Across the Steelpointe Harbor redevelopment area, Bridgeport Boatworks offers a range of services including a fleet of marine travel lifts equipped to handle some of the largest vessels on the East Coast.
The developer that owns both properties Robert Christoph Jr. has worked with Boatworks officials to land a $10.5 grant from the federal Department of Transportation as a center for an offshore wind energy project.
CT Post reporter Brian Lockhart has more:
With an infusion of $10.5 million in federal dollars, the city and a private company on the harbor are aiming to make Bridgeport a hub for future offshore wind energy projects.
But the direct beneficiary of that federal aid is not Avangrid’s previously ballyhooed Park City Wind project, but instead local shipyard operator Bridgeport Boatworks.
This week members of Connecticut’s congressional delegation announced $17 million for improvements to Bridgeport’s and New London’s ports. According to the notice of grant award from the U.S. Department of Transportation, $10.5 million is headed to the Bridgeport Port Authority to design and build an “operations maintenance and wind port” that involves harbor dredging, the installation of bulkheads, a floating service dock and pads for cranes.
The grant award document made no mention of a specific site, but the congressional delegation’s press release named Bridgeport Boatworks along Seaview Avenue.
… “This investment in Bridgeport’s port infrastructure will help create hundreds of jobs in our region and generate millions in direct economic benefits,” said Robert Christoph Jr., the developer who owns the acreage where Boatworks is located. “This transformative grant award will help continue to unlock Bridgeport Harbor’s enormous untapped potential to serve as an economic hub for the region and the State of Connecticut.”
Full story here.
So, we’re going to be a major seaport again — even as we close-off a navigable, inland, Pequonnock River portion of the port that used to service many factories and warehouses (including Bridgeport Brass) on the river, almost all the way to Lindley Street/North Avenue in the River Street area… There are still factories — a steel plant — operating in that area, which area has many vacant parcels that can be reused for purposes where port access would be a big plus…
And just what description of port would we have? A general-service port that could help support a thriving, diverse economy? Or will we have a port with a large potion devoted to the non-productive, low-key entertainment/boat-docking activities that serve only Steele Point, and another large portion occupied by huge barges and huge wind-turbine components, with few people needed to operate the moving equipment and barges involved activities that will be scant jobs and revenue while occupying our harbor — crowding out other, more lucrative activities — even as we seal-off the important inland shipping channel of the Pequonnock River?!
And just who decided to do this to BridgePORT?! I don’t recall any announcement of proposals for such that — or announcements for required public hearings for such usage that would have allowed public approval or disapproval to for such option-limiting, restrictive-redesign of our harbor. Who asked Jim Himes to pursue an Army Corp of Engineers-mandated sealing-off of the Pequonnock…
Something smells like low-tide-around-the-sewage-treatment plant in Bridgeport in regard to the hijacking and radical circumcision of Bridgeport harbor…
A lot of short-sighted, self-serving politicians (not to be redundant) involved here… I wonder who they could be(?)… A mayor, a congressman, some CC members, some state reps/senators, some US senators — all willing to bypass the people in the hijacking/circumcision of our harbor for the sake of the promise of $/votes — reelection?! The latter should not be for such condescending, self-serving “servants of The People”…
So who gave the Harbor and the Pequonock River to the Christoph’s?
Here’s what you need to know: read this to discover the funny-shaped “boat-with-legs” that’s currently offshore Bridgeport. It’s needed to drill the underwater turbine pathway that’ll bring power to Eversources grid –>
https://westfaironline.com/energy/a-glimpse-of-clean-energys-future-docks-in-bridgeport/