DOT’s $106 million upgrades to stations along Waterbury line to begin in 2025

LIVI STANFORD 

WATERBURY – The state Department of Transportation is planning $106 million in infrastructure upgrades at the Waterbury, Beacon Falls, Seymour, Ansonia and Derby-Shelton train stations along Metro-North’s Waterbury line, with construction beginning in 2025.

The improvements will be funded with a combination of federal and state money, and about $3 million is expected to go toward renovation of the southern part of the Republican-American building at Waterbury station. That project will include an indoor waiting area with seating and restrooms for travelers. There also will be private offices for station employees.

Mayor Paul K. Pernerewski Jr. noted there have been improvements to train service out of Waterbury and ridership has gone up, but people still wait outside for the trains and are subject to the weather. The renovations will enable people to wait inside, providing an “improved experience,” the mayor said.

Construction is expected to occur between 2025 and 2027, DOT spokesman Josh Morgan said.

“Making upgrades to stations along the line will improve the rider experience,” he said. “It could also draw future investments into those communities through transit-oriented development.”

Morgan said the upgrades are focused on modernizing stations with longer platforms, canopies, parking lot improvements, and adding bathrooms and passenger seating to waiting areas on the main level and some staffing offices on the second level.

State Rep. Geraldo Reyes, D-75th District, said the improvements are a long time coming.

“For the ridership that had the No. 1 volume during COVID, it stands to reason why this infrastructure investment has been made,” he said. “It opens up the opportunity to get more commuters going back to New York and vice versa, whether for work or education. I am excited the day is here.”

State Rep. Ron Napoli, D-73rd District, said the infrastructure upgrades are a necessity.

“Any upgrades we can make will improve (people’s) quality of life,” he said.

DOT will hold two public information meetings to discuss the planned improvements. The first will take place Monday at 6 p.m. at Waterbury City Hall, 235 Grand St., in Veterans Memorial Hall on the second floor. The second is set for Tuesday at 6 p.m. at Ansonia Senior Center, 65 Main St.

Lamont joins CT, city officials to celebrate reopening of Derby-Shelton Bridge

Brian Gioiele

SHELTON — Derby-Shelton Bridge rehabilitation is done, a sign of the continued investment in this Valley corridor which city and state officials said is a hub for economic development. 

Gov. Ned Lamont, state DOT Commissioner Garrett Eucalitto, Shelton Mayor Mark Lauretti, Derby Mayor Joseph L. DiMartino, former Valley United Way chair and Derby Historical Society head Jack Walsh and a host of state legislators braved a stiff wind Tuesday morning to celebrate the reopening of the bridge connecting downtown Derby and Shelton. Work on the project began three years ago. 

“I welcome this day to be able to stand on this bridge and understand the prospects created by this upgrade,” Lauretti said. 

Lauretti went on to thank the state DOT and Lamont for his administration’s ongoing financial support, which has helped further spur economic growth in the two Valley communities, he said.

"With projects like this, the Valley will continue to be the economic engine for the state of Connecticut for years to come,” Lauretti said. 

The renovation work began in 2021. The final cost to rehabilitate the bridge stands at $12.4 million — 80 percent of which was funded by the federal government. State money covered the remaining 20 percent. The original estimated project cost was $10.3 million. 

“This is such a historic bridge,” said state Rep. Jason Perillo, who worked with fellow state Rep. Nicole Klarides-Ditria and former representatives Themis Klarides and Linda Gentile to obtain the initial funding for the work.  

"This is a wonderful job restoring a beautiful bridge,” Perillo said. “This matters, and it is a great example how communities can work together with the governor, cities and state agencies to make things happen.” 

The contract was awarded to Mohawk Northeast, Inc. Construction. The project design was performed by AECOM under contract with the Naugatuck Valley Council of Governments. 

The project was designed to create an aesthetically pleasing public space along the Derby-Shelton Bridge and provide a gateway that is pedestrian and bicycle friendly to the downtown areas, according to NVCOG Executive Director Rick Dunne. 

Details included the replacement of bridge parapet walls, the removal of existing lighting and replacement with period-style light, colored LED “up-lighting” that will accent the archways and parapets from below the bridge, a second travel lane for traffic heading to Derby, new pavement and curbing, shifting of the travel lanes to accommodate wider sidewalks on the south side of the bridge and a cycle track. 

“I love the care that went into this,” said Lamont, surveying the bridge. “People want to live in the Valley. They are coming back, and this is all coming to life. This bridge is symbolic of this growth.” 

The Derby-Shelton Bridge project also connects with the existing Housatonic Riverwalk trail network in Shelton and the Naugatuck River Greenway in Derby. 

“This is the connection between two towns, the connection of the two greenways,” said Dunne, “But it is also connecting the historic industrial waterfronts that populated this area in the 19th century and really made it strong.” 

Dunne praised the Lamont administration’s investments in projects such as the bridge, the Waterbury rail line and the Derby Shelton Train Station as key to spurring further economic expansion in the two Valley communities. 

"The Valley is the future for affordable housing in Connecticut,” said Dunne. “Look up and down the Valley. This is the anchor of thousands of units constructed, under development or approved on the drawing board for the future.” 

Lauretti, during his comments, recognized former Derby Mayor Anthony Staffieri, who was in the crowd of media and spectators at the bridge opening celebration. 

“We initiated this project years ago, because we saw a need for a change," Lauretti said. "We saw the changing face of our downtown areas and the economic opportunities that would be created by this work.” 

Walsh praised the renovation work before describing the bridge’s history, which began in 1831 when it was a simple wooden structure. 

That bridge washed away in 1857 and was then rebuilt by private developers who charged a toll to help pay for the construction, Walsh said. 

"This bridge has been and will continue to be critical to the financial success of whole Valley,” Walsh said. 

Through the years, Walsh said there have been several bridges that spanned the Housatonic River between Shelton and Derby — from covered bridges to iron bridges to the current concrete bridge, which dates to 1918. 

The Derby–Shelton Bridge used to carry two streetcar tracks until the 1930s. Part of that history was discovered in 2022 during the construction phase of the rehabilitation project. 

According to the Derby section of the old Electronic Valley website, the trolley line dates to 1887 and the creation of the Derby Street Railway Co., which focused on building an electric trolley line mainly to haul freight between the Derby docks and the industrial center of Ansonia on upper Main Street. 

The Shelton Economic Development Commission, aided by a grant from the Derby-Shelton Rotary Club, was able to secure $265,000 to conduct a study that ultimately resulted in the current state bridge reconstruction project, according to former Rotary President Kate Marks. 

How a Connecticut company is turning used bottles into schools and skyscrapers

John Moritz

BEACON FALLS — Inside of an old stone fabrication plant alongside the Naugatuck River, thousands of tons of glass from millions of discarded soda and beer bottles are being ground down until they reach a fine dust. Dust that can build skyscrapers. 

The dust — sold under the trademark brand Pozzotive — is a cement alternative developed by Urban Mining Industries and manufactured at the company’s first-of-its-kind facility in Connecticut, where recycled glass is cleaned, crushed and milled before being distributed to nearby plants to be mixed into concrete.

Concrete mixed with Pozzotive has been used in hundreds of building projects around the tri-state area and further afield since Urban Mining opened its Beacon Falls facility in 2021. Previously, the company operated a pilot plant in New York beginning in 2009.

Among those projects is the 60-story JP Morgan Chase Building under construction in Manhattan — and scheduled for completion in 2025 — which utilized the equivalent of roughly 20 million discarded glass bottles in the concrete for its massive floor slabs and building blocks. 

Gov. Ned Lamont toured the Beacon Falls plant on Tuesday, following the announcement of a $37 million matching grant from the U.S. Department of Energy for Urban Mining to build two new, larger facilities in Florida and Maryland, allowing the company to expand its reach down the East Coast.

Urban Mining leases its current plant from partner O&G Industries, a Torrington-based construction firm that also utilizes Pozzotive at all eight of its concrete plants in Connecticut. 

“The whole process, this whole manufacturing enterprise, is a Connecticut start-up,” said Bill Stanley, the vice president of the materials division at O&G Industries. 

Unlike traditional cement — which is made from limestone or clay that is melted down under extreme heat — Pozzotive can be made entirely from post-consumer glass that comes from nearby material recovery facilities in New York and Connecticut.

The resulting product uses 94 percent less carbon emissions than a comparable amount of cement, according to Urban Mining. (Pozzotive can replace up to half of the cement used in concrete, though the amount varies depending on the project, the company said). 

Patrick Grasso, the principal at Urban Mining, said the idea for Pozzotive came about from efforts to distinguish his family’s concrete block business in upstate New York by experimenting with new materials. The company’s website credits Grosso’s nephew, Louis Grasso, Jr., as the lead inventor of Pozzotive. 

”It was an invention of necessity,” Patrick Grasso said. “What was at time really a focus on recycled content evolved to low-concrete concrete solutions. This kind of does both.”

Asked whether he feared that a potential shift away from climate-conscious practices under another Donald Trump administration would hurt companies like Urban Mining, Lamont said he was optimistic about its prospects. 

“I think a President Trump would like this, don’t you?” Lamont said. “The guy builds a lot of buildings, he buys a lot of concrete, this is the type of thing he could identify with.” 

In Connecticut, Pozzotive has been used to construct schools, libraries, a new digital studio at the ESPN campus in Bristol as well as the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection’s new Western District Headquarters — the last of which required roughly 346,000 bottles, according to O&G Industries, project’s concrete supplier. 

During the tour on Tuesday, Grasso also spoke to Lamont about including guidance around the use of low carbon, locally-sourced materials into the state’s green building standards as a way of incentivizing the use of Pozzotive. 

Lamont offered to look into the matter — the regulations are set by DEEP — before sharing his own thoughts on the product. “I love what you guys are doing,” he said over the din of the mill. 

In addition to utilizing less carbon during the manufacturing process, high-performance concrete mixed with Pozzotive is also more resistant to salt corrosion, according to Stanley, resulting in a longer lifespan for road projects. 

“The plan is to try and take this on a more national scale,” Grasso said. “Certain regions are more focused on sustainability and low-carbon concrete, and they seem to tend a little bit more toward the East and West Coast, and so those will probably be some of the earlier markets we focus on.”

This 46-acre property in CT could become a solar farm

KURT MOFFETT 

WINSTED – A 46-acre property at 132 Spencer Hill Road could become home to a solar farm.

The undeveloped land was purchased by Vineyard Sky Farms Corp. in February for $860,000

In recent months, tree cutting has occurred and town officials said they were receiving inquiries about what was going on there.

Zoning enforcement officer Geoffrey M. Green said the project manager for the property, Rodney Galton, contacted him and told him the long-term plan is for a solar farm, but for now it is going to be a grazing area. Green said Vineyard Sky has not yet applied to the Connecticut Siting Council, which has jurisdiction over the location of power facilities, transmission lines, hazardous waste sites, and telecommunication towers and antennas.

Green noted there has been some “confusion” over the Vineyard Sky property and an adjacent site that already received approval from the Siting Council for a solar farm. The 16-acre parcel does not have an address but is in the area of 140-142 Spencer Hill Road.

The council in February approved a proposal for the development and construction of a 3.74-megawatt, ground-mounted solar array from Greenskies Energy. The project calls for the installation of about 8,200 individual panels, which should generate 5.9 million kilowatt hours per year, enough to power 350 to 450 typical homes.

No work, however, has begun on the Greenskies project, Green said. The plan is for Greenskies to lease 16 acres from the 190 acres owned by Frank Ahern and Karen Merete. The property consists of forest, wetlands and a pasture/hayfield.

Meanwhile, Vineyard Sky is allowed to cut the trees down because it owns the property and is only opening up more space for grazing, an agricultural use of the property, Green said. He took written guidance from the Hartford-based Halloran and Sage law firm in determining that the tree cutting did not violate state law or local regulations, he said.

“Clear cutting has generally been defined to mean the removal of substantially all of the trees, bushes and wooded vegetation within a particular area,” Halloran and Sage wrote. “Selective cutting, even a majority of the timber, is an exempt activity. … Agricultural crop land would include hay fields and land on which animals are to graze, in addition to land on which crops are cultivated for harvest.”

Green said the property has “historically been farmland, but Vineyard Sky does not have a zoning farm permit. So even though the use could be considered pre-existing, I have advised them to pull a farming permit, which should close any questions as to the allowable activity of harvesting timber to open up additional grazing fields.”

Two large apartment projects planned for Route 32 in Montville

Daniel Drainville

Montville ― The town has received applications for two projects that would construct a total of 257 apartments on Route 32.

When the Planning and Zoning Commission meets on Dec. 10, it is expected to set a public hearing date for the two projects.

The first project calls for a four-story mixed-income apartment building on Route 32 across from Fort Shantok Road. West Hartford-based developer Honeycomb Real Estate Partners, LLC, has submitted an application for the project, along with site plans a traffic study and drainage report.

According to the plans, Horizon View would contain 57 apartments, including 25 one-bedroom units and 32 two-bedroom units. Twenty percent would be rented at market rate, while the other 80 percent would be reserved for people making up to 80% of the area median income.

The apartment building would be constructed on 3.4 acres of vacant land.

According to a letter from project attorney William Sweeney to Planning and Zoning Chairperson Sara Lundy, Honeycomb has an agreement to buy the land.

An entrance would be built directly across from Fort Shantok Road, creating a four-way intersection. The traffic report states 259 vehicles would leave and enter the property each day.

The developer’s traffic engineer, Roy Smith, wrote in the report that the project would not have a significant impact on traffic. The project would have 132 parking spots.

A sidewalk would be built along the southbound side of Route 32, which would be connected by an existing crosswalk to a sidewalk on the northbound side.

The second project calls for five four-story apartment buildings on 12.9 acres of vacant land on Norwich-New London Turnpike across the street from the Tantaquidgeon Museum. It would contain 200 units.

East Hartford-based Four Seasons Construction has submitted plans for the project known as Shantok Village, along with reports on traffic impact and drainage and a letter from the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection stating there are no endangered species on the site.

Plans also call for a 3,500-square-foot community center and 408 parking spots. A traffic report prepared for the developer states the impact of the project on Route 32 “will be limited.” Between 74 and 78 vehicles will leave or enter the project during peak hours, according to the report.

Construction starting on $27M affordable housing project in New Haven

Hanna Snyder Gambini

City officials on Tuesday marked the start of construction on The Monarch, an affordable multifamily development in New Haven’s West River neighborhood.

Being developed by Honeycomb Real Estate Partners, the 64-unit building will be located at the site of the former New England Linen company, at 149 and 169 Derby Ave.

The industrial laundry facility dates back to 1900 and was known as Monarch Cleaners. 

The $27 million project is being funded in part by a 4% federal low-income tax credit through the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority, a $500,000 brownfields grant from the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development, and $500,000 from American Rescue Plan Act money.

The old building was razed, and the 1.77-acre site was remediated and will soon be home to a mix of one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments. Most units, 47, will rent at 60% of the area median income, with 13 units at 50% AMI and four units at 80%.
 
This project is one of the latest multifamily housing developments on vacant or abandoned sites throughout the city. Since 2020, more than 2,000 new housing units have been built in the Elm City and an additional 3,500 new units are currently in the pipeline, of which an estimated 40% are affordable.

How will a second Trump administration affect transportation policy?

Dan Zukowski

Former President Donald Trump will become the next president of the United States. Following the Biden administration, which put billions of dollars into Amtrak, high-speed rail, public transportation and the transition to electric vehicles and buses, what might change under the incoming administration?

On transportation policy that affects cities and states nationwide, Trump has a mixed record. In his first term, he proposed a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan that never came to fruition. He repeatedly tried and failed to cut funding for Amtrak’s long-distance trains and attempted to take back nearly $3.5 billion in already-awarded federal grants for the California high-speed rail project to connect Los Angeles and San Francisco. Instead, the first Trump administration largely favored highway expansion projects.

Smart Cities Dive asked experts Wednesday morning for their thoughts on how the second Trump administration could affect forthcoming transportation policy impacting U.S. cities.

“The Trump administration in the past and the Republican Party’s general approach has been to advocate for significant cuts in public transportation,” said Yonah Freemark, research director of the Land Use Lab at Urban Institute. He added that pursuing those policies next year “could be absolutely devastating for urban transit systems.”

Federal grant programs under the Trump administration will likely focus on roads and rural areas, marking a big shift from the Biden administration’s prioritization of transit, cyclists and pedestrians, Freemark said.

However, rural Americans want more trains, not less, some rail advocates say. Staff from the Rail Passengers Association have traveled across the country over the last two years in an effort to bring back discontinued train routes, and “we’ve heard from rural communities that they feel disconnected and left behind,” said Sean Jeans-Gail, RPA vice president of government affairs and policy.

The previous Trump administration blocked funding for the Gateway project in New York and New Jersey to build a new two-track tunnel and rehabilitate the existing tunnels under the Hudson River that carry Amtrak intercity trains and New Jersey Transit commuter trains. The project began construction this year under the Biden administration.

“Investing in infrastructure has always had bipartisan support, and President-elect Trump has promised to strengthen America’s economy,” the Regional Plan Association said in an email statement. “Delaying these capital investments only drives up their costs and weakens our economy. We will be looking to our delegation and leadership in the House and Senate to continue these investments.”

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Trump opposes New York’s plan to toll drivers entering Manhattan at or below 60th street, which would generate needed funds for subways, buses and commuter trains. He vowed May 24 on social media to “TERMINATE Congestion Pricing in my FIRST WEEK back in Office!!!” The plan has been on hold since New York Gov. Kathy Hochul ordered an indefinite pause to implementing congestion pricing on June 5.

In an email statement on Wednesday, Riders Alliance Policy and Communications Director Danny Pearlstein urged the governor to reverse her stance before Trump is inaugurated. “Governor Hochul must race against time to secure the money New Yorkers need to fix our aging subway and protect riders from climate change,” he said.

The Biden administration put forth a major effort to support the transition to electric vehicles, including a $5 billion program to create a network of EV charging stations every 50 miles along the interstate highway system or within one mile of an interstate exit, and federal incentives for electric vehicle buyers.

But “all EV policies are on the table” with the incoming administration, said Genevieve Cullen, president of the Electric Drive Transportation Association. “What will hopefully emerge from the fog of campaign rhetoric is when folks take a closer look at these EV policies, they’ll understand more clearly what the impact on investment and jobs in the United States are, and how consumers are benefiting and communities are benefiting,” she said.

More clarity on the incoming president’s policies will emerge in the coming months.