SUITE TALK DEBUTS
NRA AND INSURANCE POLICIES
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MAY 14, 2018 | VOL. 54, No. 20
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Bridgeport casino a no-go for now BY KEVIN ZIMMERMAN kzimmerman@westfairinc.com
T
he controversial plan to bring a casino to downtown Bridgeport’s Steelpointe Harbor is dead — for now. But it’s an issue that’s likely to come up again in the next legislative session, as proposed operator MGM Resorts indicated it was hardly ready to throw in the towel. “A year ago, the bill never received a floor vote,” MGM Resorts and developer RCI Group said in a joint statement. “This year it passed the House. That is significant. We realize that change is hard and takes time, and we respect the delegations’ preference not to dominate debate with this issue with much to accomplish in a short time in the session’s final hours.” Indeed, the state Senate failed to call a vote on the issue as its session wound down on May 9. The House narrowly approved the bill on May 4 by a 77-73 vote. The bill called for authorizing a study to bring a new casino to the state, with Bridgeport being the most likely site. A large part of the controversy stems from the state’s arrangements with its two existing casinos: Foxwoods Resort Casino, operated by the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation in Mashantucket, and Mohegan Sun, operated by the Mohegan Tribe in Uncasville. The tribes operate the casinos under exclusive revenue-sharing agreements that require them to pay 25 percent of their slot machine » CASINO
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Making order out of chaos page 5
Angelique Joseph of The Organizing Angel. Photo by Phil Hall.
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Downtown Danbury Transit-Oriented Development Study TRANSPORTATION & INFRASTRUCTURE
Figure 29: Preferred Schematic Design Layout for Co-Located Transit Center: Illustrative Plan
Danbury details plans for new transit center BY KEVIN ZIMMERMAN kzimmerman@westfairinc.com
D
anbury could be taking a major step forward when it comes to being a transit hub in the county, if its much-discussed Danbury Transit Center (DTC) becomes a reality.
“The administration (of Mayor Mark Boughton) wants to move this forward,” said Planning Director Sharon Calitro. “We expect to finalize the study over the next couple of months.” Calitro and Ben Carlson, the director of urban design for Boston-based firm Goody Clancy, recently presented the final draft of their downtown Danbury transit-oriented development study, which highlights the DTC. Calitro said it’s a culmination of sorts of a process that began in the summer of 2016, when Danbury received a $250,000 state grant to study a potential transit district surrounding its train station at 1 Patriot Drive.
She said the $27-30 million DTC — which would not include the costs of acquiring some surrounding property and environmental clean-up — would take three to five years to realize, “assuming that the stars align and we can get control of it.” The project would essentially combine bus and train service in one location by adding a bus
terminal with 12 berths on one end of the DTC and the MetroNorth train station at the other. The work would involve developing two underused parcels of land; one is owned by the city and contains a skate park, which would be moved to another location. The other is owned by utility Eversource, “so we don’t have » TRANSIT
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