Processing Your Payment

Please do not leave this page until complete. This can take a few moments.

March 15, 2023

CT officials tentatively approve $98.52M for projects in distressed municipalities

Michael Puffer Michael Zaleski, president of Riverfront Recapture. The nonprofit was approved for $522,000 to build a bridge and a section of trail connecting existing riverside trails in Windsor and Hartford.
By Michael Puffer

Connecticut’s Community Investment Fund 2030 board, on Tuesday, signed off on borrowing $98.52 million to fund 28 projects ranging from redevelopment of former industrial spaces to creation of community centers.

Hartford-based nonprofit Riverfront Recapture is in line for a $522,000 grant completing a section of trail and a bridge that will connect riverside trails in Hartford and Windsor.

Another $7.5 million was allocated to help Manchester redesign its downtown Main Street to be safer for bicyclists and pedestrians.

Created by state lawmakers in 2020, the Community Investment Fund Board has a mandate to approve up to $875 million for projects in distressed municipalities over a five-year period. It approved $76.4 million worth of projects in its first grant round last September.

The funding requires approval from Gov. Ned Lamont and the state Bond Commission, but is expected to pass easily. Community  leaders are already celebrating the new funding.

State Sen. Joan Hartley, D-Waterbury; State Sen. Jorge Cabrera, D-Derby; State Rep. David Labriola, R-Oxford; and State Rep. Seth Bronko, R-Naugatuck, issued a statement Tuesday morning celebrating a $3 million allocation to help redevelop an 86-acre site that formerly hosted Uniroyal Chemical and United States Rubber Co.

“This funding approval is significant for advancing the Naugatuck Industrial Project,” Hartley said. “Step by step, we are working closer to putting this 80-plus acre site back into productive use and growing the tax base…”

Greater Hartford-area recipients include:

  • Boys & Girls Club of Hartford -- $1.6 million for renovation of 18,000-square-foot space for athletics and educational use.
  • City of Bristol -- $6.8 million for safety improvements to Riverside Avenue and Park Street
  • City of Hartford - $4.57 million for pre-development work for the redevelopment of Mary Shepard Place in the Clay-Arsenal Neighborhood.
  • Grace Congregate Housing in Waterbury - $92,564 for renovation of 40 units of low- to moderate-income elderly housing.
  • McCall Foundation Inc. in Torrington - $1.42 million for renovation of a 7,000-square-foot historic property into a bilingual wellness center.
  • Meriden-New Britain-Berlin YMCA in New Britain - $1.7 million to convert unused racquetball courts into six childcare classrooms.
  • Town of East Windsor - $4 million to extend a public water line to provide drinking water to 31 residents with contaminated wells, as well as 84 public housing units in an East Windsor Housing Authority complex.

The extension will also facilitate the housing authority’s development of another 123 units. 
 

Sign up for Enews

Most Recent

Most Recent

0 Comments

Order a PDF