The forum will also “review curriculum and programming options that will be available for our grades 6-12 scholars,” said Superintendent Catherine Carbone.

Memorial Boulevard first opened as a school 1922. The building, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, was originally a high school, then a junior high, and finally a middle school when it closed at the end of the 2011-12 school year. It’s now being completely updated and transformed into an arts magnet school.

The city and the Board of Education are collaborating on the project, which will be open for grades six through 12. The total cost of the project is $63 million, of which 60% will be paid by the state. It’s on track to open for the 2022-23 school year.

The building is approximately 106,000 square feet. The main work is being done by the D’Amato+Downes Joint Venture, which includes D’Amato Construction Co. of Bristol and Downes Construction Co. of New Britain.

The showpiece of the building is the auditorium, which takes up part of the ground and second floors. Eventually it will be what the City Council has recommended be called the Rockwell Theater, with all new seating for about 650, a ticket booth, concession area, new equipment, and restored décor.

The name is in honor Albert Rockwell, local inventor, industrialist and philanthropist in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In addition to providing the city with the land for what is now known as Rockwell Park, he donated the land for both Memorial Boulevard itself and the school named after it.

Once the school opens in the fall of 2022, grades six through eight will attend fulltime at the new campus. Students in grades nine to 12 will take their academic core requirements at their home high school and then choose a pathway of electives to take at the magnet school.

“All students will receive discipline-based academic coursework during half of each day,” said Deputy Superintendent Michael Dietter, who is chairman of the project’s building committee. Arts magnet courses will include creative construction; visual arts; musical arts; television, video and theatrical production; entertainment, sports and event management; and marketing and communications.

Dietter recently joined a Bristol Press podcast to discuss the project. To listen, go to http://www.bristolpress.com/BP-Bristol+News/386439/podcast-deputy-superintendent-of-bristol-boe-discusses-memorial-boulevard-school-renovations-reopening.

New Jersey-based NRG to Sell Middletown, Montville, Hartford and Devon Plants 

Brendan Crowley  MIDDLETOWN — NRG Energy, a New Jersey-based energy company, announced on Monday that it was selling 4.8 gigawatts worth of “non-core fossil assets” to a subsidiary of Boston-based ArcLight Capital Partners for $760 million.

An NRG spokesman confirmed Tuesday that the sale includes all four of the company’s power plants in Connecticut: 1,548 megawatts worth of natural gas, oil and jet fuel-fired plants in Middletown, Montville, Hartford and Devon.

NRG Spokesman Dave Schrader said the company is constantly reviewing the makeup of its portfolio, assessing the location, type and mix of assets to ensure they are suited to its customers’ needs. 

Representatives for ArcLight did not respond to a voicemail or emailed requests seeking comment on Tuesday.

“We look forward to working with ArcLight and the required regulatory agencies towards the successful close of this transaction,” Schrader said.

Schrader said NRG needs to have more discussions with ArcLight about their plans for the Middletown plant, where NRG has been working to gain regulatory approval and funding to replace two half-century-old turbines with one new turbine.

“In the interim we intend to continue proceeding with the permitting process,” Schrader said.

The state’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection will hold an informational hearing over Zoom at 3 p.m. Wednesday on NRG’s applications for permits to operate the proposed new turbine.

The announcement came three weeks after the company again failed to secure funding for its new turbine in a regional auction, meaning its project came with a higher price tag than the clearing price of the auction, which has been trending down in recent years.

NRG has also failed to secure funding for plans to convert the Montville station, already converted once from a coal-fired plant, into a 50 MW renewable energy park mainly powered by a wood or biomass-fired turbine, a plan that also included solar and fuel cells. NRG’s most public push for that project came between 2010 and 2013.

Public pressure for battery storage

NRG met with the Middletown Common Council and residents opposed to the new turbine shortly after the last failed auction. They pushed the company to develop a battery storage project at the site. 

The planned turbine was not meant to run all year, but to fire up quickly in order to meet peak energy demands in the winter and summer, NRG has said. Battery storage would serve the same need without burning natural gas or other fossil fuels, opponents of the new turbine reasoned.

About 630 MW worth of battery storage projects cleared the capacity market this year. That’s less than 2 percent of the total capacity that was selected through the auction, but it’s the first time a significant amount of storage has cleared.

NRG Senior Director Brian McCabe told the council and residents that the company was considering opportunities for battery storage at several facilities across the country, including a project in Queens where NRG charges energy storage trucks that can be moved around New York City.

McCabe said New England needs generators like the new gas-fired turbine NRG is proposing, and there is “great benefit” to replacing the two 60-year-old existing turbines with a new, cleaner burning turbine. But McCabe told the council and residents that NRG would “look into energy storage” in addition to building the new turbine.

“I would like to look at storage at the facility, so we will do that,” McCabe said. “We have 62 acres at that site, so we know we have sufficient space, not only to do the repowering project, but also to do something else like storage.”

Tom Atkins, NRG vice president of business development, told the council that NRG was developing the repowering project for a time when the value it will provide is recognized. He mentioned that there are initiatives to change how that forward capacity market works, but in the future there may be other incentives for quick-start generators, so its funding may not be tied to that auction.

“We’re right now preparing this project because we believe it’s needed – we believe energy storage is needed too, by the way, so we don’t think it’s either-or, but we’re preparing this project for the time when the value it would provide is recognized, and it can move forward,” Atkins said.

Now that NRG has agreed to sell the plant, whether to move forward with the repowering project or the battery storage idea is a decision ArcLight will have to make. Still, NRG will begin to look at the feasibility of developing battery storage at the site, Schrader said.

Construction spending up in 9 sectors

Jenn Goodman  

• National nonresidential construction spending increased 0.9% on a monthly basis in January 2021 but is down 5% since January 2020, according to an Associated Builders and Contractors analysis of data published yesterday by the U.S. Census Bureau. On a seasonally adjusted annualized basis, nonresidential spending totaled $799.1 billion for the month.
• Spending was up on a monthly basis in nine of 16 nonresidential subcategories. Private nonresidential spending increased 0.4% in January, while public nonresidential construction spending increased 1.6%. 
• However, only four nonresidential construction categories have experienced growth in spending on a year-over-year basis, all of which are primarily publicly financed segments, according to the ABC. These are highway and street, public safety, water supply and sewage and waste disposal.

The new numbers are in line with the ABC’s Construction Backlog Indicator, which indicates that backlog is stabilizing and that many nonresidential contractors expect both sales and staffing levels to expand over the next six months.

“It is remarkable that overall nonresidential construction spending has stabilized recently despite the lingering impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic,” said ABC Chief Economist Anirban Basu. 

The sectors that saw an increase in spending compared to last month were:

• Conservation and development (6.3%)
• Highway and street (5.8%)
• Manufacturing (4.7%)
• Public safety (1.5%)
• Health care (1.1%)
• Communication (1.1%)
• Amusement and recreation (0.8%)
• Water supply (0.6%)
• Lodging (0.5%)
• Education (0%)

There are some key caveats, however, he said. For instance, construction spending in the lodging segment is down nearly 23% over the past year, and office construction spending is down on both a monthly and yearly basis. In addition, the future of remote work, business travel and brick-and-mortar retail is still uncertain, he said, so construction spending in a large number of private categories is poised to remain soft for the foreseeable future.

Despite the seemingly good news for contractors, Basu cautioned that the rise in construction spending in January could largely reflect rising materials prices and efforts by contractors to pass at least some of those increases to purchasers of construction services, Basu said. 

Steel and lumber price increases of up to 25% have caused contractors to rework the material costs on their jobs in recent weeks. The price gains are having a ripple effect on other materials as well, with costs for drywall, copper, steel studs and even vinyl siding rising.

“It comes as little surprise that many of the contractors who expect rising sales and staffing levels during the first half of 2021 also anticipate shrinking margin,” he said.