After mid-night last night the House of Representatives called House Bill 6378 after a discussion it was voted on and passed with bi-partisan support.

AN ACT CODIFYING PREVAILING WAGE CONTRACT RATES.

Great job to the entire team that has been working on this especially Kim Glassman Director of Connecticut's Foundation for Fair Contracting, Dave Roche President of CT's State Building Trades and Joe Toner Executive Director of CT's State Building Trades. 

Biden cabinet members talk jobs plan at Electric Boat

Julia Bergman

With many people out of work or underemployed due to the pandemic, apprenticeships, long seen as pathways to higher paid, higher skilled jobs, are emerging as key way to bring people back to work in jobs that can support their families.

The was the message of two of President Joe Biden’s cabinet secretaries in their joint visit to Electric Boat’s headquarters in Groton Tuesday. Both hail from New England states with histories of using apprenticeships to train workers in the manufacturing and industrial sector,

“The reality is that today, in order to get a decent job, you need some degree or credential or skill or trade past high school. That’s a fact of our economy. You saw the folks that got hurt most during the pandemic were those who were in the lower skill, lower wage jobs,” said U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, former governor of Rhode Island.

The submarine builder was a prime venue for Raimondo and Labor Secretary Marty Walsh, a former union official and mayor of Boston, to deliver that message, as the company — with a plant in Rhode Island — has hired and trained thousands of employees in recent years for highly technical jobs with good wages.

President Biden’s American Jobs Plan proposes a $48 billion investment in workforce development including creating 1 million to 2 million registered apprenticeship slots, Raimondo said. The administration also wants to expand job training programs, and target those who are underrepresented including communities of color and women.

“We’re making sure that we prioritize workers who were shut out in the past, particularly people of color and women. We need to make sure we create these programs for everybody so everyone can benefit from them,” Walsh said.

He added, using Biden’s campaign sligan, “This is how we build back better.”

The Connecticut Department of Labor’s Office of Apprenticeship Training currently has 6,710 registered apprentices and nearly 1,700 employers that span 50 occupations. Over the past 20 years, 900 apprentices have worked at EB, according to data from the governor’s office. About 300 apprentices are currently enrolled in EB’s three- to four-year design and manufacturing programs, which combine on-the-job training with classroom learning, in specialties ranging from computer-aided design and 3D modeling to welding.

The apprenticeship programs are for employees already working at the company, who go through a competitive process to apply. About 75 percent of apprentices make it through the program.

One of them is 25-year-old Arnold Chappell, of Waterford, who just graduated from the inside machinist apprenticeship program in January. Chappell started working at EB about six years ago, fresh out high school. He worked in assembly for about two years until 2016 when EB restarted its internal apprenticeship programs.

“It’s been one of the best things I could’ve done,” he said. “I learned every machine in our shop and a bunch of different types of machines that will pretty much give me a good baseline for the rest of my life.”

Joined by Gov. Ned Lamont, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Reps. John Larson, D-1st District, Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, Rosa DeLauro, D-3rd District, and EB’s president Kevin Graney, Walsh and Raimondo toured the company’s Groton shipyard, where four different attack submarines are under varying stages of construction and where a major expansion is underway to make way for construction on a new fleet of ballistic missile submarines.

The new building being constructed will feature more steel than the Eiffel Tower.

The company is experiencing a boom not seen since the Cold War, spurred by major investments by China and Russia in their undersea fleets and a need for U.S. to stay atop the competition.

At the same time, the company’s Cold War generation employees are retiring in large numbers so “we’re hiring everywhere,” said Andrew Bond, EB’s vice president of human resources.

Last year, the company, which never shut down during the pandemic due to its work in support of national security, hired 2,000 new employees. This year, it’ll hire at least 2,400 more.

Of the 17,500 people currently employed by EB, more than 12,000 work in Connecticut.

Since 2014, the company has hired about 17,000 people to fill jobs left by those retiring or leaving for other reasons and to carry out its increased workload. EB expects to hire a similar number of people over the next seven years, Bond said.

EB is not able to train and find the workers it needs on its own. Partnerships with the Eastern Workforce Investment Board, community colleges such as Three Rivers in Norwich, and technical high schools, have helped develop the workforce needed, with direct input from company officials on how training programs should be structued and the skills these prospective employees should be learning.

While the company has made a significant investment in training, it’s also relied on state and federal funding.

The company expects to reach its peak year for hiring in 2029 — a sign of the level of work it has in front of it, with the new Columbia class strategic missile subs coming into production. Lamont pointed out that those who will be of hiring age at the time are currently in middle school.

“We’ve got to do everything to let them know what an amazing career this is, a great paying job, a job with job security, a job that makes a difference in terms of world peace, and a job right here in Connecticut,” Lamont said, pausing “and Rhode Island,” referring to EB’s facility in Quonset Point where submarine hulls are constructed.

New Haven company working on cancer treatments signs lease for 101 College Street

Luther Turmelle

NEW HAVEN — A local company has agreed to occupy about 160,000 square feet of the city’s latest biotech lab space complex — 101 College Street — which hasn’t even been built yet.

Officials with Arvinas announced Tuesday the company has signed a 10 year-lease for three of the 10 floors in the building, or about one-third of the space in the 500,000-square foot-building. Massachusetts-based Winstanley Enterprises is developing the multi-tenant project, with construction scheduled to get underway by the end of June, according to company officials.

“Arvinas has always been a New Haven company and always will be,” said Sean Cassidy, the company’s chief financial officer. “We looked at all the logical locations and developers. But with Winstanley’s reputation and the location of the new building so close to Yale, this made made the most sense for us.”

Arvinas was founded by Craig Crews, a professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology at Yale University. The company’s focus is developing treatments for cancers and other difficult-to-treat diseases.

Arvinas is expected to move into its portion of the building in 2024. The company will remain in its existing office and lab space in Science Park, in the city’s Newhallville section.

Arvinas moved into Science Park in 2013 into about 8,000 square feet of space, according to Cassidy. It currently occupies 63,000 square feet in Science Park and employs about 200 people, he said.

“Our business is requiring new hiring and we need more people to support that growth,” Cassidy said. “We would expect our head count to have at least doubled by the time we move into 101 College Street.”

While the coronavirus pandemic exacerbated weak demand for office space in Connecticut and elsewhere, the same can’t be said for lab space, he said.

“It is really at premium and it’s not just in New Haven,” Cassidy said. “It’s anywhere you go in the country, whether it’s Boston or Raleigh-Durham. A lot of venture capital was invested in biotech since the start of the pandemic.”

The building at 101 College Street is the latest part of the city’s Downtown Crossing revitalization project, designed to reclaim a section of the city that was designed for roadways in order to link downtown to western suburbs.

New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker called the company’s decision “an exciting milestone for Arvinas, New Haven, and Connecticut.”

“New Haven has a lot to offer, and we look forward to continuing the progress of the Downtown Crossing project,” Elicker said in statement.

Gov. Ned Lamont called Arvinas’ decision a “clear reinforcement of Connecticut’s commitment to the bioscience sector.”

“This is another critical step in realizing New Haven and Connecticut’s shared vision for the Downtown Crossing project - an important revitalization effort and economic investment,” Lamont said in a statement.

John Houston, Arvinas’ president and chief executive officer, said the company “has experienced significant growth over the last several years as we have led the development of a completely new treatment approach for cancers and other difficult-to-treat diseases.”

“As a company incubated out of Yale, our commitment to New Haven is strong,” Houston said. “We’re proud to continue to be a part of this rapidly growing biopharmaceutical hub and contribute to the continued development of the downtown area.”

Donald Klepper-Smith, chief economist and director of research for DataCore Partners, said biotech jobs create a ripple effect across the region’s economy.

“The multipliers on spending and jobs are significant,” Klepper-Smith. “These jobs are highly desirable. They create good incomes for the people who work there and that circulates throughout the entire economy.”

When Downtown Crossing is completed, city officials say it will create a connected, walkable community in New Haven’s life sciences district and boost Connecticut’s economy. The project, which will connect Yale’s medical and central campuses, is being funded by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s TIGER II grant, the city and the state.

Cassidy said Science Park is currently fully leased and he praised the management team at the technology center for working with Arvinas officials to accommodate the company’s needs.

“As we migrate to the next level there's going to be a beautiful space left for another company to move in,” he said. “I don’t expect they will have any trouble filling it.”

Paul Pescatello, senior counsel and executive director of the Connecticut Business & Industry Association’s Bioscience Growth Council, said what Cassidy is describing is the natural order of how a region develops into a biotech cluster.

“Companies move out and free up space for start-ups,” Pescatello said. “There always a need for more lab space because there are always nascent companies coming out of Yale. The biotech sector here has definitely steadily grown and the more companies there are, the more lab space there is, that is when it will really take off.”

Brookfield moves ahead with streetscape project with work under contract

Currie Engel

BROOKFIELD — The town has awarded the contract for engineering services and designs for Phase 4 of the Streetscape Project to Freeman Companies.

The town is calling Freeman Companies the “most cost-effective qualified bidder” in the applicant pool.

The preliminary concept design plans have been posted online and the company’s designs are expected to be 30 percent complete by mid-July, at which time the town has said that they will schedule a public review of the work. The plan will consist of installation of light fixtures, retaining walls, and construction of over 1,900 feet of sidewalk from the northern end of Phase 1 construction to the Newbury Village condominiums on Federal Road.

In February, the town approved the $3.6 million needed for the fourth phase of the Streetscape Project at a special town meeting. The vote was unanimously passed.

Construction is expected to start in the spring of 2023.

Two cabinet secretaries tour Electric Boat to promote Biden jobs plan

Mark Pazniokas

GROTON — Two cabinet secretaries with New England roots toured the General Dynamics Electric Boat submarine shipyard that anchors the economy of southeastern Connecticut on Tuesday, promoting elements of President Joe Biden’s jobs proposal that would expand apprenticeship programs important to EB.

The trip by Labor Secretary Martin J. Walsh and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo brought the former Boston mayor and former Rhode Island governor to a regional employer flush with federal contracts, challenged only by the need to hire and train thousands of designers, engineers and assemblers in a rapidly growing workforce.

With work underway on a new class of submarines and the Cold War generation of shipyard workers hitting retirement age, EB’s president, Kevin M. Graney, said the company will be in an aggressive hiring mode for the foreseeable future — assuming Connecticut and Rhode Island can continue to produce a job-ready workforce.

“For the first time in a generation, we are building two classes of submarines: the Virginia class of fast-attack submarines, and the Columbia class of ballistic missile submarines,” Graney said. “So that we can respond to the needs of the Navy, we’re hiring thousands of new employees, we are open for business. We hired more than 2,000 last year, and we’ll do that again this year.”

 There is no friendlier place for visiting administration officials and members of Congress than a defense contractor whose existence relies on the continued support of the White House and congressional votes for defense authorizations, a task made easier with the ascension of U.S. Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro, D-3rd District, as chair of the Appropriations Committee.

DeLauro promised continued funding for federal apprenticeship programs, underscoring that she was in a position to make good on the promise.

“It’s good to be chair,” she said, prompting laughter. “It really is.”

Graney welcomed the two secretaries, DeLauro, Gov. Ned Lamont and two others whose committee assignments are of special interest to the company: U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, chair of the Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces, which oversees U.S. Navy shipbuilding; and U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal of the Armed Services Committee.

Graney took the delegation on a tour of the shipyard, its massive assembly sheds and graving docks, as well as the construction of infrastructure necessary for the assembly of the new ballistic missile subs. They will be 560 feet long, nearly 200 feet longer than the Virginia fast attack ships.

The submarines are constructed in modules, with hull sections manufactured in Quonset Point, R.I., and shipped by barge to Groton for assembly, finishing and testing before being launched into the Thames River, not far from the Naval Submarine Base.

One of the secretaries’ key talking points was to highlight the $48 billion in workforce development in the American Jobs Plan that Biden proposed in a speech to Congress last week as a “blue-collar blueprint to build America.” It is the follow-up to the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package passed in March.

It includes creating as many as 2 million new apprenticeship slots, some geared to providing opportunities for women and minorities to non-traditional occupations.

‘The secret to successful job training and apprenticeship is a partnership between labor and business, between workers and the companies that employ them,” Raimondo said. “And in that regard, EB is a model for the work that the secretary of labor and I will look to expand.”

Walsh and Raimondo met with some of the EB workers enrolled in the federally backed apprenticeship program reauthorized in 2016. 

“Honestly, it struck me [that] every single one of them talked about the impact it has in the family. And you don’t hear that every day,” Walsh said. 

Depending on the skills, the programs last for three to five years, boosting the skills and wages of the employees and giving EB the workforce it needs to meet the Navy’s production schedule.

EB has 300 workers in programs, a number expected to grow to 500. Another 450 have completed the programs.

“For centuries, shipbuilders have passed their skills to apprentices, helping new tradespeople develop and refine their craft. Today, our apprenticeship programs and workforce development efforts continue that long tradition,” Graney said.

Given the total control of the region’s congressional seats by Democratic allies of the president, there are no votes for the plan at stake here. But that is not stopping Vice President Kamala Harris, who visited Connecticut last month, from joining Raimondo on Wednesday to promote Biden’s infrastructure and jobs plan.

“You could not come to a better place to really talk about President Biden’s American jobs plan and what it means for registered apprenticeships and for the Workforce Investment Act,” Courtney said. “This is the birthplace of the registered apprenticeship program.”

Courtney noted that the federal apprenticeship program dated back to the Fitzgerald Act, a law authored in 1937 by Congressman William Fitzgerald of Norwich, a child of Irish immigrants, as is Walsh.

While Connecticut, like other northeast industrial states, has lost manufacturing jobs to cheaper labor markets overseas and in southern states, advanced manufacturing has rebounded here, especially companies in the aerospace or submarine supply chain.

Walsh said the Biden administration has the same goals and is intent on finding ways to use federal stimulus dollars to build careers, not just temporarily boost the economy.

“I think we saw it here today. We saw a couple different groups of people. Some came from community college. One young man, we were talking outside, he told us he was a high school dropout. And now he’s going to finish his degree, get his degree. And he’s going on to profession here and a career here,” Walsh said. “This is an opportunity for that. So I think that we have to reimagine how we do things.”

One of the apprentices, Arnold Chappell, 25, of Groton, started at EB out of high school. The apprentice program is giving him a college degree and the skills for more challenging and better paying jobs in the shipyard.

Another, Holly Boyle, 33, started as an administrative aide and now is being trained as a designer.

Lamont said EB’s current hiring is important, but so is the long and reliable expansion to come.

“I know that now you are hiring 1,000-plus now, but your peak year is going to be in 2029,” Lamont said. “And so those folks that are in third, fourth, fifth grade, we have to do everything we can let them know what an amazing career, a great paying job, a job with job security, a job that makes a difference in terms of a world peace, and a job right here in Connecticut and Rhode Island.”

New London could take back land for downtown Coast Guard museum

David Collins

A little birdy recently whispered in my ear and explained that there is a deadline for the National Coast Guard Museum Association to use the downtown site the city donated for the project, and if the organization doesn't build a new museum there by 2024, it could be asked to give the land back.

Indeed, after I heard from the birdy, I checked on the deed, which does set out a process by which the city can reclaim the waterfront property if it is not used "as the site of a newly-constructed" museum within 10 years of the signing of the deed, on May 24, 2014.

I have never heard this deadline publicly acknowledged. Certainly museum officials have not been discussing it, since at this point it looks pretty obvious they are going to be unable to meet it.

The birdy flew up to my ear after I recently noted that the project is dead in the water, with more then seven years of fundraising producing only $25 million in private donations, far less than the $50 million pledged by the state and federal governments.

In all that time, the association has barely raised half of what a now old, back-of-the-envelope estimate — $150 million — indicated would be needed to build on the complicated site. It's hard to imagine how much the project would cost if actually put out to bid today.

Certainly all the obvious trees have been shaken for donations by now. No new big donors are likely to come forward to rescue this sinking ship.

In 2019, according to the association's tax records, it reported raising $4.5 million and spending $1.9 million, including $1.4 million on employee compensation. That deadly spiral could continue for many more years.

The good news about the deadline, which the city wisely imposed in giving the land, is that it appears city residents may ultimately get to voice an opinion on the proposed site.

My guess is that, if put to a vote, the problematic downtown site, on a flood plain and on the wrong side of high-speed rail tracks, would lose in a landslide to a location in Fort Trumbull.

If not a vote by residents, the status of the whole project should get a thorough review and scrutiny by not just the mayor but all the elected representatives of the city residents on the City Council.

I believe Mayor Michael Passero and most of the other politicians representing the region have their hands over their eyes or fingers in their ears when the subject of the downtown museum comes up.

Every one of them likes to think it's going to happen someday, that the emperor is actually wearing clothes. It's the easiest answer.

When I asked the mayor about the deadline for the museum to be built on the donated city land, he said he's not worried.

"I am expecting the construction of the museum to be well under way by then," he wrote in an email, perhaps while watching a herd of elephants fly by his window at City Hall.

The museum association tried unsuccessfully not long ago to convince Gov. Ned Lamont to release money from the state's $20 million commitment to build a pedestrian access bridge to connect the museum to the downtown.

The association even dispatched the Coast Guard commandant to the governor's mansion, where he pressed this inappropriate request. They were asking the governor to change the terms of the original $20 million commitment from the state, which dictated that the bridge money would not be released until the museum was fully funded and ready to be built.

The most cynical side of my brain believes the association hoped that construction of the bridge, financed by the state, would satisfy the city's deadline for the site to be used by 2024. Readers can make up their own minds.

Gov. Lamont made the right decision in not releasing the bridge money prematurely.

New London, not just the mayor, should eventually decide whether 10 years was enough time to give the association to fund and build a museum on such a problematic site.

If it was, tell the association to move on to a cheaper, more practical location. And get it done. The brave men and women of the Coast Guard deserve some competence here.

The XL Center is far too valuable to become a parking lot

Mike DiMauro

This was one day last week in We-Ha — how the cool kids refer to "West Hartford" — when Gov. Ned Lamont underscored a noteworthy tenet of team athletics.

"The great thing about sports," Lamont told a crowd on the steps of town hall there to rain hosannas on University of Hartford's men's basketball, "is that you get a group of people all rowing in the same direction."

Indeed. And now it's time Lamont, his fellow politicos and other Important People dunk their metaphorical oars into the lagoon and apply commensurate esprit de corps toward XL Center renovation, lest more time and tediousness pass without action.

"COVID threw us all off the balance beam this past year," Mike Freimuth, the executive director of the Capital Region Development Authority, said last week. "In fact, the XL's absence over this last year has certainly been felt in downtown energy, hotel, restaurant and bar trade and made clearer the real adverse impact of losing the building would have on the town, certainly more than any study could ever show."

A number of downtown business owners agree with Freimuth, seeing the creaky, squeaky Grand Dame of Downtown past the need for more cosmetic repairs and straight into overhaul.

"It is incredibly important to invest in the modernization of the building," said Steven Abrams, managing partner of Max Downtown. "Downtown business is reliant on several things: theatre, business travel and our biggest nights regarding sales are XL Center event nights. I remember reading some study years ago that said over $8 million for restaurants are generated through the XL Center. So not only is it incredibly important as we move out of the pandemic, but for the long term health of a bustling downtown. This all may sound selfish, but a strong state needs a strong capital city, and the XL Center is a big cog in that wheel."

Len Wolman, chairman of the Waterford Group which runs the downtown Hilton Hotel, said, "The pandemic has had a severe negative impact on the hospitality and tourism industries worldwide. We look forward to the day when events resume at the XL Center and the Convention Center that bring visitors back to the city and fill the hotels and restaurants."

So where is this project? Moving forward with the acceleration of an arthritic snail. What began some years ago at $250 million has been downsized to a taxpayer-funded $100 million, lessened mostly through fewer seats (16,000 to 12,000) but with more focus on amenities for the lower bowl.

CRDA and Northland Investment Corp., which owns the atrium and storefront space outside the arena — viewed as an important piece in expansion of restrooms, concessions and the concourse — were to meet in January to further negotiate sale of the space. That meeting was postponed.

Northland chairman and chief executive (and New London native) Larry Gottesdiener told the Hartford Courant a few months ago that "he does not believe a substantial investment in the aging arena is a 'wise use of public dollars.'"

Note to Mr. Gottesdiener: Your property is of far more value at the moment than a speech.

"We have been having meetings with Northland over the last couple of months," Freimuth said. "They have been cordial and productive but we haven't yet reached any deal. From a larger perspective, our legislative delegation (led by Matt Ritter as Speaker of the House and John Fonfara, Chair of Sen. Finance) have maintained the priority for Hartford on getting the XL renovated. The funds have been authorized by previous legislative action. The Bond Commission hasn't awarded those monies to date. So we do what we can."

Straight up: It's time this project moved along more meaningfully. Apologies for the trite "greater good" implication here, but what other Hartford-area project is of more benefit to a wider range of people than a bustling downtown arena?

Surely, the idea of a taxpayer-funded building almost naturally runs afoul of C.O.A.T. (Chorus Of Aggrieved Taxpayers) and their fundamental moral outrage. Except that a renovated XL Center is better for downtown business owners, greater Hartford in general, UConn sports and other patrons who enjoy shows, concerts and nights out in the city. A rather encompassing list, no?

Then there's this: They're not trying to dupe taxpayers into funding a strip joint. It's an arena. An indoor village green.

Remember, too, that UConn recently hitched the entirety of its athletic wagon to men's basketball. The move to the Big East imperiled football and is a competitive wash for women's basketball. UConn sports are a men's basketball production. And so if the goal for the flagship university is to give its flagship sport every chance to succeed, UConn men's basketball deserves the same creature comforts as other Big East programs.

Villanova has a big arena option, the Wells Fargo Center. Your humble narrator saw a game there in Feb. 2020, during which thousands of Nova students tailgated outside before the game, making for quite the enticing image for potential recruits. Providence's downtown crackles during home games at Dunkin' Donuts Center. St. John's has the option of the Garden. Georgetown plays in downtown D.C.

Not to be alarmist, but the XL Center has a finite number of days remaining before it's simply not functional. It is hyperbolic to suggest the building's demise is imminent. But this project needs a similar tactic Lamont used in reaching a sports betting agreement allowing the Mohegan and Mashantucket tribes and the Connecticut Lottery Corp. to provide sports wagering and online gaming.

The deal came two weeks after the Lamont administration announced it had a deal with the Mohegans but not the Mashantuckets. Funny how things like this work: The Mashantuckets did the moral outrage thing until they realized Lamont was moving forward with or without them. The deal got done forthwith.

Why can't Lamont act accordingly with the XL Center? This is what we're going to do and this is how we're going to do it. You're either on board rowing the boat or treading water outside. Your choice.

Perhaps there's a happy coincidence here that a renovated XL Center is being mentioned as a possible major sports betting venue, adding to its cachet. Keyword: renovated. It's time, folks. The XL is too valuable to become a parking lot.