BRIDGEPORT — Eighteen acres of vacant waterfront property is hard to come by in Connecticut, so the Bridgeport-Port Jefferson ferry company’s lot along Seaview Avenue on the harbor stands out.
Based on prior announcements, that prime land is supposed to house a staging area for the construction/maintenance of the off-shore Park City Wind project while the ferry, located across the harbor, prepares to eventually build a new terminal on a portion of the site.
But as the ferry company’s environmental cleanup of its acreage — dubbed Barnum Landing — drags on, the two sides have yet to finalize a lease agreement, even though one was announced in spring, 2021.
And in a recent statement for this report, Avangrid Renewables, which owns Park City Wind, declined to reaffirm its plans to utilizing the Seaview site or divulge if it is eyeing alternative locations.
“AVANGRID is committed to making Bridgeport a centerpiece of the Park City Wind project while delivering significant economic benefits to the state and continues to work with the mayor’s office, the City Council, and local business owners to optimize our operations in the port,” Craig Gilvarg, Avangrid Renewables’ director of communications, said in an email.
But as of Friday the Park City Wind website continued to state it was “partnering” with the ferry company “to redevelop an 18.3-acre waterfront industrial property in Bridgeport that is currently underutilized and undeveloped.”
“I’m fairly confident that we will at some point have a deal,” Fred Hall, the ferry company’s general manager, told Hearst Connecticut Media. “We continue to talk … to try to define what exactly the relationship is going to be between the two entities in terms of space utilization.”
Hall added, “We can’t let them use it until we clean it up.”
“We’re still in clean-up mode. We’re still getting the contamination squared away,” Hall said. “We’re a year out on (finishing) cleanup.”
How does that fit AVANGRID’s timeline? According to a document forwarded by Gilvarg, the offshore wind project remains in the permitting stage, with state approvals “on track” but federal permits delayed by nine months. The revised timeline shows manufacturing is now scheduled to begin in early 2024, versus mid-to-late 2023, pushing installation and commissioning of Park City Wind from mid 2024-25 to early-mid 2025-26.
Meanwhile another harbor front neighbor of the ferry site, Bridgeport Boat Works, a shipyard operator located at 731 Seaview Ave., is looking to get into the offshore wind business with its own staging area.
In May U.S. Senators Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy and U.S. Rep. Jim Himes, all Democrats, signed a letter to the U.S. Maritime Administration in support of an effort by the city and Bridgeport Boat Works to obtain $11 million in federal aid to help fund “ground improvements and construction of a seawall and service dock to facilitate component transfers to offshore wind vessels, and related services.”
The letter does not mention Park City Wind by name, and Gilvarg was unable as of Friday to answer a question about whether Bridgeport Boat Works could be an alternative staging area. He did in an earlier email state, “AVANGRID is providing support to a local Bridgeport company, Bridgeport Boat Works, which has applied for federal infrastructure funding to enhance its ability to provide services to the offshore wind industry.”
Himes in an interview acknowledged the Park City Wind project is “absolutely slow going.”
“The amount of permitting and work — it’s a massive project with all kinds of potential pitfalls along the way,” he said. “(But) there’s only a couple of ports up and down the Northeast where you’ve got unobstructed access to Long Island Sound. Bridgeport is one of them. Bridgeport has a real competitive advantage.”
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