Madison unveils details of new $60 million elementary school 

Christine DeRosa

MADISON — A referendum date on a project that would allow Madison to build a new elementary school and shutter three others is set for early next year.

A draft of the $60 million plan, presented at a Sept. 14 Board of Education meeting, would create the new Jeffrey Elementary School and would close Jeffrey and Ryerson elementary schools and the Town Campus Learning Centers.

The vote is scheduled for Feb. 15, 2022.

Under the current plan, Brown Intermediate School would be converted to a kindergarten- through fifth-grade school, and Polson Middle School would be renovated.

The elementary education specifications were presented by Dan Hansen, an educational consultant who has been helping guide Madison Public Schools through the project’s process. He specifically helped develop the education specs for the school, which must be submitted to the state when applying for grants.

A draft of the $60 million plan, presented at a Sept. 14 Board of Education meeting, would create the new Jeffrey Elementary School and would close Jeffrey and Ryerson elementary schools and the Town Campus Learning Centers.

The vote is scheduled for Feb. 15, 2022.

Under the current plan, Brown Intermediate School would be converted to a kindergarten- through fifth-grade school, and Polson Middle School would be renovated.

The elementary education specifications were presented by Dan Hansen, an educational consultant who has been helping guide Madison Public Schools through the project’s process. He specifically helped develop the education specs for the school, which must be submitted to the state when applying for grants.

Other special spaces include a world language room, rooms for tutoring and special services, and a library media center.

The building will include four preschool classrooms, five kindergarten classrooms, nine first- and second-grade classrooms, and 11 total for grades three, four and five. Every classroom will have air conditioning, and Wi-Fi that can handle one-to-one devices, according to the draft.

The current plan also includes separate play spaces for the younger children that will be closer to their classrooms, whereas those for older children will be closer to the gymnasium.

Community use was also taken into account. Plans for the gym to be 6,000 square feet with a platform stage would allow groups such as the Madison Parks and Recreation Department and Registrar of Voters to continue using the space.

Cooke said the gym will not be as large as Brown Intermediate School’s but will be usable for full-court basketball and other activities.

The draft also details energy efficiencies being considered for the new building, such as roof-mounted solar panels, geothermal walls, and light sensors to reduce electrical loads.

After the plan was presented, board member Katie Stein questioned classroom numbers, wondering why they changed so much between grade levels. She wondered why, since kindergarten has five classrooms in the plan, first grade didn’t as well.

“We oftentimes get bubbles where we’ll have a large kindergarten class, and then maybe need one less classroom the next year in kindergarten, so we wanted to be prepared on the high end of that, because, as you see, the kindergarten classrooms are larger than the other grade levels,” Cooke replied.

Stein also said the board had heard from the community about school space if Madison’s population increases, as the plan calls for closing two schools in the district.

Cooke said that the plans for the new elementary school were based off the district’s eight-year projection, which will be updated this fall. He said that Brown Intermediate School would be bigger than the new school, giving the district additional space.

The earliest this new school plan would go into effect would be for the 2025-26 school year.

The project’s budget will be presented at a Board of Education meeting Oct. 12.

Madison Public Schools is also working on purchasing property on Mungertown Road for the project.

Norwich City Council approves $800,000 support for $8.8 million Main Street development

Claire Bessette 

Norwich — An $8.8 million proposed Main Street renovation project got a second chance at city support through the city’s federal American Rescue Plan grant Monday.

The City Council voted 6-0 to approve $800,000 for the project, two weeks after stripping the funding by setting limits on amounts for single projects.

The $8.8 million renovation of two mostly vacant buildings at 77-91 Main St. was put in jeopardy Sept. 7, when the council placed a cap of $300,000 per project on a $2 million grant to the Norwich Community Development Corp. Prior to the council vote, the NCDC board of directors had approved a $400,000 grant and additional $400,000 loan to the Main Street project.

Developer Norwich Luxury Apartments LLC has proposed renovating the two buildings into 42 market rate apartments and eight commercial spaces on Main and Water streets. The developer purchased the property in August for $1.8 million.

The City Council Monday granted the $800,000 to NCDC, specifically for the Main Street project — a $400,000 matching building code upgrade grant and a $400,000 loan.

The council on Sept. 7 objected that NCDC had approved funding for the Main Street project prior to the council vote on distributing the first round of ARP money. And the council’s majority four Democratic aldermen opposed a single development receiving nearly half of the total $2 million NCDC money economic development money. They preferred much of the money be reserved for small businesses and directed at least $400,000 of the $2 million be reserved or businesses with 10 or fewer employees.

During council discussion Monday, Democratic Council President Pro Tempore Mark Bettencourt asked for quarterly updates on the Main Street project as one condition. And if the project is not completed by the end of 2024, the city could recapture the funding from NCDC.

Democratic Alderman Derell Wilson said the conditions were important to safeguard the city’s funding for the project.

Republican Alderwoman Stacy Gould said she was disappointed the council removed the project two weeks ago. She called it important to put “feet on the street” downtown and spur more development to support the tenants.

NCDC President Kevin Brown said the Main Street project would bring private investment downtown, and when the project is completed, it would yield an estimated $128,000 in city property taxes.

Norwich Public Utilities General Manager Chris LaRose said the finished renovation also is expected to bring in about $100,000 in utility revenue to NPU, which then distributes 10% of its revenue to the city.

NCDC attorney Mark Block told the council that both the grant and the loan would not be paid to the developer until the project is completed, assuring that the city money would not be at risk.

Resident Beryl Fishbone questioned how the project funding would work, how and when the loan would be repaid and asked for more accountability for all the ARP money given to NCDC.

Fishbone said, “Since the City Manager, Mr. (John) Salomone, Mayor (Peter) Nystrom, City Councilors Ms. (Stacy Gould) and Mr. Bettencourt and Mr. LaRose of NPU are all on the NCDC Board of Directors, it should not be at all difficult to give a quarterly report of the funding with a bit of detail how all of the city is benefiting from the use of the ARP funding.”

Data centers target eastern Connecticut for development

Sten Spinella

Data centers could soon be coming to Groton, Bozrah and Griswold.

Montville and Norwich, also candidates for data centers, are a bit further away from putting in such facilities.

During this past legislative session, lawmakers passed a measure erasing the property and sales tax burden on data center developers for 20-30 years, depending on the size of the developer's investment. The move is important to eastern Connecticut, a potential landing spot for such facilities, which can help grow a town’s grand list.

A qualified data center is defined as a facility that houses networked computer servers in one location, centralizing the storage and dissemination of data.

Related story: Will Connecticut's race to attract data centers pay off? For some, it's unclear

Gotspace Data Partners LLC, a company based in Groton, has entered into host agreements in Groton, Wallingford, Griswold and Bozrah. Griswold also has adopted the necessary zoning changes. Host agreements with towns and cities require data centers to pay a fee because of the long-term tax abatement created by the state. While critics argue data centers would be paying more if taxed, developers have indicated they won’t build at all without favorable taxes.

Groton Town Manager John Burt said town staff members have been meeting and talking “semi-regularly” with Gotspace.

“They have been getting a lot of interest in their sites. The focus of Gotspace right now has been more on working with Groton Utilities to officially submit a request for power,” Burt wrote in an email. “My hope is that things will move quickly, but it’s always hard to gauge what will happen with large projects.”

Gotspace currently pays to have the right to buy the Groton properties. Once the developer is ready, it can trigger the sale.

“My understanding is that they are in the process of officially buying those pieces,” Burt added.

The Bozrah Planning & Zoning Commission had been scheduled to meet Wednesday for a public hearing about making a zoning change to allow Gotspace to build on the site. The commission termed it an “application to amend the zoning regulation of the town of Bozrah by adding” a “technology park district” that would establish “a floating zone,” in the hearing notice.

Commission Chairman Stephen Seder said that if the public hearing, which he expects to be rescheduled soon, goes well, the commission must decide on how to move forward with zoning.

“We’re a small town, we don’t have a lot of infrastructure, and we’re a fairly conservative town,” he said. “We try to balance everything with the town’s character. Will it be a good fit? Probably. But there are a lot of questions that we still have. Everything is in the details ... It’s dollars, but the dollars do not override the character of the town.”

If the commission agrees to change the zoning after the public hearings, then it will “move right forward with a master plan,” Seder said.

While Gotspace has expressed interest in a location in Norwich — one such possible location is included on its website — no host agreement has been entered.

Montville has had plans for a data center in place since 2019, when the Planning and Zoning Commission unanimously approved a site plan for the first phase of the project. Developer Verde Group LLC had hoped to build two large data storage buildings — at 87,000 and 166,000 square feet, each with an office, electrical room and data hall with computer and networking equipment — on 65 acres, with room for potential expansion on a 300-acre site.

Town Director of Planning Marcia Vlaun said in March the Verde Group still is ready to develop the data center between Route 32 and the Thames River but hasn't taken the next step. But, Joel Greene, who formed Verde Group LLC and was pushing for the data center, died in July, Montville Mayor Ron McDaniel wrote in an email. Greene was being sued for breach of fiduciary duty, breach of the duty of good faith and fair dealing and breach of contract, related to the proposed data center in Montville.

"The principals were involved in litigation regarding the property and that has not been resolved and has been put on hold," McDaniel wrote.

He said Montville has permissive zoning in place for a data center, "but no plans have been filed, and they have not approached the town to negotiate a host agreement as they have done in Groton and Wallingford."

Range of industries, from law to construction firms, see new business opportunities in CT's recreational marijuana market

Sean Teehan

Bob Lickwar sees recreational cannabis legalization as an opportunity to significantly expand his firm’s business in Connecticut, even though UHY Advisors doesn’t manufacture or sell the plant.

UHY, an accounting and consulting firm that serves a wide range of sectors, is aggressively seeking clients in the state’s nascent cannabis industry, Lickwar said. The move makes sense, he added, because starting a legal marijuana business involves scaling a number of regulatory hurdles while figuring out complicated state and federal tax questions, in addition to dealing with capital raising, municipal land use and myriad other issues.

“I see [cannabis] becoming a very big practice area here in Connecticut, no question about it,” said Lickwar, whose Michigan-based firm has an office in Farmington. “The reality is people need the tax work, there’s compliance work that needs to be done.”

Companies that want to grow and sell cannabis in Connecticut’s newly legal recreational market are already jockeying for positions in what will almost certainly be a lucrative statewide industry. But those businesses will all require ancillary services from accountants and lawyers to contractors and consultants.

Similar to how merchants made a fortune selling shovels during the California gold rush in the mid-1800s, myriad service providers see Connecticut’s recreational marijuana industry as a way to generate new revenues without directly being involved in the industry.

“The companies within industries that decide to embrace this very safe, very lucrative, highly-regulated industry first will maximize the most profit and retain the most market share,” said Ezra Parzybok, a principal at Massachusetts-based cannabis business consulting firm Blue Skies Unlimited.

Growing practice

Lickwar, a partner at UHY’s Farmington office, stands on firm ground in predicting Connecticut’s cannabis industry could be a boon for his firm. UHY’s Michigan office began leaning into the cannabis industry in 2017, putting it at the forefront of sector-related issues by the time that state legalized recreational marijuana two years later.

UHY’s Michigan office currently serves north of 50 cannabis industry clients and has 10 staffers working solely on marijuana business, Lickwar said, adding he thinks the firm’s Farmington office could post similar numbers in Connecticut.

“I think it’s a great opportunity for us here in the Connecticut market because we have developed expertise through our Michigan office,” Lickwar said. “What’s going to distinguish us is our ability to provide services even before the business is up and running.”

That could include anything from setting budgets and deciding whether to establish a company as an LLC or corporation, to separating certain parts of the business for tax purposes, Lickwar said.

Parzybok said he’s seen companies in varying industries benefit from legalization in Massachusetts. Realtors, for example, have done well selling industrial properties to companies starting grow operations. Some have even enjoyed the phenomenon known as the “marijuana markup,” where warehouses are selling at higher prices due to increased demand, Parzybok said.

For example, Mao Moon LLC, an investment property company connected to cannabis firm Exotica Farms LLC, bought a building in Holyoke, Mass., for $1.3 million in 2020, five years after the same property sold for $200,000, according to the city’s assessor’s office.

Additionally, security companies have gained lucrative contracts guarding dispensaries and grow operations; attorneys have new clients seeking to stay on the right side of state laws; and construction companies are getting work on cannabis-related building projects, Parzybok said.

“Cannabis companies are really going to need ancillary [industry] allies,” Parzybok said. “If you’re willing to embrace the industry and embrace the idea that it’s here to stay, you stand to profit ahead of the other guys.”

Niche expertise

Kurt Smith, a business line manager at Manchester-based engineering firm Fuss & O’Neill, said his firm has already developed expertise in the industry, doing projects for more than 200 cannabis clients over the past five years.

The company does everything from assessing prospective sites for cannabis dispensaries and cultivation operations, to conducting traffic flow studies to present to municipal boards, to designing solutions for issues like odor mitigation, Smith said.

“For us, it’s a significant portion of what we do on an annual basis,” Smith said. “We’ve done as much business as $3 million to $4 million in engineering and planning services for these businesses.”

Since Connecticut legalized adult-use cannabis, Fuss & O’Neill has already signed contracts for two cultivation facility projects — one in central Connecticut, the other on the shoreline — and is in talks with other companies, he said.

Smith said he predicts his group can increase its book of business by up to 30% when the state’s recreational market comes fully online.

Firms serving the Massachusetts cannabis industry have certainly been able to increase their business, said Michael Sweitzer of Massachusetts-based Sweitzer Construction, which does work in the Bay State as well as Connecticut.

For most of its four decades in business, the family-owned company focused on dental and medical building projects, but took on its first cannabis development in 2018 with a grow facility expansion, Sweitzer said. After that project, Sweitzer developed expertise in cannabis projects from the kind of heavy-duty HVAC systems needed at grow facilities, to which municipalities might be difficult sites for dispensaries due to zoning restrictions.

Sweitzer Construction has five cannabis projects on the books for the next year, which make up about 90% of the firm’s overall workload. Sweitzer said he thinks the company is well-positioned to expand its services to Connecticut.

“We know what makes a successful location, we know what equipment costs will be, what equipment is necessary, we know what makes an adequate site,” Sweitzer said. “We plan on taking all of the information we’ve learned to Connecticut.”

Law firms in Connecticut are also anticipating an uptick in marijuana industry clients, and advertising their cannabis practice groups.

Hartford-based Shipman & Goodwin started its cannabis practice after the 2018 federal Farm Bill legalized and regulated hemp, said Sarah Westby, a Shipman attorney who works in the firm’s cannabis practice group. With adult-use cannabis now legal, the firm is hoping to expand the practice.

“We have, I would say, a decent number of clients who’ve approached us in the last couple of months looking to start cannabis businesses,” Westby said. “We’re really seeing growth … and we really expect that to increase exponentially.”

The cannabis industry could provide a consistent stream of work for Shipman, as companies in the sector have unique needs in remaining compliant with the state’s new cannabis law, in addition to representation for issues common to companies in any industry like contracts, mergers and acquisitions and real estate transactions.

Michael Fritz, another Shipman attorney in the cannabis practice group, said that in addition to serving cannabis companies, his firm stands to expand the business it does with current clients who are looking to invest in these businesses.

“It’s an interesting space,” Fritz said. “It’s the opportunity to be involved in something from the ground floor.”

Parking structures will be key to Hartford’s Bushnell South development

Terry Corcoran

Parking structures will be a key component of Bushnell South, a development that seeks to replace acres of parking lots with up to 1,200 new housing units and 60,000 square feet of retail and commercial space.

“The core focus is to leverage the [Capital Region Development Authority’s] work in some critical properties and investments they've already made in the Clinton Street parking garage,” Ben Carlson, director of urban design for Goody Clancy, a Boston-based architectural and planning firm, said in a Sept. 16 update to the CRDA board.

As the existing supply of surface parking diminishes, Carlson said they’ll need to create more parking structures, then operate them in a shared-use format that has residents, office workers and theater goers using them at different times of the day and week.

“We minimize the cost and land area needed and it opens opportunities for development,” Carlson said.

The project focuses on about 20 acres bordered by Capitol Avenue, and Elm, Trinity and Main streets near the Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts.

CRDA built the new $16 million parking garage on Clinton Street. It is also contributing $13.5 million toward the conversion of the former state office building at 55 Elm St., into 164 residential units, a $63 million project that’s part of the first phase of the Bushnell South development. Overall, the first phase will have 278 housing units.

CRDA Executive Director Michael Freimuth said the authority owns several parcels in the area and expects to underwrite other projects consistent with the plan prepared by Goody Clancy.
 
The second and third phases take advantage of the addition of two levels and about 135 spaces to a CRDA parking structure by creating a mixed-use building facing the state office building, Carlson said.

Phases two and three represent half the project’s housing potential, he said.

Contractors react to upcoming federal vaccine mandates

Sebastian Obando

Since President Joe Biden issued plans to mandate vaccines in some workplaces earlier this month, a number of construction companies are encouraging their employees to get vaccinated and are trying to figure out what the new rules mean for their workplace.

Biden announced on Sept. 9 that private employers with more than 100 employees will be required to either mandate vaccines or conduct weekly COVID-19 testing, while government employees and employees of government contractors will be required to get vaccinated, with no option for regular testing in lieu of vaccination. These policies are expected to affect over 100 million workers.

DPR Construction, a California-based commercial contractor with over 9,000 employees, is gearing up to meet the new mandate, according to Jay Weisberger, communications leader at DPR. The company recently implemented a system where employees can share their vaccination documents with the human resources department. Company officials estimate that more than 50% of the workforce is vaccinated. 

EllisDon and PCL Construction, two of Canada's largest general contractors, announced last week that they are implementing vaccination verification requirements. Both companies will require Canadian employees working at any location on company business to be fully vaccinated for COVID-19 by Nov. 1. Unlike the Biden administration mandate on government employees, testing will be offered as an alternative to full immunization.

Concerns and questions

While Associated Builders and Contractors encourages people in the construction industry to get vaccinated, the group has concerns about several “unresolved questions” related to the new COVID-19 vaccine policies, according to Ben Brubeck, ABC vice president of regulatory, labor and state affairs. ABC officials plan to share these concerns with the Biden administration.

Other contractor groups said Biden's actions are too broad and would put undue burdens on firms that are already having a hard time finding workers. They are concerned that workers will leave their jobs rather than get vaccinated.

Executive Director of the Association of Oklahoma General Contractors Bobby Stem believes the executive order will impact highway construction in Oklahoma and across the United States by "effectively shutting down much-needed work to build, maintain and replace dangerous roads and bridges," he said in a statement to The City Sentinel. 

"Yes, we do, and need to, take the new COVID variant very seriously," said Stem. "However, a blanket mandate on companies with more than 100 workers who do highway construction is grossly unreasonable and not a fit for every workplace."

Confusion on policy implementation

There is some confusion as to exactly who these mandates will affect and when they will begin.

The Biden administration announced the plan will go into effect immediately, "but we expect there will be some notice period that employers can react to," said Gabrielle Wirth, partner at law firm Dorsey & Whitney, during a recent company webinar. Panelists during the webinar said they believe that the mandate for employers with 100 or more employees will go into effect sometime in October.

The proposed OSHA action plan requires all private employers with more than 100 employees to either ensure their workforce is fully vaccinated or require any workers who remain unvaccinated to produce a negative test result on at least a weekly basis before coming to work. Several questions arise from this mandate, such as:

How do you determine whether an employer has more than 100 employees?

Are subcontractors counted in this number?

Who will pay for the weekly testing? 

What are the penalties for non-compliance?

"Right now, we don’t know what kind of employees will be covered. For example, do part-time employees count? Do seasonal employees count?" said Katie Ervin Carlson, senior attorney at Dorsey & Whitney, during the webinar. "I've also had questions that I don't know how to answer yet in terms of how do you calculate 100. So, what if an employer has a few employees in multiple states, is there going to be some sort of distance requirement?"

There is also confusion as to what classifies a federal contractor or a federal subcontractor. A federal contractor is an organization that has a direct contract with the federal government. By comparison, a federal subcontractor is a company that does business with another company that holds direct contracts with the U.S. federal government.

Federal contractors and subcontractors, unlike private employers with more than 100 employees, will be required to get the vaccine and will not have the option for testing.

There are a number of ways to find out if a business is considered a federal contractor or a federal subcontractor. The easiest way to know is to receive a letter from a governmental contractor saying that your organization is a subcontractor necessary for the performance of a government contract. Other ways include checking the Federal Procurement Data System or a recent EEO-1 report, said Drew James, associate at Dorsey & Whitney, during the webinar.

"If one of your customers has ever asked you to sign an affirmative action plan, sometimes that's a signal that you might be a [federal] contractor," said James. "If you're part of a large company that has a parent organization and that parent has contracts with the federal government, it's worth calling a good lawyer because you may well be a [federal] contractor."

Some states will fight the ruling in the courts

Nearly two dozen governors have threatened to sue the Biden administration over the vaccine requirement on private sector employees, claiming the federal government cannot impose a nationwide mandate. Arizona's attorney general filed the first lawsuit challenging the new mandate on Sept. 14.

But Wirth said lawsuits like these will most likely not be successful. There's a lot of legal history confirming that as long as there's evidence of grave danger, the executive branch has the power to have OSHA issue these kinds of regulations, she said.

Some health and safety advocates said they would like to see the mandates go even further by adding requirements for other types of COVID-19 mitigation protocols.

The new vaccine mandate for private sector workers is a "missed opportunity" for a broad, comprehensive effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19, said Marcy Goldstein-Gelb, a co-executive director of the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health, in a press release shared with Construction Dive.

Social distancing, improved ventilation, shift rotation and protective equipment to reduce exposure are all important components of an overall plan to reduce risk and stop the virus, said Jessica E. Martinez, co-executive director of National COSH. But those strategies are missing from the mandate.

"COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective, but they are only one piece of a broad effort needed to keep workers safe," said Martinez. "The highly contagious delta variant of COVID-19 requires a comprehensive approach to protect all workers."