CT Construction Digest Tuesday June 27, 2023
June 30th Connecticut Bond Agenda
Hartford’s North End flooding woes to be addressed with $170M
For decades, homes in Hartford’s North End have been plagued by regular flooding, and nobody took responsibility for fixing the problem.
But on Monday, state and local officials, led by Gov. Lamont and U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal, announced a $170 million project to correct decades of environmental injustice.
Standing in front of a house at 294 Granby St. that has had chronic flooding issues, politician after politician apologized for how long it has taken to hear the residents’ pleas for help and promised that they will not leave now until the flooding is stopped.
“I’m sorry and shamed at how long it took us to get here, but we are here now, and we’re not leaving until we get it right for each every one of you in this community,” Lamont said. “If there were sewage bubbling up in a basement in Guilford or Greenwich they’d be getting that fixed overnight, and now we’re gonna get it fixed right here on Granby Street and beyond.”
The $85 million to pay the state’s portion will come from the Clean Water Fund, which is administered by the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, to implement a pilot program that will address sewage overflows in streets and basements homes and businesses in North Hartford.
DEEP Commissioner Katie Dykes said the funds will be applied to 12 projects proposed by the Metropolitan District Commission to increase protections from sewer and stormwater-related flooding and backups in North Hartford. Five projects are slated to begin in 2023, six projects will begin in 2024, and one project will begin in 2025.
Officials expect the first shovels in the ground by the end of summer.
The rest of the funding will be provided by MDC, and Dykes said the agency has promised the project costs will be covered within the current MDC rate structure, with no impact on current rates.
Dykes said the projects will include a pilot program where MDC will be allowed to go onto private properties and propose fixes for each property that would then be paid through the $170 million.
There also is $5 million set aside to cover the costs that residents have endured or will face if there is another storm and sewage overflows into their basements. An administrator will be hired to review claims and submit them to the state Comptroller’s Office for payment.
Delores Quinn, owner of Deloreses Masonry Services, wondered if the $5 million would be anywhere near enough to compensate homeowners for flooding damages in the past.
“The past few years, I’ve been in more basements than I can count helping people who were flooded,” Quinn said. “All those places have to be sanitized because of the sewerage before you even get to damage to furnaces or water heaters or try installing a sump pump.”
State officials said the $5 million fund will be renewed annually and that more can be added to it if needed.
Dykes said the impetus for Monday’s announcement was a community meeting last February where resident after resident recalled their flooding horror stories that took place after two major back-to-back storms in August 2021 — storms Fred and Ida.
For some of the speakers, the problem is personal. Sen. Douglas McCrory pointed across Granby Street to the home he grew up in as he spoke.
“You see that house right there? That’s my mama’s house, and I was born and raised in that house. You see that young lady across the street there? That’s Miss Burke. That’s Miss Mansfield. That’s the lady who walked me up the street,” McCrory said. “Those people have lived in this community for over 30 or 40 years dealing with this problem.”
“I’m happy that this is a good start. But I’m disappointed that it took this long. There’s been flooding ever since I was a child, and everybody passed the buck to the next person and then to the next person, and it took a storm that was an act of God to make people come to realize the problems.”
McCrory stood with the rest of the city’s state legislators, all of whom worked to get the funding for the project. House Speaker Matt Ritter acknowledged that, for a long time, “the trust has been so frayed that you can’t even get to a bill because you can’t even talk the same language about what the next steps ought to be.”
“I remember that first meeting and the emotion and the tension … What it said to me is we got to do something. People are at their wits’ end. And so the three things we laid out were more money for more projects, a fund that will allow people to be reimbursed, and reporting requirements. And we did all three,” Ritter said.
Making sure the projects are done on time and the money is spent properly and fairly is key, said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.
“We need to make sure there’s oversight and scrutiny and make sure that stuff happens on time. It’s not about 10 years from now, it ought to be about 10 weeks, 10 months from now, work beginning right away, so we don’t ask residents to wait any longer for environmental justice,” Blumenthal said.
Blumenthal said while the Clean Water Fund does contain some federal funding, much more will be needed to overcome decades of neglect.
“The federal government has an obligation to do much, much more. And I’m not done fighting for this community and others who were similarly affected,” Blumenthal said. “The problems here are about environmental justice. It’s simple, straightforward environmental justice. The reason it took so long, the reason we’re not done, the reason why we still face threats of flooding and wastewater contamination is inequity and injustice.”
All Alice Nance wants is to be able to plant her flowers again. She has lived in the North End for more than 20 years and has endured multiple floods that have ruined her backyard.
“I can’t enjoy my backyard. I can’t enjoy my basement because of the floods. I have mold. I have sinkholes in my yard,” Nance said. “But today, looking around, I have hope that I will be able to enjoy my home again and be able to plant my flowers.”
Honeycomb Real Estate Partners, expects to launch a $26 million transformation of the run-down West Hartford Inn into 44 affordable apartments this fall.
The Farmington Avenue project is moving forward in a well-to-do area of West Hartford that’s already seeing numerous new market-rate and luxury apartment developments.
A stone’s throw to the west, developers Brian Zelman and Avner Krohn are partnered with Rich and Zach Korris on a roughly $20 million effort to build 48 market-rate apartments.
To the south, New York-based Continental Properties is building an amenity-rich project with 172 luxury apartments on the former West Hartford Children’s Museum site.
“There are a lot of market-rate apartments that are coming online,” Brown said in a recent interview. “That’s why we felt this particular property at 900 Farmington Avenue was going to be perfect for affordable. With all of the high-end luxury and market rate coming out of the ground, there was a need for affordable apartments.”
Brown, who has had a hand in building about 10,000 affordable housing units since 2005, could be getting some new company in the affordable housing space.
Soaring interest rates and construction costs, along with historic levels of state funding, have some of the biggest names in Connecticut’s multifamily development sector moving to add affordable housing to their portfolios.
Brown, for example, is in talks with Zelman, Krohn and well-known Hartford developer Martin Kenny, of Lexington Partners, about potential projects.
While they declined to share further details, the traditionally market-rate apartment developers did discuss the forces incentivizing their newfound interest.
Krohn said fast-rising rents have increased the need for affordable housing at a time when construction of market-rate units has become “extremely challenging” due to higher interest rates and materials costs.
He said these pressures are shrinking the number of market-rate projects that make financial sense.
“We are looking at opportunities where a market-rate project wouldn’t make sense, but where it would make sense for an affordable or mixed-rate project,” Krohn said.
Krohn isn’t exiting the market-rate space. He said he’s advancing a pipeline of about 500 market-rate units. But adding affordable projects to the mix will help him keep busy, and allow his company, Jasko Development, to retain its roughly 20-person construction team.
“Anybody who is successful as a developer is opportunistic,” Krohn said. “... Me, Marty (Kenny), we run construction in-house. We both have big staffs to keep busy. If there’s less opportunity, what you don’t want to do is lose staff members. So, (you try to figure out) how to bridge this time, until the market resets.”
Differing business models
Lexington Partners’ InnoConn Construction Management arm has been retained by Honeycomb for construction at the West Hartford Inn site. Honeycomb is also partnered on the project with Simsbury-based affordable housing developer Vesta Corp., Avon-based investor Corridor Ventures, and architect Joseph Vincent Vallone of Westport-based Vallone Ventures.
The redevelopment is being funded by debt through the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority (CHFA) and Connecticut Department of Housing, a state brownfields grant, a grant from the town of West Hartford, tax credits and a “seven-figure” deferral of development fees, Brown said.
Lexington Partners’ most recent projects have included some affordable units, mostly at the request of the municipalities involved, Kenny said. His transformation of the former Sisters of St. Joseph of Chambery campus in West Hartford into 292 upscale apartments is an example.
Town officials gave the “One Park” project a tax deal after Kenny agreed to set aside 10% of the units as affordable.
Now, he said he’s contemplating diving more directly into projects with higher percentages of affordable units, which will allow him to tap state financing.
Bond financing through CHFA allows a 6% rate locked for 35 years, Kenny said.
“We’ve had some of the highest increases in construction costs in history,” Kenny said. “The last two years, the increase is a record-breaker. We had interest rates two years ago on construction loans that were at 3 ½%, and now they are at 8 ¾%.”
The business model for affordable projects differs from market-rate developments, Kenny noted. Affordable housing depends on government contributions, and with less cash flow, profits typically come from developer fees.
“With market rate, your fee income is not as important,” Kenny said, because rents are higher and can be increased more easily. “When a developer does affordable housing, the bulk of the profit is in the development fee because it’s a long-term hold, usually 30 to 40 years. And management fees are based on the income. That’s not a high yield.”
Kenny said Lexington is contemplating projects that would mix affordable with market-rate housing. He’s focused on towns around Hartford, as well as southeastern Connecticut, which is experiencing a jobs boom being driven by Groton submarine maker Electric Boat.
“Clearly, there is a demand, and we think it’s a good way for us to grow and diversify the work we are doing beyond just market-rate multifamily,” Kenny said. “The governor has prioritized affordable housing and the demand is there.”
Like Krohn, Kenny is not giving up on market-rate projects. He continues to advance plans for a $100 million redevelopment of the 12-acre former Red Lion Hotel property in Cromwell into 265 apartments, 24 townhomes and 30,000 square feet of retail.
He is working on a pipeline of additional market-rate efforts.
Reggie D. Kronstadt, principal of Krown Point Capital, has worked with partners to buy or build hundreds of upscale rental units in Connecticut since 2020.
In May, Krown Point and Fairfield-based Connecticut Realty Trust broke ground on 90 luxury townhomes in Bloomfield. The partners are currently seeking permits for 163 single-family homes in East Granby.
Kronstadt said Krown Point is contemplating affordable projects, given the growing number of funding supports. Even so, affordable builders face competition for the funds and, quite often, opposition from local residents, he said.
“It’s definitely an interesting property type and a lot of people are looking at it,” Kronstadt said. “We are softly looking. It takes the right project in the right location and the right municipality. We haven’t found the right site that works yet, but it’s definitely on my radar.”
Funding wave
The two-year budget Gov. Ned Lamont signed earlier this month included $810 million for affordable housing and housing supports, more than double the spending allocated in the previous budget that expires on June 30.
Michael Santoro, director of the office of policy, research and housing support at the Connecticut Department of Housing, said it’s been decades since policymakers allocated so much money for affordable housing.
Santoro said the new funding will allow the department to speed up the project pipeline.
However, state lawmakers failed to pass zoning reforms that had been sought by advocates and developers who contend local resistance to affordable housing is at least as big a factor in the current shortage as the need for additional capital.
Department of Housing Commissioner Seilia Mosquera-Bruno said her department is stepping up outreach to deploy the new resources as effectively and efficiently as possible.
“We are bringing in more developers,” Mosquera-Bruno said. “We are working with companies that are providing homes for manufacturers. We are looking at all different avenues to achieve our goal.”
Hamden eyes $5 million in state aid to repair tennis courts, ice rink
HAMDEN – For longtime resident Ed Doll, the condition of the town’s tennis courts has been a concern for several years.
“The courts have been in a state of deterioration for some time,” said Doll, who visited the courts Friday to practice tennis.
On a couple of occasions, he has asked the town about repairing the cracked courts, he said, and was told it would be too expensive.
But in the coming years, that could change: Hamden is seeking $5 million from the state’s Community Investment Fund, a portion of which would help repair the tennis courts. The rest would go toward updating and renovating the neighboring Louis Astorino Ice Arena.
The Legislative Council on Tuesday voted to give the town administration permission to submit the CIF application.
The tennis courts, which are used by Hamden High School’s tennis team, have large cracks in them. Officials described their state of disrepair as a safety issue.
“The tennis court is uneven and cracked,” said Councilman Justin Farmer, D-5, adding that the conditions could cause users to trip and fall. “I just see it as a general hazard.”
While the town had the cracks patched earlier this year, Mayor Lauren Garrett said, that solution is not long-term; just liked patched potholes, the material can easily re-crack.
As for the ice rink, Garrett said it has its own safety issue: its cooling system, which uses the chemical ammonia, has come under the scrutiny of the Environmental Protection Agency in recent years.
In November 2021, the EPA issued a notice of violation and a non-penalty compliance order over the rink’s ammonia refrigeration system.
The compliance order required a Process Hazard Review of the cooling system, according to a copy of the document obtained by the New Haven Register.
“Ammonia systems have to have a lot of different protections, warning systems in case there’s a leak,” Garrett said. “The town had to do an evaluation of (the rink’s system).”
Now, the EPA is requiring that the town make certain improvements to the system, according to Garrett.
“That’s kind of a safety issue as well,” she said.
Sean Donohue, who helps manage the rink, said the arena also requires various aesthetic repairs, including upgrades to doors, flooring and the locker room.
“It’s just an old building, so we’ve got some electrical stuff that needs to be done. One of the major things is just some work with the compressor,” said Donohue, noting that the compressor is part of the cooling system.
But the possibility of a state investment raises questions about long-term plans for the rink, which occasionally comes up as a subject of debate among local officials, as the New Haven Independent reported in 2021.
While the rink is town-owned, it is managed by a private company called 595 Mix Management, LLC, which operates under a contract with the town. Donohue is a co-owner of the business, state business records show.
Currently, the rink costs more to operate than it brings the town in revenue, according to Garrett. In addition to being responsible for utility and certain capital improvement costs, the town pays 595 Mix Management an annual fee of $257,500 for operating the rink, the contract between the town and the firm shows.
The agreement gives the town a portion of the ice time fees. Overall, however, Garrett does not think it was well-written and believes the town could get a better deal.
She hopes to put the contract out to bid when it expires in 2026, she said.
“We accepted the contract that they offered us,” Donohue said when asked about Garrett’s statement.
If improvements are made to the rink, Garrett also believes the town could charge more for ice time, thus increasing revenues, she said.
Farmer, the Legislative Council member, also raised concerns about community access to the arena. Though the high school hockey teams use the rink, there are no public skate sessions.
One reason the rink cannot currently offer public skate is a lack of rental equipment, Garrett said.
Donohue is working to procure rental skates and hopes to have public skate sessions starting at the beginning of the coming school year, he said.
State approves $4.3M for Plantsville streetscape project
Jesse Buchanan
SOUTHINGTON — State funding is ready for a streetscape improvement project for downtown Plantsville that’s been in the works for well over a decade.
The $4.3 million project will realign the West Main Street and Route 10 intersection slightly to improve site lines in addition to providing other safety and aesthetics upgrades for the area. Funding is coming from the state Department of Transportation.
Town Manager Mark Sciota said he got a letter from the transportation department last week saying that the project was approved.
On Monday, the Town Council selected Paramount Construction LLC of Newington to do the work. The total contract amount includes a 10% contingency and 10% earmarked for incidentals.
Town officials have been working to get the grant for years. There were a host of delays, including the pandemic.
Sciota said securing the project with state funding was a great development for Southington.
“I know that some of us including myself get frustrated, but it’s days like this that I’m pleased we’re working closely with the Department of Transportation,” Sciota said Monday. “I know it took a long time, but the result is going to be worth it.”
The Town Council unanimously approved Paramount for the work during Monday’s meeting. Republican Councilor William Dziedzic recused himself from the vote. He’s part of a property management company based in downtown Plantsville.
The question of safety at the downtown Plantsville intersection has arisen several times when drivers crashed into the Hop Haus building on West Main Street. State transportation officials have emphasized that the crashes were related to driver impairment of various kinds. The building owner Cheryl Moran wanted some physical barrier to prevent drivers from hitting the building and put up some large planters following the most recent crash in 2020.
Concrete posts along the road are in the plans for the streetscape project, although they’re designed to prevent street parking rather than stop cars.
The project will also make improvements to the Farmington Canal Heritage trail crossing to make it safer for pedestrians.
Several downtown buildings on West Main Street were renovated in recent years by Dean Michanczyk, who owns Dean’s Stove and Spa as well as buildings across the street.