Massive ship delivers key wind turbine components to New London

Lee Howard

New London ― The massive UHL Fierce cargo ship arrived Tuesday morning at Adm. Harold E. Shear State Pier with the first shipment of blades and gear boxes known as nacelles to be assembled here starting later this month as part of the South Fork Wind project .

Ulysses Hammond, interim executive director of the Connecticut Port Authority, said the offloading process would start Wednesday morning, conducted by 20 to 30 mostly local longshoremen. He expected the Portugal-registered, nearly 500-foot heavy load carrier that seemed to dwarf every other ship in the harbor to be fully offloaded within six days, and the first turbine assembly would start later this month.

“It is truly hard to describe what this moment means to our project, to southeastern Connecticut and our nation,” Hammond said in a phone interview Tuesday.

He called the arrival of some of the most critical components in the wind turbine assembly process a “tremendous milestone” in the nation’s attempt to “advance the fight against climate change.” He noted that State Pier will play a critical role in the construction of offshore wind farms that will be an “immediate benefit” to Connecticut, Rhode Island and New York, helping to create new jobs, drive local investment and advance the state and nation closer to clean energy goals.

Hammond said the blades and nacelles manufactured by the Danish firm Siemens Gamesa are destined for Ørsted and Eversource Energy’s South Fork Wind project, being constructed 35 miles east of Montauk Point. The business is technically still a partnership, though Eversource is in the process of selling its interest.

The project, expected to power 70,000 homes in Long Island, N.Y., is currently on schedule, Hammond said.

“We ... have not experienced delays for components, except there is an electrical panel board that will not arrive until November that was ordered in the spring of this year,” he said in an email. “It will not delay anything due to Siemen's work-around of using on-site generators to power up the nacelles until the panel board arrives.”

The UHL Fierce, which came to New London via Germany and Denmark, is operated by United Heavy Lift. Its cargo included the massive wind turbine blades that are each as long as a football field and, at 656 feet in diameter, twice as wide.

Once installed, the 11-megawatt turbines will measure nearly 800 feet tall, five times taller than the Gold Star Memorial Bridge and 200 feet taller than the Travelers Tower in Hartford, said Justin May, an Ørsted spokesman, in emailed responses to questions.

In June, the first wind components were offloaded from the Claude A. Desgagnes cargo ship; since then, several other ships have arrived at State Pier with wind components, including 200-ton tower sections that now sit at the pier waiting for the assembly process to begin. One more shipment of tower sections is expected this month, and in the fall there will be two more shipments of nacelles and blades, May said.

Last week, South Fork Wind announced the completion of 13 foundations to support the project’s offshore wind substation and 12 wind turbines. The foundations were transported by an offshore installation vessel called Boskalis's Bokalift 2.

“Meanwhile, work continues on connecting the wind farm's export cable and array cables to the offshore substation, and installing advanced foundation components,” according to a South Fork Wind press release. “A fleet of American vessels at the project site ... including construction and transport barges, tugboats, crew vessels, and protected special observer monitoring vessels, continue to support South Fork Wind's construction.”

Workers involved in the project’s ongoing work include vessel and crane operators, boat captains and crew, engineers, welders, scientists and protected species observers, according to the release.

New York local union members involved in the work include a number of ironworkers, pile drivers, divers, operating engineers, electricians, laborers, and members of the region's building trades.

The installation of South Fork Wind turbine generators is expected to start later this summer and run through the fall.

“Ørsted and Eversource's South Fork Wind remains on-track to become America's first utility-scale offshore wind farm to be completed in federal waters when it begins full operations by the end of this year,” the release said.

Wilton seeks $500K CT grant to offset cost of new, $16.4M police headquarters

Shantel Guzman

WILTON — The town is applying to the state for a $500,000 grant from the Small Town Economic Assistance Program to offset part of the construction cost of the new police headquarters, First Selectwoman Lynne Vanderslice said. 

The town is still reviewing bids for the construction of the station, and Wilton has been applying for multiple state grants in an effort to lower the financial burden for taxpayers, Vanderslice said. The Board of Selectmen approved $16.4 million for the project, which was also approved by voters last year. 

“We’re pretty hopeful that we’ll receive the grant,” Vanderslice said. “The state grant program was suspended for a couple of years. Last year there were a number of towns that received grants, so I’m hoping that this year is less competitive and we will receive the award.” 

The Small Town Economic Assistance Program funds economic development, community conservation and quality-of-life capital projects for localities that are ineligible to receive Urban Action bonds from the state.

The project will nearly double the size of the outdated existing station to almost 19,000 square feet and will be constructed on an 11.17-acre site at 238-240 Danbury Road.

Construction was at one point expected to begin in spring 2023 and take up to 20 months, but the town is still reviewing bids for a general contractor. Vanderslice said she expects bids will be presented at the Sept. 6 Board of Selectmen meeting and anticipates a contract will be approved no later than October.

The parking bay is a priority for the state grant because emergency vehicles need covered parking when the weather is bad, Vanderslice said. The town has also applied unsuccessfully for two years in a row for federal grants, she said. 

“We don’t have a contract yet, but one of the things that we questioned is whether or not funding would cover the response team’s (parking) bay, so we wanted to look for a source of those funds,” Vanderslice said. 

The state grant could be used for a wide variety of things, Vanderslice said, but the town is set on using the funds toward the police station. 

“I sent an email out to the department heads asking if they had any ideas for the grant,” Vanderslice said. “I threw this out and no one else came up with another proposal … we all thought the same so it made sense.” 

The application deadline for towns to apply for the grant is Aug. 18, and decisions will be released in late September. 

Why a new Wilton police station is needed 

The current police station at 240 Danbury Road hasn't been upgrade since it was built in 1974 for about 24 male officers. Today it serves 48 employees — 45 officers and three civilian staff — including eight women. The station contains only four small cells and a tinier, temporary holding cell to process inmates, according to previous reports.

The lack of renovation prevents the department from abiding by state regulations to process juveniles and adults in separate parts of the building, town officials have said. The current conditions also make it difficult for officers to separate men and women.

The new building is expected to have new features, such as improved locker rooms and address the issues with detention. 

The Wilton Plan of Conservation and Development from 2019 found that the current station had “several major deficiencies that need to be addressed,” including inadequate infrastructure and insufficient space.

At a Planning and Zoning Commission meeting in February, Police Chief Thomas Conlan said he has seen the need for a new station increase over the years since he first joined the department.

“The new building will be almost twice the size of the old one and will bring the department up to current policing and building code standards,” he said. “A new police facility will have a tremendous benefit to the department, as well as the town.” 

Greenwich's Glenville section scheduled for long-delayed road redesign in spring 2024

Andy Blye

GREENWICH — Major road redesign work in Glenville is now expected to start next year, more than three years after it got the greenlight from the Board of Selectmen.

The work will stretch from Glenville Street, at the entrance of the former home of Stop & Shop, past the Glenville Fire Station and Glenville Pizza, to the intersection of Glenville Road and Weaver Street, according to the Department of Public Works’ project website.

Crews will upgrade the traffic signals, add a new signal at the intersection of Pemberwick Road and Glenville Road, widen some lanes, add sidewalks and more.

First Selectman Fred Camillo said during an Aug. 14 community forum on Glenville that the road work would start in spring 2024.

The project was approved by the Board of Selectmen in November 2020, but Camillo said it was delayed over local concerns and cost increases.

“It got stopped by some residents in this community that were concerned about trees, so we put it off for a year,” he said. “Then what happened was in the pandemic, the prices went up, tripled and quadrupled. So we waited again, we applied for more state grant funding for that and we just heard this week we received it.”

The town had previously been working off the assumption that it would receive a $2 million grant to fund the work, but this past week the grant funding was bumped up to about $4 million, thanks to DPW's coordination with the state Department of Transportation.

The town's 2021-22 fiscal year budget previously allocated $3 million for this Glenville corridor work. 

The grant money will come from a federal program — the U.S. Department of Transportation's Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement Program — which is administered locally by the Connecticut DOT.

The project started going through the Planning and Zoning process last year.

Camillo said the town will go out to bid this fall and start work early next year. DPW expects it will take one year to complete the project once work begins.

More information about the redesign is available on the town’s website at greenwichct.gov/1493/Glenville-RdSt-Corridor-Traffic-Improvem.

49-unit apartment development proposed at site of shuttered West Hartford synagogue

Michael Puffer

An affiliate of the West Hartford Housing Authority is proposing to demolish most of a shuttered synagogue to make room for a 49-unit multifamily building.

Trout Brook Realty Advisors, the no-profit development arm of the West Hartford Housing Authority, plans to retain the front façade, including stained glass, of the existing 1969-vintage Agudas Achim Synagogue at 1244 North Main St., attaching it to a new 20,750-square-foot building on the 1.8-acre property.

Tentative plans for the development will go before West Hartford’s Design Review Advisory Committee at its Thursday meeting. This is a chance for city staff and commission members to hear the proposal and make suggestions prior to a formal submission.

Jill Corrado, CEO of Trout Brook Realty Advisors and executive director of the housing authority, said her group has two options to present. Both have identicle square footage and unit counts but vary in the design of the exterior building envelope. Both would incorporate the front facade of the existing synagogue. 

"We are really excited about it," Corrado said. "It's a cool adaptive reuse of an existing structure. We wanted to pay tribute to it by not demolishing the entire structure. It has some cool features we want to preserve." 

Corrado said Trout Brook has a purchase-and-sale agreement in place for the property. Trout Brook will apply for funding early in the coming year, which could make for a late 2024 groundbreaking, Corrado said. 

Economic Development Coordinator Kristen Gorski anticipates a special development district will eventually be sought through the Town Council to accommodate the proposal. The Design Review Advisory Committee can help address any potential concerns prior to a formal submission, she noted.

“I think they will look to the committee to get an impression of which direction they should go in,” Gorski said. She also complemented Trout Brook’s efforts to work a portion of the existing building into the new development.

Trout Brook “is looking to preserve some of the architectural features of the existing building and really bring back energy to a site that’s been vacant for quite some time,” Gorski said.

The Agudas Achim Synagogue ceased operations as a house of worship several years prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Rabbi Chagie Rubin, who previously led the congregation. Attendance had been dwindling for some time, he said.

The Design Review Advisory Committee, on Thursday, will also continue review of a proposal by West Hartford-based Hexagon Group to build a 70-unit, four-story apartment building at 579 New Park Ave. That proposal was first aired in May. The developer is returning to the committee with a new architect and design concept.

The 1.2-acre property Hexagon proposes to develop currently hosts a 7,626-square-foot truck storage garage built in 1947.