How some of $5.38 billion in federal funding could be spent on I-84, rail line in Danbury

Julia Perkins

DANBURY — The Hat City could be among the big winners of a federal infrastructure package that could fund improvements to Interstate 84 and the Danbury rail line.

These long-discussed plans to alleviate traffic on I-84 through Danbury and create a faster train line from the Hat City to New York City are among the priorities for the $5.38 billion Connecticut will receive in infrastructure funding.

“It’s a historic breakthrough, literally,” U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal said outside the Danbury train station Wednesday morning when touting the federal package approved last week. “It’s going to benefit Danbury more than most other towns in the state because I think you are truly poised for progress.”

Money could also go toward the long-time goal of expanding rail service to New Milford, as well as improving roads, bridges, sidewalks and broadband in the Danbury area.

I-84 project

The funding could allow construction to start sooner than the projected mid-2030s at exits 3-11 on I-84, said Francis Pickering, executive director of the Western Connecticut Council of Governments. Officials have discussed widening I-84.

“Adding resources to that program will potentially accelerated it,” he said.

The state cited the need to improve I-84 in the Danbury area as early as 2000. A report focused on exits 1-11 found that the highway needed safety improvements for acceleration and deceleration lanes, local road improvements, and widened and improved lane continuity at exits 3-4 and 7-8, according to the I-84 Project website. Access needs to be improved between exits 3-8, too.

The project remains a high interest at the state level.

“The governor has specifically referred to this project as one of the most advanced in terms of planning,” Blumenthal said.

He noted heavy traffic clogs up I-84 where it intersects with Route 7.

“Right now, it creates bottlenecks, even at non rush-hour times,” the Democratic senator said. “Any time you travel from Waterbury, you’re going to encounter that traffic which keeps people away from Waterbury.”

Maybrook line

If a faster train could be created from Danbury to New York City, that could reduce traffic, too. That’s one of the reasons reopening the Maybrook line is one of the priorities for funding.

“It’s a huge plus for us economically, and traveling on the highway as (Blumenthal) said, there’s bottlenecks,” Mayor elect Dean Esposito said. “There’s bottlenecks through 84, 684, and they’re going to relieve that.”

Pickering added this will be better for the environment because it could reduce emissions from cars.

Officials may hear within a couple months the results of a study on the feasibility of reopening the Maybrook line, Cavo said. The project could be more important than ever because of the large number of New Yorkers who moved to this region, he said.

“With the influx of folks that have been moving here over the course of the pandemic, it gives them tremendous opportunities to get back to the city,” he said. “We’re really excited about that.”

This potential line is the best example of how “transformative” the package is, Blumenthal said.

“I would put it at the very top of the priorities for the state, not just for Danbury,” he said.

The Danbury rail line has “untapped potential,” not just for the city, but for the towns at the stops along the way, Blumenthal said. Adding the Maybrook line would “explode the potential economic development” for the region, he said.

Danbury as a ‘regional hub’

Before any projects begin, the U.S. Department of Transportation will need to release the money to the state, who will plan and design the work. Some money will go directly to the state Department of Transportation and Metro-North, while the state will need to apply for other competitive grants, Blumenthal said.

Danbury is a prime area for the state to focus on because of its rail line, proximity to New York and its airport, among other factors, he said.

The city is the link between Fairfield, Litchfield and Westchester counties, Pickering said.

“Danbury has been an incredibly vibrant economy, sub regional economy, regional economy,” he said. “The challenge for us largely has been our infrastructure.”

Mayor Joe Cavo said he wants Danbury to remain a “regional hub.”

“We have been the economic driver of this region for quite some time,” he said. “We’ve been on the forefront of a lot of these projects, trying to get the funding for them.”

Blumenthal estimated the projects across the state will create thousands jobs, as well as support Danbury and the region’s economy.

“It’s a job creating program,” he said. “By creating new infrastructure, we’re creating a new economy. It is the single most significant investment in rail and roads in a century, maybe even in history.”

2 New Haven developers want lower taxes on affordable housing. This committee said no

Mary E. O’Leary

NEW HAVEN — A committee that vets tax abatement requests on affordable housing has recommended higher taxes than two builders have proposed — one of them almost four times as high.

The Low Income Supportive Housing Tax Abatement Committee took up four proposed developments and recommended taxes of $1,500 per housing unit with a 3 percent annual increase for three very different projects.

The three projects recommended for $1,500 per unit annual tax with a 3 percent annual increase for 17 years include Beacon Communities, Fairbanks and Vessel.

The committee consensus was to make all the payments the same, though Alders Anna Festa, D-10, and Abigail Roth, D-7, said in a later discussion that the circumstances were different for each, particularly Beacon.

Roth said the tax abatements previously approved “are all over the place.”

Beacon Communities, out of Boston, is a known entity in New Haven as it owns the Residences at Ninth Square downtown and Monterey Place in the Dixwell neighborhood.

It has a complicated history on this tax abatement request as having proposed to pay $600 in taxes per unit for 48 affordable units when it was talking about 60 proposed apartments at 300 State St. last year.

It withdrew that plan when LISHTA recommended $400 in taxes per apartment for two other low-income affordable housing proposals. The committee said it went along with the $600 at that point because it was what Beacon offered.

Since its proposal last year, Beacon bought more property downtown and has a plan to build a total of 79 apartments with 44 in a new building at 300 State St.; 26 at 742-746 Chapel St.; and nine at 756-760 Chapel St. It now is proposing $400 in taxes per apartment.

Together the properties constitute a major corner downtown with housing in one new, 4-story building and the rest on the upper floors of the historic Chapel Street buildings. It also would have 23,000 square feet of ground-level commercial space.

A total of 63 Beacon units would be deeded as affordable with 16 at or below 30 percent of average median income; 33 at 50 percent of AMI; 14 at 60 percent of AMI; and 16 at market rate and fully taxed.

The new project also proposes to designate 20 percent of the apartments as “permanent supportive housing units” that would provide job education training and financial literacy, among other services.

Some 10 percent would be accessible to persons with mobile and sensory disabilities.

Beacon, in its cover letter to the alders, said, like the Residences at Ninth Square, its new proposal “will promote economic integration and expand housing opportunities for households at every income band.”

It said a feasible financing plan would require local support for tax abatement as it also seeks state and federal subsidies. Beacon said this particularly is true when building affordable units that don’t generate much rental income.

It was hoping to get into the November round of Low Income Housing Tax Credits offered through the state but it would need the alders to be on board with the abatement plan. Beacon also has proposed entering an Extended Low-Income Housing Commitment for at least 40 years to protect the affordability and rent levels.

The second project was a request from Vessel, which proposes to buy 136 Hemingway St. from the city and build 27 apartments on land bordering Hemingway Creek, wetlands and a flood plain.

It submitted a tax proposal in which it would pay 6 percent of revenue for the first 10 years; 8 percent of revenue through year 20; and 10 percent through year 30. It proposed further not to pay taxes on unoccupied units.

The third project under review to keep the tax level of $1,500 per unit was one for 121 apartments at Fairbanks, which has been taken over by Community Preservation Partners.

The new owners plan to put $7 million into renovations in the property in the heart of Fair Haven at Ferry Street and Grand Avenue.

Also, they are making all 121 units affordable at or below 60 percent AMI, lowering it from 80 percent AMI for only 100 of the apartments.

The breakdown is 79 percent of the apartments at or below 60 percent of AMI and 21 percent at or below 50 percent of AMI.

The fourth development under review was from the Glendower Group, which is the construction arm of Elm City Communities, the Housing Authority of New Haven, which has a special arrangement with the city.

LISHTA agreed with its $350 tax per unit with a 3 percent annual increase as proposed by Glendower. That project consists of 32 low-income units at 210-290 Valley St., with 8 market units that would be fully taxed.

Standards

Festa and Roth, nearly a year ago, had asked that the Board of Alders develop standards against which these abatement requests could be measured, but that has not happened.

The standards would look at such things as need, the amount of affordable units and the income level of the tenants.

Given the recommendations out of LISHTA, the two alders said the need for standards remains, something the board already has done on requests for tax assessment deferrals from developers.

In their letter recommending a workshop on LISHTA last December, Roth and Festa quoted a member of LISHTA who said they were given guidelines in 2018 on what LISHTA was “all about ... but not what we ought to charge.”

Festa and Roth said guidelines would ensure consistency and could incentivize housing aimed at lower-income tenants or for families. They also recommended a review of what other cities were doing.

Attending the LISHTA meeting this week was Alder Sal DeCola, D-18; Acting Assessor Alex Pullen; Arlevia Samuels, director of the Livable City Initiative; and Deputy Economic Development Director Steve Fontana.

This week’s meeting of LISHTA, for the first time, was public on the Zoom platform, but there was no recording. It is an internal administrative review group put in place in 2018, but there has been a push to open it to public scrutiny.

Its recommendations go to the aldermanic Tax Abatement Committee and sometimes the Community Development Committee.

Waterbury dealing with contaminated at parking lot

MICHAEL PUFFER 

WATERBURY – The city must pay an extra $250,000 to complete a 119-space surface municipal parking lot off Prospect Street after a contractor encountered unexpectedly large amounts of contaminated soil.

The city’s Board of Aldermen, at its meeting Monday, will be asked to approve the increase in its contract with Dayton Construction Co., bringing that expense to $1.7 million.

The city’s original estimate anticipated 1,650 tons of contaminated “urban fill.” Contractors needed to remove 4,962 tons of contaminated soil, three times the original estimate, according to Thomas Hyde, interim head of the Waterbury Development Corp.

The rising price will not affect the deadline for “substantial” completion by Dec. 24, with all punchlist items finished by Jan. 23, according to a summary by Hyde.

Hyde said contractors might have been able to reuse some of the contaminated material underneath the lot, but did not want to be delayed waiting for needed approvals from the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.

The soils were contaminated with polyaromatic hydrocarbons, which can be generated from auto exhaust, diesel emissions, wood burning, roadway dust or petroleum products. Most was sent to a quarry in Massachusetts specializing in reuse of urban fill. About 320 tons was shipped to Clean Earth Connecticut in Plainville, which treats contaminated soils by burning off pollutants.

The parking lot is being built on a 1.3-acre site between Prospect and North Main streets just north of the city’s downtown Green.

The property used to host a public ramp garage and a former alley, both of which were abandoned and then torn down due to advanced decay.

The absence of the two dilapidated structures was seen as a victory against blight. This new parking lot is seen as a benefit to ongoing efforts to revitalize downtown, and could help support the city’s efforts to repopulate empty commercial buildings around the Green.

The new parking lot will include landscaping, lighting, fencing, four spaces with outlets for electric cars, security cameras and emergency call boxes marked by blue lights.

The Hartford to spend $2.5B to address climate change, support renewable energy

Zachary Vasile

Property and casualty insurer The Hartford plans to spend $2.5 billion over the next five years to address climate change and support renewable energy initiatives.

In a statement, company officials said The Hartford will invest the money in “technologies, companies and funds which are advancing the energy transition and addressing climate change.” The firm also plans to exit all tar-sands investments by Dec. 31, two years earlier than projected in The Hartford’s 2019 coal and tar sands policy.

The company expects to exit certain coal investments by the end of 2023.

“As a 211-year-old insurer and asset manager, we view the transition to a greener society as a business imperative, and we are doing our part,” said Chairman and CEO Christopher Swift. “We are demonstrating our environmental commitment through our actions across the business, ranging from insurance solutions that encourage sustainable construction to investments by the company in renewable energy.”

The Hartford also announced that it has signed the United Nations Global Compact, a non-binding pledge encouraging businesses to adopt more environmentally and socially sustainable policies and report on their progress toward those goals. Company officials said the firm is one of the first property-casualty insurers to sign the compact.

The Hartford first announced plans to scale down investments connected to fossil fuels two years ago. At the time, executives said they would not provide any new underwriting or investments for the construction or operation of new coal-fired power plants, or for companies that derive more than 25% of their revenues from thermal coal mining or the extraction of oil from tar sands.

The Hartford met its goal of 100% renewable-energy-source consumption for its facilities last year, 10 years before its self-imposed deadline.

Technology will create natural gas from cow manure at Oakridge Dairy in Ellington

Joe Chaisson / Journal Inquirer

ELLINGTON — Officials with Oakridge Dairy, the town, and contractors broke ground Tuesday at the 131-year old farm on Jobs Hill Road for an anaerobic digester that’s expected to reduce the pervasive odor of manure.

The 2 million-gallon facility is designed to extract methane from cow manure and process it into natural gas, which will be sent to New Jersey for Elizabethtown Gas customers.

On hand for the event was the Seth Bahler, CEO and owner of Oakridge Dairy; Lori Spielman, recently re-elected as the town’s first selectman; Rep. Jamie Foster, D-Ellington; Bryan P. Hurlburt, commissioner of the state’s Department of Agriculture, and officials from SJI and REV LNG LLC, companies involved with building the facility.

SJI is funding a large portion of the project, Bahler said, and REV LNG will build and maintain the digester. Oakridge Dairy will supply the manure and get a percentage of the revenue generated.

“We’re super excited to have this digester project finally come to the building process,” Bahler said. “We talk about sustainability, and one portion of sustainability is to be able to run a multigeneration family farm into the future. You have to make the right business decisions and be able to hand it off to the next generation, and we want to hand it off better than what was handed down.”

REV LNG specializes in the development, production, and transportation of renewable natural gas, liquified natural gas, and compressed natural gas in North America. They were founded in 2013 and are headquartered in Mendon, New York.

SJI is an energy infrastructure holding company based in Folsom, New Jersey, that delivers energy services to customers through two primary subsidiaries: SJI Utilities and SJI Energy Enterprises.

Spielman noted that she and Bahler have been working together on the project for about five years and said she hopes the facility can assist with the smell of manure around town.

“We get quite a few calls, and you can always tell when a new family moves into town because the first thing they do is call up the Town Hall and complain about the smell,” Spielman said. “Hopefully with the digester it will help that out.”

She added that even though the town will not receive any of the energy produced from the anaerobic digester it will help the grand list of taxable property grow.

“It’s just very smart if you can contain that methane and re-use it,” she said. “We’re moving in the right direction and we’re proud to have the largest dairy farm in Connecticut.”

The farm is home to roughly 3,000 cows that produce about 25,000 gallons of milk per day.

Hurlburt praised Bahler’s efforts and his progressive thinking.

“Wherever I go I make sure I talk about agriculture and Connecticut’s farmers as innovators and entrepreneurs and this is the demonstration of that. It takes forward-thinking business leaders to be constantly thinking about ‘what do we need to do next,’” Hurlburt said.  

The project is expected to be operational by September of next year and is expected to produce 60,000 dekatherms of renewable natural gas per year.

Biden: Infrastructure bill will ease economy woes, just wait

JOSH BOAK and COLLEEN LONG, Associated Press

BALTIMORE (AP) — President Joe Biden touted his $1 trillion infrastructure plan Wednesday as an eventual fix for the nation's inflation and supply chain woes — if Americans just have the patience to wait for the construction to begin.

The president toured the Port of Baltimore at the start of what is likely to be a national tour to showcase his signature legislation that cleared Congress last week and that he intends to sign on Monday. He declared that the spending would improve transportation of products and supplies from overseas and within the U.S. to help lower prices, reduce shortages and add union jobs.

That message is becoming more critical as the government reported Wednesday that consumer prices in October climbed 6.2% from a year ago. Inflation has intensified instead of fading as the economy reopened after the coronavirus pandemic, creating a major challenge for Biden whose administration repeatedly said that the price increases were temporary. During remarks at the port, he acknowledged that consumer prices remained “too high."

“Everything from a gallon of gas to a loaf of bread costs more,” he said. “We still face challenges and we have to tackle them ... we have to tackle them head on.”

Higher prices have eaten into wages and turned public sentiment on the economy against Biden in polls. One of the obstacles for reducing inflation has been backlogged ports with ships waiting to dock at major transit hubs, causing shortages and leaving some store shelves depleted ahead of the holiday shopping season.

“Many people remain unsettled about the economy and we all know why,” Biden said.

He offered his infrastructure plan as the solution, albeit one that will take time to manifest. Better infrastructure — whether roads, bridges, ports or whatever — would give more capacity and resiliency for the supply chain. There would be more capacity to unload ships and move goods, which in turn would reduce price pressures and shortages.

Biden said the infrastructure spending would create jobs paying $45 an hour, nearly 50% above the current national average. It would create a wealth of jobs to fix aging pipes, bridges and roads, and boost clean energy and cybersecurity. And most wouldn't require college degrees.

"This is a once in a generation investment,” he said.

The president pointed to Baltimore’s port as a blueprint on how to reduce shipping bottlenecks that have held back the economic recovery. The facility is adding container cranes as well as a 50-foot berth where ships can be unloaded. Baltimore’s port is also benefiting from grants to upgrade the Howard Street Tunnel, a brick-lined underpass for trains that opened in 1895. The tunnel would be expanded so that shipping containers could be double-stacked on railcars, making it easier to move goods out of the port.

The president, who consulted with the CEOs of Walmart, Target, FedEx and UPS on Tuesday, emphasized that these investments are part of a national effort to relieve supply chain bottlenecks in ways that can aid broader growth.

His administration also announced new investments to reduce congestion at the Port of Savannah in Georgia, nearly a month after the administration helped broker a deal for the Port of Los Angeles to operate nonstop.

The president has been trying to explain that the port congestion shows just how strong the economic rebound from the pandemic has been. A forecast by the National Retail Federation suggests a record level of imports this year.

The inflation phenomenon is also global in nature, with Germany and China recently reporting high levels.

The president made his case Wednesday in a city of nearly 600,000 people that supports him. Nearly 90% of voters in Baltimore backed Biden in last year’s election. The president also stopped in the city for a CNN town hall on Oct. 21.

Baltimore embodies the complexities of an increasingly diverse America at a time of heated national politics.

Many Americans have seen a TV version of the city's poverty, crime, political corruption and vacant row houses on shows such as HBO’s “The Wire.” Unrest following the 2015 death of Freddie Gray from injuries in a police van helped to propel a national movement for respecting the rights and lives of Black Americans.

But Baltimore also contains deep pockets of wealth and prosperity in what is a microcosm of the broader inequality confronting the nation. There are the mansions of the Guilford neighborhood, elite private schools, celebrated restaurants and the prestige of Johns Hopkins University.