Land acquisition issues have caused the Stamford Urban Transitway project to put off construction work on the road until next year.
“We”™re in the right of way acquisition phase, which typically takes awhile,” said Ann Brown, project manager for the SUT, which is intended to ease the accessibility to the transportation center in Stamford. She said the process must wait while property owners take time to consider offers and get appraisals.
The city is also required to meet a federal mandate to help displaced property owners relocate homes or businesses.
The project, being funded through the Federal Transit Administration and the city of Stamford, is a one-mile long facility intended to provide direct connection to the transportation center south of the railroad tracks, including travel lanes, high occupancy vehicle lanes, bus priority, traffic signals, bicycle lanes, sidewalks and landscaping.
Rachel Goldberg, counsel for the city who is handling the right of way acquisition negotiations, said this portion of the project will require the acquisition of five properties on Elm Street and Myrtle Avenue. She said the majority of land purchases do not involve entire lots, but smaller patches of land needed to widen the road.
Brown said efforts to buy properties and relocate property owners should be finished by the fall, allowing demolition of buildings and proposals to be made for roadwork.
She said work on the second phase of the project, which was scheduled to be done this fall and is projected to cost $58 million, will begin at the start of 2012.
The $68.1 million first phase of the project was finished in December 2010, missing its expected completion date of October 2009.
After the major delays in the first stage, Stamford Mayor Mike Pavia requested greater efficiencies in city construction project deadlines, as well as the streamlining of the procedures that surround them. Fred Flynn, the city director of administration, will in the next month give the results of his review of the first phase of the project to the City”™s Board of Finance.
