I-95 blasting engineer turns over detonator to next generation in East Lyme

Elizabeth Regan

East Lyme – Explosives engineer Mike Rodriguez was in a bright orange sweatshirt and a hard hat as he led a group of 14 aspiring engineers through the blasting site on the northbound side of Interstate 95 that has eroded 800 feet of ledge over the past three months.

The site is part of a four-and-a-half year highway reconstruction project being pitched Wednesday to the East Lyme High School engineering class as a $148 million project generating more than $30 million annually. It’s overseen by Plainville-based general contractor Manafort Brothers of Plainville and engineering firm GM2 of Glastonbury.

“Look well ahead,” Rodriguez said. “Watch where you’re stepping. Keep your heads on a swivel, guys. Always be aware of your surroundings.”

At the blasting site near the Exit 74 on-ramp, tires from heavy equipment had etched grooves into the mud where construction workers were hauling away dislodged rock and preparing the site for more detonations.

Resident Engineer Robert Obey, of GM2, said as many as 60 contractors and subcontractors work daily in multiple areas across the 1.3-mile project span from Exit 73 to just south of Exit 75. Inspection staff account for another 15 jobs.

Obey said the initial blasting project, estimated at six-to-eight weeks when it began on Aug. 1, took down a looming wall of ledge to make room for a wider highway. Now, he anticipates at least five more weeks of blasting so crews can attack an underground expanse of ledge getting in the way of plans to level the highway.

Described by project officials as the biggest safety improvement in the project, crews will raise the highway on the south side of the Route 161 overpass by 14 feet while lowering it on the north side by 10 feet.

During a presentation inside the project headquarters at Latimer Brook Commons, Obey cited a diverse array of civil engineering specialties involved in the project, including traffic, highway design, soil, bridge, geotechnical, hydraulic, and environmental engineering.

The project is bringing more well-paying jobs to a region already bolstered by the manufacturing industry, according to Obey.

“In southeast Connecticut, we have a lot of engineering communities that need people. Whether you’re building a submarine or whether you’re building this, it takes a ton of engineers to do,” he said.

Rodriguez, the one who typically presses the button to set off the blast, passed the igniter to high school senior Alicia Haynes on Wednesday. The device was attached to a thin, yellow lead line traveling a safe distance to the blasting area covered with multiple 12,000-pound blasting mats to contain the debris.

“Before this presentation, I had no idea what this project was,” she said. “And now, being here and being able to see it and press the button to make things go boom, is so exciting.”

Haynes credited her parents with her interest in engineering honed from a young age. She said she’d watch her father, a fire protection engineer, build projects at home before she was old enough to work on her own kits.

She recalled a hydraulic lift she built when she was 7 years old that was similar to the one she made in her engineering class this year.

Haynes, whose mother works at Pfizer with a background in chemical and bioengineering, acknowledged a current push to increase the number of women in science, technology, engineering and math.

The high school senior cited clubs focused on women in engineering that she learned about when she visited Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts. She has applied to the University of Connecticut and is looking at Lehigh University and Bucknell University, both in Pennsylvania.

“I know girls are the minority in engineering right now,” she said. “But I think there’d just be more guys around, and I’m not afraid of that. I’m more than willing to work with a team of guys.”

She said she was the only female in her high school computer aided design class and one of three in her engineering class.

Haynes said her parents were always careful not to pressure her into following in their footsteps. Instead, they gave her the opportunity to see where her interests took her.

“They’ve always said I can do whatever I want,” she said of her parents. “My dad’s always worked with me on projects, whether I’m a girl or not. I don’t have a brother. Me and my sister both do it all the time, and we’re always excited to.”

Before setting off the day’s blast, Haynes donned a hard hat and a fluorescent vest with engineering teacher Frederic Clark and the rest of his students. She made a turn on the packed mud like it was a runway.

“Do you think I get to keep this?” she asked. “It’s fashionable.”

Greenway Commons project in Southington could start this year

Jesse Buchanan ,

SOUTHINGTON — The long-awaited residential and commercial development of the former Ideal Forging site in downtown Southington may break ground on the first building in the next month or two.

Property owners of the industrial site have approval to build the foundation of a 55-unit residential building and are working to get a multifamily construction permit.

The project, Greenway Commons, includes hundreds of residential units as well as commercial space. Contamination from the forging site was cleaned up but the project stalled due to financing and other challenges.

Meridian Development Partners, a New York firm, sold the property last year to 195 Center Street Associates, a Branford company. Michael Massimino of GR Realty, one of the owners, couldn’t be reached for comment Tuesday.

Lou Perillo, the town’s economic development coordinator, said he’s “cautiously optimistic” that the first building could start going up this year. The last he’d heard from the company was that construction would start in the next 30 to 60 days.

“We’re trying to confirm he’s still on track to start in the fourth quarter of this year,” Perillo said.

He and other town officials have been working to encourage the redevelopment of the Ideal Forging site for nearly two decades.

“Obviously they’re anxious to move forward as well,” Perillo said of company owners.

Back taxes

195 Center Street Associates applied for a foundation permit in August. At the time property taxes due Aug. 1 hadn’t been paid. Without a waiver, a property owner can’t get permits if back taxes are owed.

Town Manager Mark Sciota said he granted the waiver requested by the company since the taxes were only a few weeks overdue. Currently the company has a balance of more than $12,000 in property taxes and is looking to get a construction permit.

The company would have to request a waiver or pay the taxes to move forward, Sciota said. Even with a waiver, taxes are still due.

“The taxes are still owed and they’re still being charged 18% interest,” Sciota said.

Phased construction

Perillo said the first residential building will go up on the west side of the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail. The site will contain residential buildings with mixed-use buildings going up last.

It’s unclear if construction will continue through the winter. Perillo said excavation equipment will be onsite and that the company’s preference is for it to be used immediately but he wasn’t sure about the schedule.

State loans and local tax abatements have gone towards the costs of remediation. Massimino estimated those costs to be between $10 million and $13 million last year.

Hotel, apartments, restaurant, retail envisioned on Eugene O’Neill Drive

Lee Howard

New London ― No plans have been formally submitted, but conceptual drawings first unveiled to the public last week show the developers of a block on Eugene O’Neill Drive that includes The Day building and the former Citizens Bank are envisioning the site for a new 120-room hotel and restaurant along with apartments and retail.

The drawings, shown off at the bank building Oct. 26 after a Chamber of Commerce of Eastern Connecticut event, featured a gathering space on the main floor of the marble-faced space that could be a restaurant, cafe and/or bar, said Dash Davidson, one of the principals of High Tide Capital LLC of Bangor, Maine.

He added that it is too early in the process to say whether the hotel will be a branded property and emphasized that this is the very earliest stage of planning that will likely result in changes to the plan as the developers consult with city planners and historic-preservation groups like the National Park Service, which will be a key to obtaining tax credits.

“We feel New London could use a great downtown hotel,” Davidson said in a phone interview Wednesday. “I’m very excited about that vision. ... We want to see tourism downtown.”

Davidson added that he and partner Max Patinkin are aware of several successful bank conversions into hotels in cities like Providence and St. Louis.

“That’s something we can learn from and replicate,” he said. “We believe the market could support this project.”

Mayor Michael Passero said Tuesday in a phone interview that he and Director of Development and Planning Felix Reyes have seen the conceptual drawings, though no formal plans have been submitted to City Hall.

“It’s pretty amazing,” Passero said. “It’s sort of like you have to pinch yourself to believe it’s real.”

High Tide Capital in September bought the former Citizens Bank at 63 Eugene O’Neill Drive and an adjoining property for $1.75 million and has an agreement to acquire The Day property at 47 Eugene O’Neill Drive for $1.875 million that has not yet been finalized.

High Tide Capital is the same development company that has been restoring three buildings on Bank Street as part of the so-called Riverbank project. It also completed a project last year at the Manwaring building on State Street that now serves as overflow dorm space for Connecticut College.

Davidson said he expects to have formal plans ready to submit to the city in a couple of months. He added that the hotel part of the project would be largely contained within the old bank building, along with the restaurant. That would leave an unknown number of apartments and retail spaces to be contained largely in The Day building, which the drawings show would be opened up to allow a freer flow of pedestrian traffic from Eugene O’Neill Drive to Atlantic Street in back of the property.

“We’re starting now with the whole outreach phase of the project,” Davidson said, adding that reaction to the conceptual plans last week was very positive.

“People are eager to get these buildings into the next phase of life,” he said.

Davidson didn’t yet have specifics on the project, other than to say The Day building and the bank building would be connected. He couldn’t yet say whether the restaurant would be upscale, or what the mix of apartments would be between market-rate and workforce housing. He added that the restaurant would have to support the hotel and be available throughout the day.

“We’re in the very early days,” he said, “trying to see what works, what we can afford.”

Passero said the company’s track record so far has been outstanding as it has developed several challenging sites in the city and appears to be on the cusp of starting its most ambitious project yet.

“High Tide Capital has been a real boon to the city,” Passero said. “What a great vision.”

There’s a recommended redevelopment plan for a CT airport. See how it stacks up with alternatives.

KENNETH R. GOSSELIN

HARTFORD —  Closing Hartford-Brainard Airport for either industrial or mixed-use redevelopment is possible, but it could cost tens of millions of dollars to rid the 200-acre airfield of contamination and it could take years to fully reap property tax and economic development potential, a new study concludes.

Instead, as expected, the Brainard Airport Property Study recommends keeping the airport open and extending one of its runways. But this alternative — one of four outlined in a final report — calls for the closing of a lesser-used runway and redeveloping the area primarily for warehouse and industrial uses. That would build on what already exists in and around the airport in the city’s South End, according to the study.

“The closure of the Hartford-Brainard Airport is definitely feasible, but it introduces a complex element that could significantly affect the investment returns in any situation, given the state wouldn’t achieve any potential advantages for several years due to the indeterminate time required for the airport shutdown,” the report said.

The report — the culmination of a $1.5 million, state-funded study by BFJ Planning of New York over eight months — was a bit anti-climactic because its conclusion was contained in a draft report whose recommendation surfaced earlier in October.

State Sen. John Fonfara, a proponent of the study and of mixed-used redevelopment on the airfield, said Tuesday he was “seriously disappointed” with the report. The report did not delve deeply enough into what the economic spin-off of Brainard is today and what redevelopment could produce in the future, Fonfara, a Hartford Democrat, said.

“They spend how much time on, ‘Oh, there could be vertical lift airplanes at some point down the road,’ ” Fonfara said. “They talk about that, but don’t talk about the potential of this property and what it could mean five, 10 years from now. You’ve got at least five towns around Hartford and south of Hartford that are talking about developing on the river. They see potential there.”

Fonfara said he intends to hold hearings on the study in the next legislative session and question the authors of the study closely.

Those who have pushed to keep Brainard open and see its potential for growth also expressed displeasure with the study’s recommendation — for different reasons.

Michael Teiger, president of the Hartford Brainard Airport Association, said the closing the runway hobbles the airport and opportunities for future growth.

“I think death by a thousand cuts fits this perfectly,” Teiger, a recreational pilot with a plane at Brainard, said. “You take away the property and you make it so it’s unable to grow and bring business in. It’s just going to be a place where guys like me fly in and out. And it can’t survive.”

The report said the recommended option would dovetail with the industrial nature of the area surrounding Brainard Airport, which includes a wastewater treatment plant. The alternative also could be achieved swiftly, potentially in one phase, the report said.

The proposed structures under the recommended option include a 100,000-square-foot building split equally between flex industrial and advanced manufacturing spaces; another 100,000-square-foot structure dedicated to industrial or manufacturing purposes, and a 20,000-square-foot retail area.

The three other options are:

♦ Keeping the airport open with limited development with a runway extension, new air traffic control tower, hangars and 94,000 square feet of aviation-related space.

♦Closing the airport and pursuing the addition of 2.6 million square feet of industrial space, 140,000 square feet of office space and 100,000 square feet of “accessory retail.”

♦Closing Brainard for a massive, mixed-use redevelopment that could have 2,700 units of rental housing, 105,000-square feet of retail, 262,000 square feet of industrial space and 255,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor recreation venues.

According to BFJ, Total development costs range from $46 million for the recommended option to $1.4 billion for the mixed-use alternative. These numbers do not include the use of public subsidies in the calculations. Typically in the Hartford region, projects such as these receive subsidies of at least 20% of the total project cost in order to be financed due to market conditions and cost of construction, BFJ said.

In months of public meetings, the issue of contamination was prominent in discussions. In addition to any soil contamination from the century-old airport, there was the concern about coal tar, a by-product of coal gasification plants that once provided light and heat to cities like Hartford.

The report says the options calling for closing Brainard and redeveloping it would require $45 million for razing buildings and cleaning up contamination.

Last year, state lawmakers approved the funding for the study. But Brainard’s future has been debated for decades, stretching back to the 1950s when a large portion of the airport was taken to develop the city’s South Meadows area.

The latest push to close and redevelop — led by Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin and Fonfara with the support the city council — is built on the argument that redevelopment would foster economic development that would add to Hartford’s tax base, sorely needed by the city.

“I view the recommendation to close the east-west runway as incremental progress,” Bronin, who is not running for a third term, said Tuesday. “Although I continue to believe the entire site covering hundreds of acres of riverfront land at the intersection of two major highways is vastly underutilized today.”

The recent push to redevelop spawned the formation of the airport association, whose members include local pilots, Brainard tenants and others. They have pushed back against the airport being cast as a “playground for rich folks” with single- and twin-engine planes. The association also argues that Brainard is crucial for its pilot training schools and should be invested in as an asset to promote economic development in the region.

The association also believes the findings will be no different than a legislative study conducted in 2016 that recommended Brainard stay open. That study never came to a vote, dismissed by those who support redevelopment, including Fonfara.

State legislators are expected to use the report in the 2024 session of the General Assembly to decide whether the state-owned airport should remain open or be closed. The Federal Aviation Administration would then have to approve the closing of Brainard if that option were chosen.