CT Port Authority may merge with Airport Authority, chair says

David Kooris, the chairman of the Connecticut Port Authority, announced Tuesday that state officials are discussing whether to fold the maritime agency into the Connecticut Airport Authority.

The announcement means there could be a potential merger between the Port Authority, which manages Connecticut’s harbors and deep water ports, and the Airport Authority, which oversees operations of Bradley International Airport and five other state-owned aviation facilities.

Kooris dropped the news about the merger talks at the end of a short emergency meeting of the Port Authority board, which was scheduled to discuss new hires at the maritime agency and hiring a financial auditor.

The Port Authority has come under fire in past years for questionable spending, ethics violations and other contracting practices.

A federal grand jury subpoenaed the Port Authority last year for several years of records related to its operations. The agency has also caught flak from lawmakers for the ballooning cost of renovating the State Pier in New London into a port capable of shipping offshore wind turbines into the Atlantic.

That construction project, which is now in the final stages, was marketed as a $93 million rebuild of the New London port in 2019, but the budget grew to more than $300 million this year after repeated cost overruns.

The issue of a potential merger was not noted on the Port Authority’s meeting agenda on Tuesday, but Kooris said he had already shared news of the talks with the other board members via email.

“Over the last several years, there’s obviously been a lot of conversation about the structure of the Port Authority, the future of the Port Authority,” Kooris said during the meeting. “One of those options that have been discussed over the years, as you will recall, is some sort of partnership with the airport authority, which has some commonality and much larger infrastructure in which we might be able to rely.”

Kooris told his fellow board members that he was sharing the news because he didn’t want them to be surprised when the airport authority board openly discusses the potential change at a meeting Wednesday.

“Conversations will certainly have to take place. A lot of details would need to be worked out, if we conclude that is the best option,” Kooris said. “But I do want to make sure folks are aware that conversation is taking place.”

Officials with the Connecticut Airport Authority said they were asked to consider a possible merger with the Port Authority by state political leaders.

“The Connecticut Airport Authority has been asked by the state to consider synergies with the Connecticut Port Authority. The CAA is currently reviewing details, and, until there is more clarity on the direction forward, there will be no further comment,”

Any merger between the two quasi-public agencies would likely require action by the Connecticut General Assembly.

Both agencies were formed through legislation passed in previous years. The Connecticut Airport Authority was created by lawmakers in 2011. And the Port Authority got its start in 2014 after the management of the state’s harbors and ports was transferred out of the state Department of Transportation.

Gov. Ned Lamont’s administration confirmed that they initiated the merger discussions because the Connecticut Port Authority is wrapping up the State Pier project in New London, and because the Airport Authority has “extensive administrative infrastructure and experience with transportation facilities.”

Chris Collibee, a spokesman for the Office of Policy and Management, the governor’s budget office, said those attributes would make the Airport Authority ideal for managing the state’s deep water ports.

“If the Governor decides to propose this initiative, then legislation will be proposed to the General Assembly for consideration in the next legislative session,” Collibee said.

The idea of merging the two entities did not come as a surprise to a state lawmaker who has been involved with the operations of the Port Authority in recent years.

Rep. Holly Cheeseman, R-East Lyme, said there have been discussions in her circles for years about whether the state needed to restructure the Port Authority. Those past discussions also included ideas about returning management and maintenance of the state’s ports to the Department of Transportation.

“I think there has been a desire from numerous parties to rethink what the future of the Port Authority is,” she said.

Cheeseman, who also sits on the State Bond Commission, said there has been a concern recently that the Port Authority lost sight of one of its primary jobs of marketing the state’s deep water ports when it began overseeing the renovation of the State Pier in New London.

“Is it actually accomplishing the goal for which it was created, which is marketing the state’s ports?” Cheeseman asked.

The public should get a better understanding of how a potential merger might work on Wednesday when the leaders of the Connecticut Airport Authority are set to meet.

Diverse mix of small business owners partner to build industrial rental properties north of Hartford

Michael Puffer

Three businessmen from Massachusetts with longstanding ties have joined with a pair of Connecticut builders for an ambitious push to develop small industrial rental properties north of Hartford.

The partners broke ground this year on a 19,800-square-foot industrial building on nearly 4.5 acres at 29 Moody Road, in Enfield. The $2.8 million project will offer 11, 1,800-square-foot bays that can be leased individually or combined.

As construction in Enfield wraps up later this year, the group plans to begin work on 100,000 square feet of industrial space — to be divided into relatively small rental bays — in four buildings on a 26-acre site along Route 83 in Ellington. The partners recently paid $1.1 million for the vacant land on West Road.

Partner Adam Oliveri said the plan is to hunt for additional development sites that can be transformed into rental spaces for small, trades-focused businesses.

“So, the goal is to keep doing one (project) as soon as the other one wraps up,” Oliveri said. “Our dream is to have these two go really well — we know they will — and then have three, four, five, ten after that.”

At the Enfield site, each bay will have a separate entrance with a 14-foot-tall garage door, along with bright white interiors and 18-foot-tall ceiling heights. The partners imagine the units will attract a wide array of tenants, including plumbers, HVAC professionals and other tradespeople who own small businesses.

“You might have a contractor with four or five employees,” said Chris Skinner, a partner in the venture. “Maybe he doesn’t want to take out a $1 million mortgage and build his own office.”

Skinner and his brother, Everett Skinner, own Ellington-based The Barn Yard, a builder of timber-frame structures ranging from 100-square-foot sheds to rustic 10,000-square-foot events center barns. The Barn Yard has produced custom commercial and industrial buildings. It manufactures components using CNC machines, and ships worldwide.

The Barn Yard offers full assembly in New England. In the rest of the continental U.S., it will erect the timber frame and leave finished carpentry for the new owners to arrange. Their building components have shipped as far as Belgium.

Chris Skinner said the partners aim to fill a void in quality small industrial rental spaces, with high-end finishes that offer small businesses a proud home.

Diverse backgrounds

Based in West Springfield, Oliveri has interests in a commercial bakery, small pharmacy chain that supplies rare-ailment drugs, bowling alley, commercial real estate and horse stables.

About nine years ago, Oliveri hired The Barn Yard to build an eight-stall, 2,500-square-foot barn at his West Springfield boarding stable. He liked the work so much, he asked Chris and Everett Skinner to handle construction of his Enfield industrial property.

Oliveri started the Enfield project as a solo venture, but soon found it difficult to juggle his everyday business demands with permitting and other development tasks. So, he recruited two friends, N. Andrew Robb, a partner in East Longmeadow-based accounting firm Burgess, Robb & Grassetti P.C., and Marc Murphy, co-founder of West Springfield-based brokerage Lock and Key Realty.

The trio jointly owns a 4,570-square-foot office building at 31 Moody Road in Enfield, and carved off 4.5 acres nearby, at 29 Moody Road, for their first industrial project.

Next, they recruited the Skinners as full partners, drawn by the brothers’ familiarity with permitting and land-use boards.

“The second they got onboard, the project just kind of took off,” Oliveri said. “It’s the best decision we’ve ever made.”

The partners expect to finish the Enfield building in January, and begin leasing in the first quarter of 2024.

Groundwork at the 26-acre Ellington site will begin about the same time. That project will be done in phases, starting with 100,000 square feet of industrial space on 19.61 acres.

At the same time, the partners will begin marketing the remaining 6 acres for commercial tenants, with plans to seek permitting for buildings tailored to user needs. A conceptual plan shows four potential commercial buildings on-site.

The partners said they plan to stick together, looking for additional building sites for similar concepts in northern Connecticut and western Massachusetts.

“All of us have really successful other businesses, but we all feel like we bring something really unique to the table,” Oliveri said. “So, with Marc’s real estate and brokerage experience, and with Andy being a CPA, and my business background, combined with the Skinners’ work in construction and building, we just think that’s the perfect team.”

Hartford on track for over 2,200 new apartments as housing boom continues

Liese Klein

With 2,293 new apartment units under construction, at the closing desk, or in the planning pipeline, Hartford is betting big on the demand for housing downtown and in neighborhoods like Parkville.

A key player in financing the housing boom, the Capital Region Development Authority, approved deals on more projects Tuesday that would create hundreds of new units, many in converted office space.

“I think our overriding, our overwhelming imperative right now is to get as many units built as possible, to take as much as the the office space that’s not performing out of the market, to remove the slack,” Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin said on Tuesday at a virtual meeting of CRDA’s housing  and neighborhood committee.

Bronin was commenting on the planned conversion of Class B office space at 31 and 45 Pratt St., a building that houses the Society Room event space on its first floor. 

The CRDA approved a $1.1 million low-interest loan to developer Simon Konover to convert office space on the building's upper floors into 37 apartments, all of which would be rented at market rate. The gut renovation of the historic property is expected to cost a total of $7 million and add to the effort to create a residential and retail corridor in the heart of downtown on Pratt Street.

The much larger-scale conversion planned for the former Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute campus at 275 Windsor St. also secured a key approval on Tuesday. The CRDA committee voted to allow developer Randy Salvatore to apply funds secured for a project stalled by a lawsuit against the city to be used for the campus redevelopment, which could result in 269 apartments in its first phase. 

“The parcel has been caught up in litigation and effectively cannot proceed,” CRDA Executive Director Mike Freimuth said, referring to Salvatore’s dormant plan to build housing across from Dunkin’ Park in a location known as Parcel B. “Yet the dollars are sitting on the shelf.”

Bronin endorsed the plan to shift the funding to the campus conversion. 

“I think it’s been enormously frustrating to the city and to our overall objectives not to be able to move forward on Parcel B … But I think it’s critical that we maintain momentum in this neighborhood. Randy’s acquisition of the RPI campus gives us the opportunity to try to retain some of that momentum,” Bronin said. 

Efforts to convert another downtown building into housing advanced on Tuesday despite the death last week of developer Martin Kenny, a principal in the plan. Kenny's company, in partnership with LAZ Investments, plans to convert a long-vacant office building at 15 Lewis St. near Bushnell Park into 78 apartments. 

A total of $7 million in CRDA loans and equity were approved toward the project, expected to cost about $27 million. 

Developer Carlos Mouta of Parkville Market and his partners plan to create 57 apartments in a new building at 17 Bartholomew Ave. in the Parkville neighborhood, a project that got approved for $3 million in funding through CRDA on Tuesday. 

A new garage project planned for 35 Bartholomew that would serve the Parkville neighborhood also secured $5.2 million in CRDA financing toward its $11.6 million total cost. 

CRDA, which plays a key role in allocating state bond commission funds to development projects in Hartford, is involved in multiple projects that are expected to result in at least 2,293 new apartments in the city in coming years, Freimuth said.

“It’s a lot of work and a lot of units,” Freimuth said. “I don’t know if they'll all make it through the gauntlet, but it’s a lot of activity.”

Milford developer starts $16M luxury housing complex on River Street

Nick Sambides

MILFORD — Having finished a $22 million, three-building apartment center on Broad Street this summer, city developer Robert Smith's Metro Star Properties is starting construction of a $16 million two-building complex slated for nearby River Street this fall, he said Monday.

Asbestos abatement continues and demolition will begin of an old downtown shopping center in October at 44-64 River St. The city issued the demo permit about two weeks ago, city officials said. The 50-apartment complex, which includes 12,000 square feet of retail space, is Smith's 30th in and near downtown since 1999 starting with what is now known as Schooner Wharf, Smith said.

"Our priority is to find a neighborhood grocer to occupy the first floor," said Smith, Metro Star's founder.

Smith, a lifetime resident of Milford and third generation real estate developer and construction company owner, is bullish on downtown Milford and his and other investments made there through the years. His company sold Schooner Wharf and several other properties to an Arizona developer for $70 million in 2013.

"We have seen the downtown continue to prosper with the contribution of other stakeholders like Stonebridge (Restaurant), SBC (Restaurant and Beer Bar) and Milford Photo, who believed in the potential of the area and invested time and money," he said. "When driving through downtown on the weekend its wonderful to see all the people walking around the green with lines of people waiting to enter Scratch Bakery, all looking to relax and enjoy the Milford vibe. Many of these people live just steps away."

The 44-64 River St. apartment project initially consisted of one 61,928-square-foot mixed-use building, approved in 2021, but the Planning and Zoning Board agreed in February to split the 50 apartments between two buildings. The board took this action after Smith relocated the proposed parking garage to avoid delays in getting approval for an initial entrance on Railroad Avenue.

The complex, which will include 20 electric vehicle charging stations, consists of a front building along Broad Street that is 51,844 square feet and a rear building that is 12,303 square feet for a total of 64,147 square feet, according to city documents. 

Metro on Broad, the project completed this summer, is 78 units spread across three residential buildings ranging from studio- to three-bedroom apartments, with rents ranging from $2,095 to $3,295 per month. It's at 135 Broad St., just off the Milford Green. The first apartment center, Building 131, was completed and opened in October. The last to be built, Building 127, opened in July and its last apartment rented in early August, said Colleen Chrzanowski, Metro Star's assistant community manager who helps rent spaces in and manage the building.

About 150 people reside there, Chrzanowski said.

"I live in Milford and it was interesting to see how fast they came up," Chrzanowski said of the buildings' construction. "It was like one day there was nothing and the next day there was a building."

The site is historic. It is where early submarine inventor and Milford resident Simon Lake did his work, Chrzanowski said. One of the buildings on site was fashioned with a sawtooth roof to commemorate Lake's having kept a laboratory there. Nautical flags with names of his submarines and other historical terms from his life hang from the buildings, Smith said.