CT Construction Digest Thursday March 24, 2022
US Service Group Acquires Walker Crane & Rigging of Plainville, Conn.
US Service Group (USSG), a New York based industrial services company, has acquired Walker Crane & Rigging Corp. of Plainville, Conn.
Established in 1883, Walker is one of the premier crane, rigging and transportation operations in Connecticut providing rigging and logistics solutions to a diverse client base throughout the United States. Walker operates out of a 130,000 sq. ft. facility located approximately 30 minutes southwest of Hartford, Conn.
With the acquisition of Walker, USSG continues its strategy of building an industry leading national rigging, machinery moving and warehousing business. Along with ABLE Rigging Contractors and Transcope Services, USSG now consists of three separate operating businesses focused on providing rigging and machinery moving services to a diverse customer base including many Fortune 500 and top construction companies in the United States. A number of other companies are in discussions about becoming part of USSG.
"Acquiring Walker strengthen's USSG's presence in the New England region and expands our network of rigging and logistics services into this attractive market," said Steve Laganas, USSG founder and CEO.
"We are very pleased that Walker is now part of USSG. With Walker's history and stellar reputation, our plan is to see USSG continue to grow and prosper as we add equipment, services and additional high quality employees to the team."
About Walker Crane & Rigging Corp.
Established in 1883, Walker Crane & Rigging Corp. provides crane, rigging and machinery moving, along with warehousing and heavy hauling services. It specializes in transportation throughout North America. Specific services include: plant relocation and in-plant rigging, steel fabrication and millwright service, export and domestic skidding and crating, transformer installation and removal, modular building construction services and set crews, local and long-distance trucking and heavy hauling, industrial storage and warehousing with 15 and 30-ton overhead bridge cranes.
About Transcope Services
Begun in 1964, Transcope Services is a fully licensed ICC carrier specializing in transportation, warehousing, logistics, distribution and consulting. Transcope serves primarily the elevator, escalator and moving walks industry. It partners with industry leading domestic and international elevator and escalator companies on projects throughout the New York, New Jersey metro area. Transcope receives elevator and escalator equipment from manufacturers in its clean, climate-controlled warehouse for storage and timely delivery to customer job sites.
About ABLE Rigging Contractors
ABLE Rigging Contractors has been a trusted provider of rigging services for more than two decades, specializing in industrial rigging, tower crane and derrick services, construction, machinery moving and warehousing.
South Windsor close to adopting year-long moratorium on new warehouse proposals
South Windsor’s Planning and Zoning Commission is poised to adopt a year-long moratorium on new warehouse and distribution centers in response to resident concerns following a development boom of just over a decade.
Several commission members voiced support at a Tuesday night meeting for a moratorium proposed by resident Kathy Kerrigan. Members delayed action, however, after an attorney representing an unspecified landowner raised concerns the measure had not been publicly available long enough for its adoption to be legal.
Instead, the commission continued the public hearing until April 5, allowing enough time to ensure a moratorium could not be challenged on that basis.
Developers have added seven large scale warehouses and distribution centers in South Windsor over the past 11 years, according to Kerrigan. These have a combined floor area of 2.2 million square feet and occupy lots totaling 283.3 acres, she said.
Kerrigan and her supporters argued Tuesday night this has yielded dubious job and tax returns while causing environmental health concerns, traffic congestion and noise pollution and other negative impacts. They argued a year-long pause on the acceptance of applications for new facilities will allow South Windsor time to adopt strong regulations, giving the town more control and a greater arsenal of protections for quality-of-life.
“Our P&Z commissioners are up against developers who know how to navigate our zoning regulations to push ahead with projects, even when those projects may very well cause damage to the human beings working in them and living near them,” Kerrigan said.
Several letters of support from residents were read into the records. Several more residents appeared at the hearing to speak in favor of its adoption.
South Windsor Director of Planning Michele M. Lipe said a moratorium would be supported by South Windsor’s Plan of Conservation and Development. That plan calls for the town to attract development “consistent with the character and scale of its surroundings and with a strategy to maintain current business zones with updates,” she noted.
Commission member Stephen Wagner said current regulations aren’t sufficient to control noise or enforce traffic restrictions.
Those commission members who voiced opinions appeared inclined toward the moratorium.
Commission member Alan Cavagnaro said a moratorium “makes sense” and would give staff “breathing room” to analyze possible changes to local regulation.
Paul Bernstein, an alternate who sat-in for an absent member, also voiced support for a moratorium.
Evan Seeman, an attorney specializing in land-use for the firm of Robinson+Cole, was the one voice at Tuesday’s hearing to challenge adoption. Seeman stressed his objection was procedural. He did not argue the merits of a moratorium.
Seeman said town staff had been unable to supply him with a copy of the proposal last Thursday. Zone text amendments must be available to the public for 10 days prior to a public hearing, he noted.
“Until then and until it’s made available in the town clerk’s office 10 days before the hearing, there is nothing that the commission can do unfortunately,” said Seeman, who said he represents “a party with an interest in property in town.”
Lipe said she understands the text has been available online for weeks. Even so, Seeman’s objection prompted her to advocate a short delay in the vote.
The board called a 10-minute recess to reach out to the town attorney. Members then agreed to continue the hearing until April 5.
Tuesday’s meeting comes just a week after the Planning and Zoning Commission adopted a moratorium on applications for new housing developments, including single-family subdivisions of more than three lots or special exemption permits for residential dwellings of any number of units.
The former St. Thomas Aquinas High School in New Britain is being demolished to make way for the potential construction of 11 single-family homes, city officials said.
The $2 million demolition is being performed by Wiese Construction and is expected to be completed by the end of April. The building, which sits on 2.2 acres at 74 Kelsey St., is owned by the city of New Britain and city leaders say their goal is to have single family homes built on the site and occupied by 2023.
A homebuilder has not yet been selected for the project, city officials said.
Mayor Erin Stewart said the building, which was last occupied from 1955 to 1999 as a high school, has been a blighted nuisance for the city for decades.
“The evolution of the former St. Thomas Aquinas sight is a landmark example of the block-by-block transformation we are seeing throughout the city,” said Stewart, who is serving in her ninth year as mayor. “We are turning what was once a dangerous blighted eyesore into a site for beautiful single family homes that will provide opportunities for first time homebuyers to move into our great city.”
The property, city officials said, contains hazardous materials, including PCBs and asbestos, which are being separated into piles for disposal out of state.
After demolition is completed, the project will move into the design, site preparation and construction phases. The city hopes construction will begin in June and July.
The total cost of the project is still to be determined, city leaders said. The project will be paid via city funds; U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development HOME funds; and funds from the federal American Rescue Plan Act.
Preston residents continue to object to proposed RV park
Preston — Speakers and the audience became testy at times Tuesday night, as residents continued to urge the Planning and Zoning Commission to reject permits for a controversial proposed RV park on 65 acres of land owned by the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation at the junction of Routes 2 and 164 and abutting Avery Pond.
Maryland-based Blue Water Development Corp. has proposed the RV park and campground resort under the name Blue Camp CT LLC, on three parcels owned by the tribe. The project has been revised several times in response to concerns from residents and the town’s consulting engineers and now is estimated to cost $18.5 million.
Tempers flared at times during Tuesday’s two-hour second public hearing session. The PZC's first hearing session Feb. 23 lasted over three hours.
Many of the roughly 40 people in attendance shouted objections when project attorney Harry Heller told the commission he wanted to correct the record “when factual matters that are patently wrong are being presented.” Heller read a letter from the Preston Plains Water Co. countering concerns about water quality and sufficient supply by residential customers of the water system.
The letter stated no water from two community wells on Lynn Drive that serve residents would be used for the project, which would receive water directly from the Mashantucket Pequot water treatment plant. The plant has sufficient capacity to supply the proposed project, as well as to continue to provide emergency water to Preston if necessary.
Heller also countered residents’ claims that the proposed project would not benefit the town’s tax base. He estimated that, based on the town’s grand list, the Blue Water project, even downscaled, would be assessed at about $13 million and become the town’s second-highest taxpayer.
Residents submitted newspaper articles from other states that reported property values of surrounding homes declined “even with just the threat” of an RV park nearby, one resident said. Preston residents said any new tax revenue would be offset by declines in nearby property values.
Former First Selectman Robert Congdon heard boos and shouted comments from a few residents when he told the commission that it had to adhere to its zoning regulations. If the project met those requirements, the commission would have to approve it. He made a similar statement at a recent inland wetlands hearing.
Several residents accused Congdon of stating he supported the project. Congdon said the developer came to his office three years ago and asked for his support, and he said he told the developer he would neither support nor oppose the project but said it would have to meet town zoning regulations.
“You try living near it,” one person shouted.
“Go back to Utopia, Bob,” another said, referring to the discredited, failed proposal to develop a giant recreational theme park at the former Norwich Hospital property in the early 2000s.
The PZC public hearing will continue at the commission’s April 26 meeting at 7 p.m. at Preston Plains Middle School. The Inland Wetlands and Watercourses Commission closed its public hearing March 15 and will review the project at its April 19 meeting.
Despite multiple revisions that downsized the project, residents at Tuesday’s second PZC public hearing session remained dissatisfied. Residents in nearby neighborhoods and elsewhere in town said the project is still too big, would be too disruptive, has inadequate traffic plans and would lower property values in surrounding neighborhoods.
The proposed RV park originally called for 304 campsites, a T-shaped dock in Avery Pond, an elevated boardwalk leading to tent camping sites along the pond, three bathhouses, paved roads and parking areas and several other amenities. Over the past several weeks, Blue Water has downsized the project to 280 campsites, eliminated the dock, boardwalk, tent sites along the pond and one bathhouse. All roadways and parking areas will be gravel-based, except at the main entrance and welcome center area.
Lynn Drive resident Susan Hotchkiss, who has obtained intervenor status in both the PZC and wetlands permit processes, said the smoke from 280 fires would be bad enough. She said she hears noise from Foxwoods Resort Casino events across Route 2 now. Lynn Drive runs along the western shore of Avery Pond, while the RV park is proposed southeast of the pond.
“I’m sitting up here thinking, 'What am I going to be breathing from these campfires?’” resident Sean Tate of Overlook Drive said, adding concerns about traffic, noise and neighborhood disruptions. Overlook Drive runs parallel and to the west of Route 164.
HARTFORD — As the debate over the future of Hartford-Brainard Airport ramps up, the Hartford City Council is urging the state to launch a study of the century-old airfield for contamination from the city’s industrial past.
“Before we start endeavoring to make plans to start to develop and things of that nature, let’s take a step back to really understand what lies beneath,” Democrat TJ Clarke II, the council’s majority leader, said. “Then let’s go from there.”
Clarke and Councilwoman Shirley Surgeon, a Democrat, co-sponsored the resolution calling for the study. The resolution has been approved by the full city council.
“I didn’t want to get saddled, as a city resident, not knowing what sort of environmental issue that’s out there,” Surgeon said. “I didn’t know what the amount would be, so that would be nice to know that in advance.”
The future of the state-owned airport, whether it should be expanded or closed and redeveloped, has been debated for decades, heating up again last summer.
The city council already has backed a non-binding resolution calling for the decommissioning the airport in the city’s South Meadows and future redevelopment. Last fall, the council formed a committee to look into redevelopment options.
The airport is overseen by the Connecticut Airport Authority, so the state would have to initiate — and likely pay for — any environmental study on the 200-acre airfield.
Concerns about soil contamination under the airport surfaced publicly last week, raised by Mike McGarry, chairman of the Greater Hartford Flood Control Commission, and others.
McGarry, a former city councilman, said he is concerned about coal tar, a by-product of coal gasification plants that existed in virtually every American city at the turn of the last century.
Those plants provided residents with the comforts of heat and light, but left coal tar contamination behind.
McGarry and others argue disturbing the coal tar so close to the Connecticut River could cause as-yet unknown effects on the surrounding environment.
Opponents of closing the airport are lining up in force, forming the Hartford-Brainard Airport Association. The association and other supporters of the airport argue the city should use Brainard as an amenity to attract new businesses to relocate to Hartford.
Improvements should be made that would, among other things, allow larger aircraft to fly in and out of the South Meadows airport, they argue.
The association is girding for a fight, vowing to hire lawyers and lobbyists to forcefully make its case.
High-profile critics of Brainard, including Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin and state Sen. John W. Fonfara, D-Hartford, say the 200-acre airfield is at the enviable intersection of two interstate highways and with frontage on the riverfront.
Brainard would be better targeted for a mixed-use development, including housing, entertainment venues, shops and a marina, that would draw visitors and new residents into the city and provide a much-needed boost to city tax coffers, they say.
Bronin did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Fonfara declined to comment.
The CAA has said it has no plans to close the airport. But there may be other other avenues, including through the state legislature.
The Metropolitan District Commission, the regional water and sewer authority, spearheaded an airport redevelopment proposal in 2006. The proposal called for nearly 7 million square feet of commercial and manufacturing space, stores, apartments, a marina, a rebuilt trash-to-energy plant, an expansion of its nearby wastewater treatment plant and a river park.
The MDC plan was headed up by William DiBella, a former Democratic state Senate majority leader who remains the MDC’s chairman.
No other conceptual plans for the area exist besides the 2006 vision advanced by the MDC.
A 2016 legislative report concluded the airport should remain open. The report recommended further investment in Brainard, rather than redevelopment.
Redevelopment, the report said, would be too costly, require large public subsidies and take at least two decades. Others have said contamination in the area, which includes the soon-to-be closed trash burning plant would be too costly.
The report has been dismissed by Fonfara and others who favor redevelopment.