City officials in Meriden, Conn. are seeking confirmation from the state's Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) office that its funding to replace a twin bridge project will not be cancelled, the Record-Journal reported July 28, 2025.
"If the grant got cut off, we would have to find additional money to finish Phase I," Brian Daniels, Meriden's city manager, recently told members of the town's Senior Center Building Committee. "We have sent a letter to FEMA asking them to confirm we are not going to get cancelled."
The federal agency shut off its funding stream in April of 2025, a move that left the city scrambling to complete the work on two bridges.
"We are halfway through that project," Daniels said. "We have to finish that bridge replacement."
Meriden was set to receive Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) monies for its Cedar Street and Center Street bridges. However, FEMA eliminated the program in the spring and put several other emergency programs on life support.
BRIC funding is used by municipalities across the New England state to mitigate the impact of potentially disastrous floods.
State Attorney General William Tong said during a recent news conference in Stamford that Connecticut and 19 other states are filing suit in federal court over the loss of funding through the program.
"For more than 30 years, states and municipalities have depended on BRIC funding, and Connecticut is no different," he said at the briefing. "And now $84 million has been cut, starting in April."
At a separate news conference in Hartford, Meriden Mayor Kevin Scarpati was joined by U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal to address the funding loss.
Scarpati noted that Meriden had spent the past decade working with federal and state governments to address its flooding issues, primarily along Harbor Brook in the city center. He added that the bridge projects are not only making the city more flood resilient, but more attractive to people looking to move to Meriden and open businesses.
"We have a project that is going on right now that is in jeopardy of coming to fruition and finishing," Scarpati explained at the news conference. "We literally have shovels in the ground today. We have excavators on site for two bridges that need to be torn down, widened and rebuilt."
He added that one bridge has already been demolished and needs to be rebuilt. The two-year project started only seven months ago, the Record-Journal said, but local officials have now been told they must finish work at the site in August.
"We are relying on funds from FEMA … to continue this project, funds we've already been awarded," he said.
If Meriden is not able to receive the federal money, the city will have to turn to its taxpayers to cover the cost of that project and the two or three flood control projects that go with it.
Daniels told the local building committee members that the city is working with Meriden-based LaRosa Construction to ensure that money does not interfere with finishing the project's first phase, even if that means putting it into the city's capital improvement budget in the future.
The initial component of the construction is not expected to be finished until either late 2026 or early 2027, according to the Meriden news source.
"We're going to have to see how it plays out," Daniels said. "We have gotten our entire [federal] grant money for the project."
New Senior Center, HHS Renovation Also Planned
As of late July, the city was still waiting on a grant application that it sent to the state to pay for work to deepen and widen the Harbor Brook channels.
Eventually, Meriden hopes to truck the dirt from the waterway's channels to 116 Cook Ave. to raise that lot's elevation. A new senior center is planned for the site, but design and construction work cannot begin until the channel and dredging work are complete.
The Record-Journal reported that the city initially planned to build a new health department along with the senior center on Cook Avenue, but municipal officials agreed to separate the two projects and renovate the existing health department at 165 Miller St.
Approximately 20 prospective architectural bidders recently walked through Meriden's two-story Health & Human Services (HHS) building to assess the rehabilitation project ahead of the city choosing a designer by Aug. 15 to recommend to the state. The selected architect will then work on plans that will accompany a Community Investment Fund grant application before a Dec. 5 deadline.
The Meriden Board of Education intends to relocate its Success Academy alternative high school program to the HHS building's second level, which would translate into a 70 percent reimbursement on that part of the overall project.
