Michigan cannabis company proposes 72,366-sq.-ft. grow facility in East Hartford

Michael Puffer

A multi-state cannabis company headquartered in Michigan plans to build a 72,366-square-foot cultivation site in East Hartford.

Launched about six years ago, C3 Industries currently employs about 800 people with 20 retail locations and 250,000 square feet of marijuana growing and production space in Michigan, Massachusetts, Missouri and Oregon.

C3 is in the process of expanding to three new states, according to CEO Ankur Rungta. That includes the proposed facility along Park Road in East Hartford. A request for a special permit is scheduled to go before the Planning and Zoning Commission on Wednesday.

Rungta said C3 has a purchase agreement in place to buy the western half of the 120,617-square-foot industrial building at 241 Park Ave., and a roughly 15,000-square-foot portion of the industrial complex at 217-221 Park Ave.

Both properties are currently owned by by Daniel Rosow, of South Windsor and David Levitz, of Avon.

Mayor Michael Walsh said he met with C3 representatives in recent weeks and believes they have a well-organized plan that comes with millions of dollars in investment. While he’s skeptical about some of the touted benefits of marijuana, this proposal has his support.

“I don’t think marijuana is the panacea some people do,” Walsh said. “However, it is legal and I’m going to welcome them with open arms.”

Between property, equipment and renovation costs, Rungta said the East Hartford project is a roughly $12 million investment. He said the venture could begin operations as soon as the second quarter of 2024, with plans to eventually employ about 70 people. Rungta seeks to finance property costs, at least partially, through a sale-leaseback deal with a real estate investment trust. The balance of the expenses will come from equity, he said.

The buildings included in the proposal will see substantial renovations, according to C3’s application, including an odor control system, a new HVAC system and extensive security precautions.

C3 is asking town officials to allow it to satisfy parking requirements through the lease of at least 23 spaces inside an industrial building at 191A Park Ave.

Rungta said his company worked to incorporate every suggestion brought up in a recent meeting with East Hartford fire and police officials. The company has a strong relationship with Rosow and Levitz and could buy more of the neighboring properties for expansion in the future, he said. The proposal will bring a new industry and new jobs to East Hartford, and spur investment by an experienced company, Rungta noted.

“This is our seventh production facility we are building, so we have a lot of experience with this,” Rungta said.

In late 2022, a limited liability company tied to C3 was awarded a “Section 149” cultivator license, which allows large-scale cultivation sites to locate in areas disproportionately affected by the federal “war on drugs.” The allowable zones under Section 149 are clustered in lower income and urban areas, including East Hartford. 

The state permit allows awardees to participate in up to two “equity joint ventures.” These must be at least half-owned by an individual with an income of less than three times the median state household income who either is, or recently was, a resident of an area disproportionately impacted by the “war on drugs.”

Rungta said his company is exploring possible cannabis retail sites through equity joint ventures. 

Opening of New London traffic circle set to mark end of construction traffic headaches

John Penney

New London — A massive road rebuilding and roundabout construction project on Jefferson Avenue aimed at improving deteriorating pavement conditions and alleviating traffic snarls is expected to be completed by next month.

Director of Public Works Brian Sear said the impetus for the work, which has led to some frustration by drivers attempting to navigate alternating lanes and traffic back-up, was the “really horrible shape” of Jefferson Avenue before the reconstruction began.

“We were getting steady complaints about potholes, about drivers’ front ends being knocked out and the ineffective drainage there,” he said. “At the intersection where Jefferson splits off to Chester Street and Jefferson ‘south,’ there was a three-way light that was really not functional. And that led to accidents and a lot of back-up.”

The $3.9 million state-funded project, paid with Local Transportation Capital Improvement Program funds administered through the Southeastern Connecticut Council of Governments, broke ground in October.

Over the summer, construction crews essentially dug up and rebuilt roughly 2,500 square feet of Jefferson Avenue with improved drainage and began work on a “three-legged” roundabout, with new sidewalks, crosswalks, lighting and curbing, set to open the first week of September.

“The goal is to keep traffic moving, and our experiences with these kinds of roundabouts, like down at the Fort Trumbull area, have been good,” Sear said.

Sear admits the project, like any large-scale endeavor of its kind, has led to traffic coordination challenges, especially during the school year, when buses carrying magnet students from New London and beyond needed access to the nearby high school.

“One delay can have a ripple effect, and there were times when we had to have alternating traffic flow,” he said, referring to when only one lane of a two-lane road is opened to allow for construction work. “Our goal was to try and keep traffic open, to not totally close the road for two months and require drivers to detour for miles around the work.”

He said two dedicated traffic control staff were assigned to work the project, but delays were inevitable, especially when large trucks needed to be waved through. He said a six-week span of work prohibited traffic from turning onto Jefferson Avenue from Broad Street and was instead rerouted to Colman Street.

On Monday, the under-construction traffic circle was already operating as a roundabout, albeit an unpaved one with several temporary stop signs that will be replaced with yield signs.

Traffic moved slowly, but steadily, as vehicles inched around an unfinished circular island set to be decorated with a replica sail. A red sign on Jefferson Avenue still instructed non-resident travelers to use Colman Street.

The imminent completion of the road work elated Miguel Gautier, the New London School District’s director of facilities, who helped coordinate the fleet of school buses driving through the construction site.

“It was challenging, but we worked with public works planning ahead and had weekly progress meetings,” he said. “The priority at the start was access for buses, fire trucks and police vehicles.”

Gautier said the biggest issues revolved around private vehicles, namely longer wait times for parents dropping off and picking up students during the school year.

“It’s a three-way intersection there, so there was some balling-up of traffic, especially since we had a high school construction project also going on,” he said. “I think we managed it pretty well, but it’ll be really good to have this all done before school starts.”

 Jesse Buchanan

SOUTHINGTON — Town leaders are hesitant about a state plan that exchanges the bridge carrying Route 10 over Route 322 for an intersection with a traffic light.

The state Department of Transportation has had reconfiguration plans for the Route 10/Route 322/Old Turnpike Road area just north of the Cheshire line since at least 2008. In addition to squaring off unusual intersection angles, the plans call for the removal of the bridge, regrading Route 10 to meet Route 322 and putting a traffic light at that intersection.

With a light about 100 yards away at the Old Turnpike and Route 322 intersection, town officials are worried about the effect on traffic.

“It’s going to create a pinch point with two stoplights very close together,” said Michael DelSanto, a Republican town councilor and public works committee chairman. “I would just repair the bridge. I guess repairing the bridge is just exponentially more expensive.”

DelSanto said he’d prefer to keep the intersection the way it is rather than remove the bridge. He wanted to get more details from the state on why they’re proposing to change the area this way.

“They’re the engineers, I trust what they’re doing, but I don’t understand the need,” DelSanto said.

Josh Morgan, DOT spokesman, said the project improves safety and won’t have an adverse impact on traffic.

“The Route 322/Route 10 and Route 322/Old Turnpike Road traffic signals will be fully coordinated and will not create additional traffic congestion,” Morgan said. “This project improves bicyclist and pedestrian safety and mobility. It also creates safe, efficient connections for all roadway users between Route 10 and Route 322.”

“The current design reflects today’s safety standards, which have changed since the bridge was first built in the 1930s,” Morgan said.

Letter from the state

Town leaders have had doubts since plans for the bridge removal were unveiled last year. In July, the DOT asked the town about whether it still supported the project “as proposed.”

“If the town no longer supports the proposed project, the department will reconsider the feasibility of the purpose and need of the project and determine the best path moving forward,” wrote Michael Calabrese, the DOT’s division chief of highway design. “The department is requesting confirmation that the town supports the project, as currently proposed.”

Among the biggest changes is the removal of a portion of Norton Street, which the DOT has described as a defacto on and off ramp for Route 10. With an at-grade intersection replacing the bridge,  there would no longer be a need for that portion of Norton Street other than local access for homes.

Under the plan, bridges carrying Route 10 and Route 322 over the Ten Mile River will be replaced. The Y-shaped intersection of Route 10 and the section of Old Turnpike Road south of Route 322 will be reconfigured to make Old Turnpike Road a distinct right-hand turn from Route 10 northbound. The project estimated at $11 million last year will also add sidewalks and widen the Old Turnpike Road/Route 322 intersection to allow better turning.

Jack Perry, a Democratic town councilor, said the bridge removal is the portion of the plan that concerns him. While DOT officials have said a signal intersection wouldn’t snarl traffic, Perry said any light there would slow drivers more than the current situation. With the Stonebridge Crossing housing and commercial development taking place just south of the town line in Cheshire, he anticipates more traffic in the area as well as the usual flow of large trucks on Route 322.

“I hate to see another light,” Perry said. “If you add a light, you’re going to add congestion.”

He said it’s worth considering for the town to conduct its own traffic study of the impact of installing a light rather than rebuilding the bridge. That also might help coming to a compromise with the state.

“I hope we can come to some sort of common ground,” he said. “Maybe we do our own traffic study to analyze it.”

DelSanto said he’ll bring the issue up for discussion at the next Town Council meeting, scheduled for Aug. 14.

A developer wants to place over 2,500 solar panels in rural Bethany. Neighbors are fighting back.

John Moritz

BETHANY — When his family first settled into the two-story colonial with picturesque windows looking out into the garden and the tree line beyond, Dominick Scaramuzzino thought the view encompassed the town’s motto, “rural is beautiful.” 

Scaramuzzino, a retired Yale scientist, said he quickly grew to enjoy the quiet of Bethany, with a population of just a few thousand, as well as watching the wildlife that occasionally wandered out of woods behind his home. Excitedly, he tells of the time he glimpsed a bald eagle soaring over the pine trees. 

So he was shocked last fall to discover that more than 20 acres of land abutting his property had been sold, and that a developer planned to construct thousands of solar panels on a portion of the land just steps from his backyard.

“We just assumed because we were in a residential, rural community, it would always be a rural, residential community, and we wouldn’t have to have to fight these battles,” Scaramuzzino said. 

The proposal by the developer, California-based TRITEC Americas, to construct a solar photovoltaic facility in Bethany is one of dozens of similar projects under construction or in planning around Connecticut, part of the state’s efforts to rid itself of emissions from fossil-fuel burning power plants by 2040. 

As both governments and developers seek to ramp up construction of renewable energy projects, they are also facing growing scrutiny from local residents, even in climate-conscious locales such as New York, Vermont and Connecticut, according to Kirt Mayland, former solar developer and fellow at the University of Connecticut’s Institute for Resilience and Climate Adaptation.

“There’s this growing conflict between the environmental community and renewables over whether or not we should just put up as much solar as we can as fast as we can,” Mayland said. “Obviously the solar community feels one way and the environmentalists are starting to push back on sites like this.”

The controversy over the Bethany development was first stirred when neighbors began receiving notices in the mail from TRITEC last September. Soon, signs began sprouting up along the acre-sized lots on Bethmour Road near the site of the proposed project, urging their neighbors to fight the “commercial solar field.”

Homeowners who lived nearby researched what had happened in other communities adjacent to solar arrays, including complaints about a “high-pitched ringing noise” from those living next to a much larger facility in East Windsor. They solicited petitions opposing the project, and set up their own website. 

After an initial set of meetings last fall at which town officials and local residents voiced their concerns, TRITEC agreed to reduce the size of the proposed solar facility to 6.5 acres, while reducing the output from 1.3 megawatts to .99 megawatts, enough to power several hundred homes. In addition, the company promised other steps to minimize the impact on neighbors such as planting a “buffer” of evergreens, according to Paul Michaud, an attorney representing TRITEC.

“Unlike other towns where you have these sprawling, enormous solar systems, this is not that,” Michaud said. “This is almost as small as you can get.”

The decision to reduce the size of the array below one megawatt also meant that jurisdiction to approve the project fell to local authorities rather than the Connecticut Siting Council, a state agency established in 1972 to determine where to place power plants, transmission lines and other essential utilities in communities that are rarely welcoming to such projects. In order to get around the change, TRITEC has filed to waive its exclusion from the Siting Council’s authority, which would place the decision back in the state’s hands. 

Michaud cast the local opposition to the project as akin to the “regular, plain, vanilla NIMBYism” that the Siting Council was created to overcome. 

“From a historical point of view, for the past 100 years, large, dirty power plants, fossil-fuel-fired power plants, were sited in low-income, economically-distressed communities for example Bridgeport, Waterbury, Montville,” Michaud said. “These same Bethany residents who were fine with those communities bearing the brunt as long as they could turn their lights on say they support renewable energy, but they just don’t want that energy generation in their idyllic town.” 

Neighbors, however, say that their issues with the project are more than just aesthetic. 

The nearby homes are not connected to a public water system, and residents fear that herbicides and chemicals used to clean the solar panels will runoff and leach into the groundwater, which also feeds the wells that supply drinking water. Locals have also pointed to the presence of wild animals inhabiting the property, including the endangered northern long-eared bat, which they say will be disrupted by the construction.   

Even an attempt to classify the array as an “agrivoltaic” project by installing several hives of honeybees has led to conflict. Several neighbors, including Scaramuzzino, say that the hives were built without an adequate source of water, sending the bees swarming into neighboring yards and pools in search of water. 

“The whole thing is just a big farce, they're trying to pull the wool over people’s eyes to get this thing through,” said Andrew Black, who lives across the street from the site and launched an online petition seeking to halt the development.

At a town meeting last week, Bethany’s Board of Selectmen voted to draft a letter to the Siting Council formally opposing the proposed development, which officials wrote had left them “dumbfounded,” due to the residential character of the area and concerns raised by neighbors. 

In an interview on Wednesday, Michaud said that many of the claims made by residents and incorporated into the town’s letter were “patently false” and “legally unsupported and sloppy,” and noted that the proposal was reviewed by the Council of Environmental Quality, which offered several comments on how to minimize visibility and protect water resources that TRITEC plans to implement. 

Adding to the layers of the dispute is the existence of at least two alternative sites within Bethany that have been pitched by both local officials and TRITEC as suitable for solar development. 

The first site, a 139-acre property owned by the town, was first proposed during a meeting with local officials, according to Michaud, leading TRITEC to put together a plan for a solar array with ten times the potential power of the location on Bethmour Road. After that proposal was submitted to First Selectman Paula Cofrancesco, Michaud said the company never received a response and moved ahead with a scaled-down version of the original project (Cofrancesco was unavailable for comment last week, according to her assistant). 

The second alternate site, which the town proposed in its letter to the Siting Council, is located on commercial land that once housed a chemical research facility, and which is potentially contaminated by leaking underground storage tanks. 

Asked about the potential to move the proposed facility to either location, Michaud said that TRITEC remained open to considering alternative locations but has yet to enter into talks with town officials.

Pointing to Connecticut’s manifold programs created to spur solar development, as well as the looming deadlines to wean the state off of fossil-fuels, Michaud argued that the type of opposition that has unfolded in Bethany runs afoul of legislation passed by lawmakers to confront climate change. 

Solar accounted for just 3 percent of the power generated in Connecticut in 2021, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, but was the state’s largest source of renewable energy. 

“Renewable energy is not just a preference, it’s the law in Connecticut,” Michaud said.

Still, on Wednesday, the Siting Council agreed to hold a public hearing to listen to the resident’s concerns about the proposal in Bethany. On the council’s agenda for the same day were a variety of petitions related to four other solar projects around the state. 

While outlining their concerns, neighbors like Scaramuzzino make a point to explain that their opposition lies not with the push for solar — he calls climate change an “existential crisis” — but with thought of disturbing what they see as a natural, bucolic setting. 

“It’s something we recognize has to be done,” Scaramuzzino said. “There’s just better places to do it.”

Susan Danseyar

ENFIELD — Connecticut Water Co. is beginning installation of a new water main this week on Belmont, Warriner, and Columbus avenues.

Work hours for the project will be 7 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday.

Connecticut Water spokesman Dan Meaney said the project is expected to be completed by November.

Nearly one-half mile, or 2,400 feet, of water main will be installed at a cost of approximately $700,000, Meaney said. The new main replaces existing pipe that is about 68 years old.

A water main is a primary underground pipe in a municipal water distribution system. It is a major artery that supplies water to smaller pipes on the way to homes and businesses.

Three fire hydrants will also be replaced as part of the project. The main and fire hydrants will provide additional fire protection for public safety and improved water quantity and quality to area residents.

Rose Gavrilovic, vice president of service delivery for Connecticut Water, said the investment in new water main will serve customers for decades to come, and improve water system reliability and water quality. 

The project is funded through the Water Infrastructure and Conservation Adjustment on customer bills. Connecticut Water’s goal is to replace about 1 percent of its more than 1,850 miles of water main every year through the WICA program. The company plans to invest over $52 million in water treatment, water storage, and pipelines in 2023, Meaney said.

Customers in the construction area have been notified of the project and will receive advance notice of any scheduled water service interruption because of the water main installation project.

Connecticut Water is a public water utility that is regulated by the Connecticut Public Utilities Regulatory Authority. The company provides water service to more than 107,000 customers in 60 Connecticut towns, including Bolton, East Windsor, Ellington, Enfield, Hebron, Manchester, Somers, South Windsor, Stafford, Suffield, Tolland, Vernon, and Windsor Locks, as well as wastewater services to 3,000 customers in Southbury.

Brian Gioiele

Highview Commercial, the project's developer, has filed an application with the Planning and Zoning Commission seeking to amend the already approved Planned Development District for the site located at 801 Bridgeport Ave. 

The revised application calls for removal of the already approved hotel and an office building planned for the rear of the site and replacing those with no more than 145 apartments, 18 percent of which would be designated affordable. 

The Planning and Zoning Commission must now set up a public hearing on this application. That action is to be taken at the commission’s meeting Wednesday. 

“The area’s apartment count is significantly underserved, and affordable workforce housing is in serious need,” said Dave Gunia, senior vice president of development with Highview Commercial, adding that there is already “an abundance of hotels along Bridgeport Avenue.” 

The application states the units designated affordable will be rented at or below the maximum monthly rent calculated at 80 percent of area median income in compliance with the requirements for “set-aside” units under state statute 8-30g. 

The plans also call for 1.7 parking spaces per unit, none of which will have more than two bedrooms. 

Also removed with be an internal fountain, which would be replaced with a gathering area, according to the application. 

This latest move comes more than three months after Gunia announced that John Abene, part of Highview's ownership group, was the sole owner of the site, bringing stability to the massive project. 

Gunia said at the time that all subcontractors and suppliers that were owed money had been paid as were all financial institutions with notes on the site, including Bob Scinto. 

Panera and Metro Mattress are already in place, and construction on Chick-fil-A, long a centerpiece of the development, remains ongoing. 

The Fountain Square project was first presented to the Planning and Zoning Commission in 2017. The project was split into six phases, and final development plans for all phases were approved separately between 2018 and 2020.    

Overall, Gunia said the site has 85,000 square feet of retail space. In the larger buildings, he said there is 50,000 square feet, with only 6,000 square feet remaining. There are also two slab areas — one at 2,500 square feet with no drive thru, the other at 2,600 square feet with a drive thru.  

Gunia also confirmed at the time that construction of the planned hotel, which had been a significant piece of the original approval, was being reevaluated. 

"We no longer believe a hotel is the best fit," said Gunia, adding that the owner is “still exploring the highest and best uses for the undeveloped upper portion of the property" where the hotel was to stand.  

Tenants in the larger building include a Mercato restaurant, Gogi Asian bistro, The Tech Team mobile and tech repair services, a national haircut chain, an upscale nail salon, Crumbl Cookies and Fountain Square Wine and Spirits.  

The smaller building will include Physician One Urgent Care, StretchLab, Pokemoto, Jersey Mike’s and Consumer Cellular as well as a national optometrist and eye wear chain. Goddard School is also coming to the property, with construction plans recently approved by the Planning and Zoning Commission.