🔒New London’s $300M State Pier faces legal fights, federal pushback and uncertainty — could short-sea shipping be in its future?

The redevelopment of New London’s State Pier has been — by any estimation — a prolonged and controversial episode in Connecticut’s infrastructure history. The project was designed to turn the State Pier into a dedicated offshore wind hub, capable of staging and moving massive turbine components for East Coast projects. To achieve that, the work has included demolishing old warehouses, filling in part of the pier to create a larger, uniform platform, and upgrading its heavy-lift capacity. Billed as a once-in-a-generation transformation, it was originally slated in 2019 to be a $93 million project. In the years since, the cost has more than tripled, to more than $300 million. And the saga isn’t done yet, as the Port Authority faces off with Kiewit, the construction company that oversaw the project, over two alleged defects. The agency wants Kiewit to pay for the fixes, while the company is demanding an additional $35 million to carry them out. And yet — courtesy of the Trump administration — this already tortured story is to have one more twist. The pier was developed at the behest and partly at the expense of Danish wind power giant Ørsted, which chose New London as the perfect staging area for building out North Atlantic wind farms. In late August, with construction on its Revolution Wind offshore project 80% complete at State Pier, Ørsted was hit with a federal stop-work order citing unspecified national security concerns. The company promptly sued in federal court.

After a month-long pause, a court order has allowed Ørsted to resume work on the project while the underlying lawsuit proceeds. The dispute has cast uncertainty over the future of both Revolution Wind and Sunrise Wind, the follow-on project expected to keep State Pier active through 2027. So, if the Trump administration continues to put pressure on the entire offshore wind industry, what’s next for New London’s expensive piece of infrastructure? It’s a question that’s been on the mind of Michael O’Connor, executive director of the Connecticut Port Authority, since he took up his post earlier this year. He’s already got some ideas, including using the pier for short-sea shipping — a system that could shift freight off Connecticut’s highways and onto coastal routes. “This is not a conversation we’re having because wind got threatened,” O’Connor said in a recent interview. “We’re having this conversation because we can make better use of our coastline.”

‘A big advantage’

O’Connor took the Port Authority’s reins at the beginning of 2025. He arrived there after a 32-year career at Millstone Nuclear Power Station in Waterford, ending his stint as site vice president. He came to the Authority saying he wanted to bring some clarity of leadership to the institution, which has had its share of governance problems since its 2014 inception, even beyond the State Pier issues. Ørsted’s lease on State Pier runs through 2033. The original plan envisioned the company subletting the facility to other North Atlantic wind projects once its own were complete, keeping the 40-acre pier dedicated to offshore wind and positioning New London as a hub for the industry. On one level, O’Connor is looking on the bright side. Just a few days after the stop-work order on Revolution Wind, the Trump administration also canceled $680 million in grants to other ports in Massachusetts, Virginia, Maryland and New York that had been earmarked to develop similar wind farm staging projects. “So, there’s a lot of infrastructure that’s not going to be taken care of,” O’Connor commented at a recent Port Authority board meeting. “Our infrastructure is taken care of, so you might say we’ve got a big advantage if you’re going to continue to do the wind projects in the Northeast.” It’s a big if.

Ørsted and terminal operator Enstructure said it’s too early to discuss alternative uses for the State Pier. O’Connor said the facility’s long-term role remains undecided but argued that multiple uses would safeguard a revenue stream in the event that one customer has a seasonal lull, or runs into unexpected difficulties, as Ørsted has. One concept he’s advancing is short-sea shipping to ease freight congestion on state highways. “We’ve already been approached, earlier this year, by transport companies from as far away as Miami,” he said of businesses interested in the idea. However, critics charge that modifications made to accommodate Ørsted have reduced the pier’s flexibility for other uses. For example, to create space for staging large turbine components, eight acres of fill were added between two finger piers, but that eliminated room for additional deep-water docking. Rail tracks that once connected the pier to the Central New England Railroad were also removed to create more space. O’Connor said he doesn’t view these changes as limitations. “The State Pier’s construction lets it do anything,” he said. “The way that the pier is situated, you can bring a motor vessel in here that can drop a ramp and roll stuff off of it; containers is an option.”

‘Promising plan’

In fact, his broader vision of using Connecticut’s maritime infrastructure to take the strain off I-95 aligns with a long-standing federal priority. As far back as 2010, the stretch of water from the East River in New York, through Long Island Sound into Block Island Sound was designated as a Marine Highway M-295, with the potential for both passenger and freight transportation.

“I think that’s a promising plan,” said Cuihong Li, a supply chain management expert and head of the Operations and Information Management Department at the UConn School of Business. “But it requires careful evaluation to weigh its costs and benefits.” Li sees potential for short-sea shipping routes from major New Jersey ports where overseas goods arrive. Those shipments now move north on I-95, but she said sending them by sea could cut costs and ease highway congestion. The trade-off is slower delivery, but for customers who can plan ahead and don’t need overnight service, Li said it could be worthwhile. “You probably need to adapt the pier to make it useful for this kind of short-sea shipping,” she warns. The pier could handle goods such as vehicles or lumber that can be stored in open space, which Li thinks might be the most viable alternate use, while container shipping would require ship-to-shore cranes and designated stacking yards. One of the biggest hurdles to such a plan could be the amount of coordination required. “It’s not just what happens at this single port, it’s also what happens at other ports, to have the flow right through the entire system,” Li said. “It needs a coordinated effort.” And that includes buy-in and investment from the customers who will ship their merchandise this way, who may need to build infrastructure around the State Pier and other ports to receive goods.

Unpredictable timing

O’Connor, meanwhile, is pressing Connecticut’s congressional delegation to secure Army Corps of Engineers dredging projects to improve inland routes such as the Connecticut and Thames rivers. He said upgrading those and other waterways would help create a broader water transportation network linking towns like Naugatuck and Norwich to the marine highway. There’s a wide range of customers O’Connor can imagine for freight arriving at the State Pier. “There’s ten Walmarts within an hour drive of State Pier,” he said. “How come Walmart’s not just shipping everything to the State Pier from wherever it comes from and have a truck go pick it up and drive it over to that place within an hour?” But the kinds of discussions he’s having in theory would involve setting aside space and having a commitment to use the facility for an extended period — perhaps over a decade or more. “For somebody to come in here and utilize any piece of infrastructure anywhere in the state of Connecticut, they need to know, when is it available, how long can I use it for?” he said. “That’s what people are asking for in order to become part of the community — to establish a shipping route, to then divert your truck traffic from here to there.”