To be fair, the controversial, scandal-prone, grossly mismanaged renovation of New London’s State Pier into a wind construction hub, with massive overruns pushing the cost to more than $310 million, does not exactly meet the definition of an architectural folly.

That would be something built intentionally as a ruin, that has no other use than ornamental, something created to look like it once had a purpose and then fell into disuse.

The state-rebuilt pier has indeed been put to some use for offshore wind construction, as intended. There are currently some wind turbine parts being moved through the port, but there’s only one more project scheduled to use it.

The long-term future use of the port for offshore wind use began to seem dubious when Gov. Ned Lamont chose earlier this year not to jump in with Rhode Island and Massachusetts in the last round of bidding for wind energy purchases, suggesting the price was too high.

The foreign wind companies have said they need more federal subsidies to make the offshore endeavors less costly.

It now looks like that certainly is not going to happen with Donald Trump in the White House.

Rather than more subsidies I would expect to see a lot of obstruction from the federal government, and that’s not promising for the wind merchants.

“We are going to make sure that ends on day one,” Trump said about offshore wind, while on the campaign trail last spring.

The Danish utility Ørsted, which contributed a small share of the massive costs of State Pier, has a long lease for its use for offshore wind and a deal to contribute fees to New London while it deploys at the pier.

But Ørsted didn’t get any takers for its latest offer for offshore wind contracts. Its stock fell 14% the day after Trump was elected.

I would bet it would be more likely in the near future to see federal assistance for transgender surgeries than subsidies for offshore wind.

State Pier was never needed for the development of offshore wind in the Northeast. The same work can be done in other places.

The notion that Connecticut will become some kind of wind turbine manufacturing hub is still being pushed by Lamont, although the idea is more absurd than it ever was. He’s even investing in the fantasy, putting money into a nonprofit to promote wind work manufacturing here. The nonprofit organized a junket touring facilities in Europe. I hope the taxpayer-funded trip was at least fun.

Maybe the whole pier project, carried out with multiple scandals involving big contracts that went to Democratic insiders, all in the name of an expensive, unpopular industry dominated by foreign interests, is a good example of why Democrats failed so miserably in the election.

State Pier may not have been built without a purpose, like a real architectural folly, but it looks like it may age as one, a modern industrial ruin.

It does most certainly meet the other dictionary definition of folly as foolishness.

I know Lamont’s pier defenders will say it can be repurposed back into use for traditional cargo. They are already starting to deploy that argument, to excuse the terrible waste of money at the pier, chasing wind turbines.

But way less money could have been spent for modern improvements to the historic port, with its previous design of double piers connected to rail lines, more useful for classic shipping.

I can’t help but think of all the ways the governor could have spent a couple of hundred million borrowed state dollars in the New London region.

One much better project that comes to mind is the National Coast Guard Museum, which sure looks to be at risk for lack of funding. I don’t have enough fingers on my hands to keep track of all the schedule delays.

Even the latest round of $50 million in federal funding secured by Sen. Chris Murphy is not enough to finish the job, by the museum’s own recent public reckoning.

Indeed, they say they are still $50 million short of the final cost, a little more than they’ve been able to raise themselves after many years of trying.

And as much as I enjoyed the spectacle of Murphy pulling that $50 million out of the federal budget hat, it wasn’t nearly enough to finish the project.

And I am pretty sure he won’t be able to pull off that trick again, in Trump’s Washington.

This is the opinion of David Collins.

d.collins@theday.com