t without its surprises. While nobody discovered any secret passages, a forgotten mural was found in one of the first-floor exhibit spaces. That mural isn’t one of the famous ones, it was added for an exhibit in the 90s.

“It’s behind that drywall,” said Renton, indicating an area across from one of the new classrooms, down the hall from the extinct mammal exhibit. “It’s lovely, very pretty, we didn’t want to get rid of it but it didn’t serve a purpose. So, we just covered it up again.”

“We also found a couple beer cans tucked into the wall,” joked Renton. “I took one home.”

One of the biggest changes to the museum wasn’t something that could be seen during the tour. The second floor will be home to new exhibits instead of staff offices. Yale professors and students will have their own gallery spaces for rotating shows. A paleo-garden, showing living fossil plants will be placed in the courtyard. The entire layout of the second and third floors will be harmonized with the “circular” footpath of the first floor. 

“When they originally built the building they had set out a circular pattern on the first floor that was sort of lost over time on the second and third floor. Those have returned with the new design,” said Renton. He explained that the first floor had originally guided visitors through time before bringing them back to the lobby. “In the Peabody’s original conception there was a lot of press written about it because it supported the idea of an evolutionary model of development.”

But none of that stuff is quite finished yet and it will come as exhibits are designed, curated and reinstalled. The iconic Brontosaurus fossil wont be fully done until mid-June.

“There’s a number of large specimens still to come,” said Renton.

Development near Dunkin' Park in Hartford brought to halt by judge ruling

Jonah Dylan

HARTFORD — A judge this week sided against the city in the ongoing lawsuit surrounding development around Dunkin' Park, further delaying long-discussed plans for major developments in the area before a trial set for April 2024.

The ruling, issued Tuesday by Superior Court Judge Cesar A. Noble, denied a motion to strike or dismiss a part of an amended complaint submitted last year by Centerplan Construction Co. and DoNo Hartford LLC, the two companies who are suing the city in a lawsuit that has been ongoing since 2016. The suit relates to the development of Dunkin' Park and other planned projects around the stadium, including apartment and retail complexes in an area known as North Crossing.

"Today’s Court decision is very disappointing, and we are carefully reviewing the decision and will determine if there are immediate steps that we can take to allow the development of the parcels to go forward while we prepare for a new trial in 2024," Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin said in a statement. "While this is clearly a setback to our effort to further develop the parcels surrounding the stadium, we are confident that, in the end, the City will prevail in the litigation with Centerplan and DoNo."

The saga has been ongoing for years and predates Bronin's time in office. The city and the developers initially reached an agreement in 2015 to develop the stadium for the Hartford Yard Goats. It was delayed because of several disputes, including a disagreement in December 2015 about the design of the stadium. The city and DoNo Hartford resolved the dispute the next month through a term sheet that increased the budget and extended the completion deadline to May 17, 2016.

The agreement also prevented changes to the project without the city’s consent and modified the liquidated damages provision, which Centerplan did not sign, according to a court opinion filed last year. But the developers did not meet the May 17, 2016 deadline, and Bronin fired them from the project. The city then hired RMS to finish the project and develop the rest of the area, part of a long-term plan to add mixed-use residential and commercial spaces throughout North Crossing.

Last year, the state Supreme Court ordered a new trial after a jury had initially ruled in favor of the city.

“Obviously our client is very pleased with the Court’s decision affirming its right to pursue its equitable remedies against the City of Hartford, including specific performance of the four 98-year ground leases it signed with the City in 2015," Louis R. Pepe, a lawyer representing DoNo, said in a statement. "Hartford DoNo successfully competed for the development rights for those parcels, and it is just as ready, willing and able to proceed with their development today as it was then.”

RMS completed one apartment complex across from the stadium but has not been able to break ground on other projects in the area as the legal process plays out. North Crossing is near downtown but is cut off from the rest of the downtown area by I-84.

In an amended complaint filed last year, Centerplan and DoNo asked for damages and for RMS to be removed from the project.

“All the actions of the city, as set forth herein, were motivated by its self-interest and the political interests of its elected and appointed officials, who sought to conceal the city's inability to meet its obligations under the applicable contracts and avoid political embarrassment,” the complaint said.

The trial is now set to begin on April 16, 2024, according to the Superior Court docket.

OPINION: Why is David Kooris still running Gov. Lamont’s $300 million State Pier boondoggle?

David Collins

Here we are: Another season, another big cost overrun in the tens of millions of dollars for Gov. Ned Lamont’s crazy, mismanaged, criminally scrutinized State Pier project.

Ho hum.

It was certainly no surprise this week when David Kooris, the citizen volunteer who has been running Lamont’s Connecticut Port Authority circus for years now, announced more than $50 million in new overruns for the botched port project.

There have been so many overruns and so many broken Kooris promises that there would be no more money requested ― including one pledged against his children’s lives ― that, as port critic Kevin Blacker said this week, you’d have to be an idiot to believe this is the last one.

A chorus of legislators expressed some shock and outrage at the latest ask, but Lamont will surely successfully escort this increase through the Bond Commission, as he has all the others.

The lawmakers are, at best, yappers, who have done nothing to derail this boondoggle.

I was especially amused by comments from state Sen. Heather Somers of Groton, who focused some of her criticism on a $6.5 million contingency to be included in the new ask for the bond commission.

“That’s $6.5 million we have to go out and borrow and our taxpayers have to pay back,” Somers told The Day.

That’s rich from someone who recently submitted a bill to ask taxpayer’s to borrow $8 million for a still-unexplained exhibit at the Mystic Aquarium, just as the place was put under the management of the inexperienced director of the senator’s political action committee.

Speaking of political cronies in management roles, with big asks for state borrowed money, what is it about David Kooris that has the governor so mesmerized?

Let’s remember it’s a long time since Kooris has had a job with the state, one with the state Department of Economic and Community Development that originally led to his appointment as port authority chairman.

Now he’s just an unpaid volunteer citizen with a powerful determination to bring the State Pier project home for the utilities it is meant to benefit.

By any measure, private or public sector, you would have changed managers of the State Pier project long before now as the cost has more than tripled, and federal criminal investigations have focused on the relentless spending.

Kooris-led decisions, like paying a controversial “success” fee to a company that at one time employed an authority board member, are being scrutinized in the investigations.

What would it take to shake the uber-wealthy governor out of his stupor and consider some leadership changes before many more tens of millions of dollars of taxpayer money are spilled on this boondoggle.

In a statement this week on the latest overruns, Lamont pulled out one of his old lies about how the project will create jobs in eastern Connecticut.

It will create fewer jobs than a new Walmart, and unlike a Walmart, won’t pay taxes.

I got a reaction Wednesday to the new overruns from Lamont’s unsuccessful opponent in the recent gubernatorial race, Republican Bob Stefanowski, who noted that the governor’s team earned an empty promise from the utilities to contribute half of the latest overruns, securing at the same time a return of that money in facility rent money that was supposed to go to the state.

“Eversource and Orsted are doing nothing more than giving the state a $23 million loan paid back by sub lease payments that were supposed to come to the state,” Stefanowski said. “Lamont is possibly the worst negotiator I have ever seen.”

Even worse, I suspect Lamont wasn’t even that involved.

For some strange reason, he’s given the keys to the Bond Commission to Citizen Kooris and his unbridled spending on the utilities’ behalf.

This is the opinion of David Collins.