CT Construction Digest Thursday May 7, 2020
Brownfield grant will boost River Street remediation in New Haven
Mary E. O’Leary
Connecticut municipalities are among more than 100 across the country that have been awarded Environmental Protection Agency grants to clean up brownfields to make them desirable properties for redevelopment.
The state received $2.3 million for six projects out of $85.6 million distributed across the country, many of them for use in Opportunity Zones that can give developers tax advantages.In New Haven, the city will use $200,000 to continue its work over almost two decades to clean up properties along River Street, while in Middletown the funds will go to renovations along its riverfront that, among other things, will help create a recreational trail in the heart of the city.New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker called his city’s projects “complex” worthwhile investments. He said the funds will help the city understand the cost of remediation of those specific sites in order to connect with potential developers.
He said it was a “beautiful site,” with its view of the Quinnipiac River and the new Pearl Harbor Memorial Bridge.
The city’s flourishing industrial heyday in the late 19th and early 20th century left a legacy of environmental challenges that have to be dealt with, Elicker said.
The target area for this grant in New Haven is the River Street industrial corridor, which was incorporated into the River Street Municipal Development Plan in 2002. The initial investment by the city was $10 million in infrastructure improvements. It has since purchased the majority of the 11 properties in the plan.
Helen Rosenberg, a city development officer, has overseen the project throughout her career. Priority sites for this latest brownfield money in New Haven include the 2-acre site of the former New Haven Pipe Pending Co.. Despite efforts to shore it up, the building itself had to be razed for safety reasons. The lot is adjacent to the 8-acre former Hess Oil Co. property, which would provide a 10-acre site for a developer, Rosenberg said.
Another parcel the city already owns is the half-acre lot at 112 Chapel St. next to Art to Frames, a new business taking the place of the Von Roll company.The last one is the closed Reagan scrapyard at 53 River St. and 69 Popular St. which already has gone through some cleanup.
Rosenberg said funds to assess the extent of the cleanup is less costly than the cleanup itself, so these funds will go farther.
“Nothing is happening right now, but if you don’t have the information on costs” before a potential developer shows an interest, it could take months of delay for a potential deal. She said the projects later could qualify for state money.
She said developers are continuing to inquire about coming to New Haven, despite the current uncertainty around the coronavirus pandemic’s economic implications.
Rosenberg said on River Street, Fair Haven Furniture has expanded as has New Haven Awning, while improvements are under way at Patriot Marine. She said property at 46-56 River St., which is above the flood plain, has been cleaned up and is ready to sell.
Elicker at his daily press conference later thanked Rosenberg and Michael Piscitelli for the two decades of work at River street and later in the Mill River section to help change those parts of the city.
A total of $300,000 was awarded for plans in Middletown that Mayor Ben Florsheim said is “hugely important.”
He said Middletown, which was founded as a port city, has been cut off from the riverfront for a long time through construction of Interstate 91 and major infrastructure such as the sewage treatment plant.
“We are trying to open that again,” he said of the area he said will be important to the region as a whole.
He said the grant will allow Middletown to conduct environmental assessments and develop cleanup plans for an Opportunity Zone along the riverfront. This area includes the Peterson Oil Co., the OMO site, Sumner Brook and Jackson Corrugated Container sites.
Shuttered Bloomfield nursing home eyed for 46-unit apartment conversion
Joe Cooper
Bloomfield officials have approved a developer’s proposal to convert the former 120-bed Alexandria Manor nursing home on Tunxis Avenue into a 46-unit apartment complex. The town’s Planning and Zoning Commission last week approved a zone change, and master and site plans submitted by Pacifica Connect LLC to redevelop the existing nursing home building at 55 Tunxis Ave., which has been vacant since 2016, into a multi-family housing community. Pacifica, based in San Diego, Calif., received several other town approvals in recent months.
Town Planner Jose Giner on Tuesday said the developer does not need any other board approvals to move forward with the project.
According to plans, the roughly 48,000-square-foot residential community will offer 46, one- and two-bedroom units and 71 parking spaces. Living units will range between 600 square feet and 1,012 square feet. It’s not yet clear how much rent might cost for those dwellings.
Pacifica, which acquired the building in a foreclosure sale for an undisclosed sum in May 2018, could not be reached for comment on how much the development would cost, or when it plans to break ground at the site.
The building debuted as a nursing home in 1966 before the operator of Alexandria Manor, Cheshire-based Affinity Healthcare Management, filed for bankruptcy in 2016 and closed the facility and others shortly after.
The front portion of the building is one-story and the rear, added on in 1999, is two stories.
The 10-acre property is flanked by single-family residences to the north and west, and sits across the street from Geissler's Supermarket at 40 Tunxis Ave.
He also talked about a recreational trail that will be a plus for the downtown area.
Shelton Mayor Mark Lauretti received two grants: $200,000 to assess the cost of cleanup for a one-mile stretch of Canal Street from Route 8 Commodore Hull Bridge to the Housatonic Canal Locks. This section includes the Wilkerson Bros. site, a former paper mill and the former Better Packages parcel.
That city also is getting a $500,000 grant to clean up the former Star Pin Manufacturing facility at 267 Canal St., a site that is contaminated with heavy metals, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and volatile organic compounds.
Lauretti praised the regional EPA for infusing “a ray of common sense in decision making.” He said the ability to bring back contaminated sites that eventually bring in taxes is a “win-win situation.”
The Naugatuck Valley Council of Governments received the most, in the form of an $800,000 Brownfields Revolving Loan Fund Grant, through which it provides loans to other groups. It will focus on Waterbury’s brownfields corridor that covers more than 45 acres of closed manufacturing and foundry buildings.
“COVID-19 has impacted the economy and redevelopment in every corner of ... New England. Today’s investment of EPA brownfields assessment and cleanup funding provides a much-needed boost for economic development and job creation in many of New England’s hardest hit and underserved communities,” EPA New England Regional Administrator Dennis Deziel said on a telephone conference with city officials.
CT can delay its transportation financing debate only a few months more
Keith Phaneuf
ith Connecticut’s economy reeling from the coronavirus, legislators insist they won’t hike gasoline taxes or impose tolls this summer — even with new projections the transportation program is headed for collapse in just over one year.
But they also concede their ability to postpone that debate likely is measured in months, not years.
In the meantime, Connecticut may have to rely on its reputation — and its great wealth — to secure the financing it needs to continue maintaining its aging highways, bridges and rail lines.
“I think a commitment to do something about the STF [Special Transportation Fund] and a more detailed look at revenues will be at the head of the agenda” when the regular 2021 General Assembly session begins next January, said Senate President Pro Tem Martin M. Looney, D-New Haven.
And Office of Policy and Management Secretary Melissa McCaw, Lamont’s budget director, said the crisis could even come 12 months sooner, if Connecticut maintains its current effort to begin reversing decades of deferred maintenance.
That backlog, coupled with 20 years of stagnant fuel tax revenues, created a system headed for collapse. COVID-19 simply sped up the timetable.
Lamont, who spent his first 14 months in office unsuccessfully urging lawmakers to adopt tolls, hinted last week he would consider boosting fuel taxes.
Tolls remain taboo
Even more certain, on- and off-the-record sources say, is that tolls won’t be up for discussion this year or next.
“For now I think we’ve moved past that,” Looney said.
House Minority Leader Themis Klarides, R-Derby, who has consistently opposed tolls, agreed.
New projections last week showed Connecticut’s record-setting $2.5 billion reserve will be gone one year from now.
More importantly, revenues for the budget’s General Fund — which covers about 90% of expenses — are expected to be down $4.3 billion in the next, two-year state budget.
Lamont and legislators will have their hands full keeping that in balance and likely won’t be able to spare any General Fund resources to keep transportation afloat.
Compounding matters, state officials have few options to cut transportation spending. Besides covering debt costs, the STF also funds an under-staffed Department of Transportation and public transit programs that already can’t keep pace with demand for service.
Delaying projects that already have been stalled for years would weaken the construction industry and ultimately break the transportation program, said Donald Shubert, president of the Connecticut Construction Industry Association.
“At the pace we’re going right now, Connecticut is still falling farther behind at maintaining a state of good repair,” Shubert said, adding that construction inflation and highway and bridge deterioration take a heavy toll. “We already know that every $1 of deferred maintenance costs $4 to $5 in future construction expenses.”
Connecticut’s two gasoline taxes combined added about 40 cents per gallon to the price of gas when 2020 began, ranking the state 11th-highest in the nation, according to the American Petroleum Institute.
During a televised briefing last Friday, Lamont noted some states are looking at gasoline tax increases “given the low price of gasoline” before he abruptly interrupted himself and dropped the subject. “Let me hear the ideas from the legislature.”
But even though lawmakers aren’t ready to talk about gasoline tax increases now, there’s another reason they can’t wait too long.
State Treasurer Shawn Wooden has said he intends to issue $850 million in bonds later this month for transportation.
Can Connecticut still secure an attractive interest rate with new projections that show our revenue-to-debt ratios barely meet the traditional standard — and could fail if the economy slips more?
Wooden remained cautiously optimistic that investors still want to buy Connecticut’s bonds. That stems both from Connecticut’s constitutional mandate to balance its budget, and its fiscally strong position relative to other states.
“Anything Congress does would be of great help and assistance,” he said, “but I don’t think they’re going to absolve the states of all of their financial problems.”
Mary E. O’Leary
Connecticut municipalities are among more than 100 across the country that have been awarded Environmental Protection Agency grants to clean up brownfields to make them desirable properties for redevelopment.
The state received $2.3 million for six projects out of $85.6 million distributed across the country, many of them for use in Opportunity Zones that can give developers tax advantages.In New Haven, the city will use $200,000 to continue its work over almost two decades to clean up properties along River Street, while in Middletown the funds will go to renovations along its riverfront that, among other things, will help create a recreational trail in the heart of the city.New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker called his city’s projects “complex” worthwhile investments. He said the funds will help the city understand the cost of remediation of those specific sites in order to connect with potential developers.
He said it was a “beautiful site,” with its view of the Quinnipiac River and the new Pearl Harbor Memorial Bridge.
The city’s flourishing industrial heyday in the late 19th and early 20th century left a legacy of environmental challenges that have to be dealt with, Elicker said.
The target area for this grant in New Haven is the River Street industrial corridor, which was incorporated into the River Street Municipal Development Plan in 2002. The initial investment by the city was $10 million in infrastructure improvements. It has since purchased the majority of the 11 properties in the plan.
Helen Rosenberg, a city development officer, has overseen the project throughout her career. Priority sites for this latest brownfield money in New Haven include the 2-acre site of the former New Haven Pipe Pending Co.. Despite efforts to shore it up, the building itself had to be razed for safety reasons. The lot is adjacent to the 8-acre former Hess Oil Co. property, which would provide a 10-acre site for a developer, Rosenberg said.
Another parcel the city already owns is the half-acre lot at 112 Chapel St. next to Art to Frames, a new business taking the place of the Von Roll company.The last one is the closed Reagan scrapyard at 53 River St. and 69 Popular St. which already has gone through some cleanup.
Rosenberg said funds to assess the extent of the cleanup is less costly than the cleanup itself, so these funds will go farther.
“Nothing is happening right now, but if you don’t have the information on costs” before a potential developer shows an interest, it could take months of delay for a potential deal. She said the projects later could qualify for state money.
She said developers are continuing to inquire about coming to New Haven, despite the current uncertainty around the coronavirus pandemic’s economic implications.
Rosenberg said on River Street, Fair Haven Furniture has expanded as has New Haven Awning, while improvements are under way at Patriot Marine. She said property at 46-56 River St., which is above the flood plain, has been cleaned up and is ready to sell.
Elicker at his daily press conference later thanked Rosenberg and Michael Piscitelli for the two decades of work at River street and later in the Mill River section to help change those parts of the city.
A total of $300,000 was awarded for plans in Middletown that Mayor Ben Florsheim said is “hugely important.”
He said Middletown, which was founded as a port city, has been cut off from the riverfront for a long time through construction of Interstate 91 and major infrastructure such as the sewage treatment plant.
“We are trying to open that again,” he said of the area he said will be important to the region as a whole.
He said the grant will allow Middletown to conduct environmental assessments and develop cleanup plans for an Opportunity Zone along the riverfront. This area includes the Peterson Oil Co., the OMO site, Sumner Brook and Jackson Corrugated Container sites.
Shuttered Bloomfield nursing home eyed for 46-unit apartment conversion
Joe Cooper
Bloomfield officials have approved a developer’s proposal to convert the former 120-bed Alexandria Manor nursing home on Tunxis Avenue into a 46-unit apartment complex. The town’s Planning and Zoning Commission last week approved a zone change, and master and site plans submitted by Pacifica Connect LLC to redevelop the existing nursing home building at 55 Tunxis Ave., which has been vacant since 2016, into a multi-family housing community. Pacifica, based in San Diego, Calif., received several other town approvals in recent months.
Town Planner Jose Giner on Tuesday said the developer does not need any other board approvals to move forward with the project.
According to plans, the roughly 48,000-square-foot residential community will offer 46, one- and two-bedroom units and 71 parking spaces. Living units will range between 600 square feet and 1,012 square feet. It’s not yet clear how much rent might cost for those dwellings.
Pacifica, which acquired the building in a foreclosure sale for an undisclosed sum in May 2018, could not be reached for comment on how much the development would cost, or when it plans to break ground at the site.
The building debuted as a nursing home in 1966 before the operator of Alexandria Manor, Cheshire-based Affinity Healthcare Management, filed for bankruptcy in 2016 and closed the facility and others shortly after.
The front portion of the building is one-story and the rear, added on in 1999, is two stories.
The 10-acre property is flanked by single-family residences to the north and west, and sits across the street from Geissler's Supermarket at 40 Tunxis Ave.
He also talked about a recreational trail that will be a plus for the downtown area.
Shelton Mayor Mark Lauretti received two grants: $200,000 to assess the cost of cleanup for a one-mile stretch of Canal Street from Route 8 Commodore Hull Bridge to the Housatonic Canal Locks. This section includes the Wilkerson Bros. site, a former paper mill and the former Better Packages parcel.
That city also is getting a $500,000 grant to clean up the former Star Pin Manufacturing facility at 267 Canal St., a site that is contaminated with heavy metals, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and volatile organic compounds.
Lauretti praised the regional EPA for infusing “a ray of common sense in decision making.” He said the ability to bring back contaminated sites that eventually bring in taxes is a “win-win situation.”
The Naugatuck Valley Council of Governments received the most, in the form of an $800,000 Brownfields Revolving Loan Fund Grant, through which it provides loans to other groups. It will focus on Waterbury’s brownfields corridor that covers more than 45 acres of closed manufacturing and foundry buildings.
“COVID-19 has impacted the economy and redevelopment in every corner of ... New England. Today’s investment of EPA brownfields assessment and cleanup funding provides a much-needed boost for economic development and job creation in many of New England’s hardest hit and underserved communities,” EPA New England Regional Administrator Dennis Deziel said on a telephone conference with city officials.
CT can delay its transportation financing debate only a few months more
Keith Phaneuf
ith Connecticut’s economy reeling from the coronavirus, legislators insist they won’t hike gasoline taxes or impose tolls this summer — even with new projections the transportation program is headed for collapse in just over one year.
But they also concede their ability to postpone that debate likely is measured in months, not years.
In the meantime, Connecticut may have to rely on its reputation — and its great wealth — to secure the financing it needs to continue maintaining its aging highways, bridges and rail lines.
“I think a commitment to do something about the STF [Special Transportation Fund] and a more detailed look at revenues will be at the head of the agenda” when the regular 2021 General Assembly session begins next January, said Senate President Pro Tem Martin M. Looney, D-New Haven.
Gov. Ned Lamont outlined the urgency last week when he and the legislature’s nonpartisan fiscal analysts noted the STF — the portion of the budget that pays off borrowing for infrastructure repairs — runs out of cash in the fiscal year beginning July 2022.
And Office of Policy and Management Secretary Melissa McCaw, Lamont’s budget director, said the crisis could even come 12 months sooner, if Connecticut maintains its current effort to begin reversing decades of deferred maintenance.
That backlog, coupled with 20 years of stagnant fuel tax revenues, created a system headed for collapse. COVID-19 simply sped up the timetable.
Lamont, who spent his first 14 months in office unsuccessfully urging lawmakers to adopt tolls, hinted last week he would consider boosting fuel taxes.
“Honesty, I think all of these discussions are premature,” said House Majority Leader Matt Ritter, D-Hartford, who remains hopeful Congress will break its partisan gridlock and approve substantial stimulus for budgetary relief for states and municipalities. “Until I know what the feds are going to do to help states, I really don’t have an answer” to other state budget proposals.
Tolls remain taboo
Even more certain, on- and off-the-record sources say, is that tolls won’t be up for discussion this year or next.
“For now I think we’ve moved past that,” Looney said.
House Minority Leader Themis Klarides, R-Derby, who has consistently opposed tolls, agreed.
But even if Congress orders a major state-municipality relief package — and especially if tolls are off the table — Connecticut may need more revenue from the gas pumps.
New projections last week showed Connecticut’s record-setting $2.5 billion reserve will be gone one year from now.
More importantly, revenues for the budget’s General Fund — which covers about 90% of expenses — are expected to be down $4.3 billion in the next, two-year state budget.
Lamont and legislators will have their hands full keeping that in balance and likely won’t be able to spare any General Fund resources to keep transportation afloat.
Meanwhile, projected deficits in the $1.7 billion Special Transportation Fund should consume all reserves there by mid-2021 — and continue piling up red ink for three more fiscal years.
Compounding matters, state officials have few options to cut transportation spending. Besides covering debt costs, the STF also funds an under-staffed Department of Transportation and public transit programs that already can’t keep pace with demand for service.
Delaying projects that already have been stalled for years would weaken the construction industry and ultimately break the transportation program, said Donald Shubert, president of the Connecticut Construction Industry Association.
“At the pace we’re going right now, Connecticut is still falling farther behind at maintaining a state of good repair,” Shubert said, adding that construction inflation and highway and bridge deterioration take a heavy toll. “We already know that every $1 of deferred maintenance costs $4 to $5 in future construction expenses.”
But state officials hope that once residents return to work, gasoline sales — and thereby tax receipts — will increase as well. But those increases already are factored into projections that still show the transportation fund going belly up in the summer or fall of next year.
Connecticut’s two gasoline taxes combined added about 40 cents per gallon to the price of gas when 2020 began, ranking the state 11th-highest in the nation, according to the American Petroleum Institute.
During a televised briefing last Friday, Lamont noted some states are looking at gasoline tax increases “given the low price of gasoline” before he abruptly interrupted himself and dropped the subject. “Let me hear the ideas from the legislature.”
But even though lawmakers aren’t ready to talk about gasoline tax increases now, there’s another reason they can’t wait too long.
More specifically, investors like to see twice as much revenue flowing into the STF as debt payments going out — for the current year and for four years into the future.
State Treasurer Shawn Wooden has said he intends to issue $850 million in bonds later this month for transportation.
Can Connecticut still secure an attractive interest rate with new projections that show our revenue-to-debt ratios barely meet the traditional standard — and could fail if the economy slips more?
Wooden remained cautiously optimistic that investors still want to buy Connecticut’s bonds. That stems both from Connecticut’s constitutional mandate to balance its budget, and its fiscally strong position relative to other states.
But Rep. Jason Rojas, D-East Hartford, co-chairman of the tax-writing, Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee, said Connecticut policymakers face a choice — soon — about how to fund transportation. And neither the bond markets nor potential aid from Washington will change that.
“Anything Congress does would be of great help and assistance,” he said, “but I don’t think they’re going to absolve the states of all of their financial problems.”