New Haven Independent

Posted by: Taxed To Death | August 3, 2007 4:41 PM

Tit for tat...and more of that....Is anyone surprised at this? Not I said the cat in the hat as he watche the city staff blame the state, its favorite vilan for all matters on development, high property taxes and whatnot. It's always THE STATE...

Just a quickie: Why are we rebuilding a tunnel anyway? Do we need it? Especially if it's below the water table? And um...I'd like to know where the money is coming from too -- $5 million -- ouch, can anybody say BORROW? Put low income housing in there and let HANH pay for it! No, no...use the SURPLUS! ooops..we'll need it for this year to cover the expenses we delayed paying last year so we could report a million dollar surplus. Oh well..back to the drawing board..But folks...grab your wallet with both hands. The DeStefanatti are on the loose with another idea.

Posted by: TGunn | August 3, 2007 5:16 PM

Gilbane is the state's construction selection? I don't think so. Look a little closer. The city is in deep with Gilbane, and former development people now work for Gilbane. By the way the tunnel is under about six feet of water, and the pumping system is done. It wasn't placed in the cost, but the city knew of the mess from the colesium project for the past two years.

Posted by: Our Town | August 3, 2007 5:36 PM

Can the fates be with us....please, please do not let us waste this ultimate of prime commercial space on a community college that could be anywhere. Mr. Becker do you, perchance, have a colleague or two looking for a site?

Posted by: Esbe | August 3, 2007 5:59 PM

Hey, Mr. Whiny State Bureaucrat -- if you are in the mood to explain to the Governor that your ever-escalating demands on the city have rendered the Gateway project "not viable", then please do so.

The city can then jointly market the Macy's, Malley's & Coliseum sites for major private development. Heck, we already paid for the demolition. The owner of 300 George St. wants a lot alongside Rte. 34 to develop biotech space. Give him the Malley's lot. A combined housing / office / retail high-rise could go on the Macy's lot. The city wins!

Kind of rotten for those hard-working Gateway students, though.

Posted by: Please Stop | August 3, 2007 6:03 PM

Get real. A State Commissioner is reprimanding people? DOT can't build a storm drain on I-84 without someone going to jail. Someone on the state construction staff gets indicted every other year. When has DPW been on time on any single project?

Prime commercial real estate Our Town? Get real!!!

Colleges have been pretty successful in downtown New Haven for a couple hundred years -- in fact they are one of the only economic engines left. Maybe we should plow under Yale's Old Campus since that's a great location with way less density of buildings despite serving fewer students. Yale College = 5300 students; Gateway = 11,000 students. Certainly 10 blocks to serve half the students as one block (two half blocks) does not make a lot of sense (insert sarcasm here). Where are all the grumpy "mixed use" advocates when it comes to Yale?

A downtown college for regular folks is a great idea and will bring thousands of students and hundreds of faculty and staff downtown. What other company with hundreds of staff has located in downtown New Haven in the last decade? Not to mention that it will make for safer streets after 5 pm.

Just tired of people thinking there is only one class of people who make for "real" economic development. Yeah despite rebuilding most of downtown as a diverse place after repeated attempts to gentrify, some people still think New Haven will only succeed when we get all those out of towners to spend their money here -- guess what -- more out of towners do now that those silly policies have been (mostly) abandoned and downtown has become diverse and interesting.

Posted by: Esbe | August 3, 2007 6:22 PM

Oh, and by the way: why do we need the Malley's lot for Biotech space? Because our "representatives" in Hartford, State Sen. Toni Harp and Rep. Pat Dillon grabbed a more suitable lot away from the city in a last-minute legislative maneuver designed to ensure free parking for workers at CMHC. Because we all know that free parking for a group of state employees is much more important than the economic development of the city and region.

Read about it in the Rag
here and here

Posted by: James M. | August 4, 2007 6:15 PM

The DOT comment above is gratuitous.

An equivalent comment would be:

"Who is DeStefano to run anything? His Police Department was obscenely corrupt for decades and he didn't even know it."

As far as DPW projects being "delayed" see above for several of the typical reasons why. Given the overall "performance" of the City's team on the Coliseum, I tend to concur with Fleming in this case.

Posted by: nfjanette | August 5, 2007 12:34 AM

A downtown college for regular folks is a great idea and will bring thousands of students and hundreds of faculty and staff downtown.

A downtown that can't handle the current volume of traffic very well.

Posted by: Taxed To Death | August 5, 2007 6:47 AM

You know folks, this tit for tat that always happens when Kelly Murphy and John DeStefano don't get their way, or somebody tries to hold them accountable is just sad. It's very interesting to compare the city's relationship and execution of the this deal, with the Becker deal. They really wanted the Becker deal..and they gave away the store and our money to get it done. Everybody's happy. On this site, Kelly-DeStefano are singing a different tune from Becker; the same is true on the Lot E with YNHH, a site where if you're going to put housing in the middle of the hottest smog zone in the city, it will only be subsidized because paying people are not going to pay big money to live in that area, on the outside of a parking garage.

Posters noting that this is a waste of good development land are absolutely correct. In DeStefano's head of pin dance telling us all how we should enjoy paying a record increase in spending this year to "protect our values" his routine regularly mentioned the problems of having all the non-profits in New Haven. He also says we need a Shartenburg/Becker deal every year with high density. He says he wants a greener city and more bicycles and pedestrians and that's why Becker can build a third less parking spaces than what the development needs.

So what does he do? He tears down a coliseum we haven't finished paying for; he turns it into a parking lot with plans to use that site and all the rest of it for a non-profit Gateway Community College, paying no property taxes; wants to borrow another $5 million to rebuild a tunnel for some reason nobody has explained; He takes more property on College Street in the middle of a bunch of bars and nightspots, that will also pay no property tax.

Perhaps we should just call him Mayor Flip Flop.

Posted by: bugupit | August 5, 2007 1:33 PM

My guess is the City does not have the $5 million, and if they have a source in mind they would rather not commit it. Most likely, while one office talks drags out responding to DPW and naming the source ($5m is $5m when you are just asked to name your source, nevermind disputes over a portion of the specs) ANOTHER City office is working on getting the $5 from... anyone? anyone? ... THE STATE, that's right! Standard Operating Procedure. --------- About dedicating the site to the community college, Macy's and Malley's have been marketed to commercial developers by Bialecki since the 1990's. The CITY LOBBIED the State to bring the College downtown. ------ City State relations are breaking down over several development initiatives. Even legislators are at times siding with the State. Who is managing this at City Hall? With Flemming and DPW opening another front, it is clear, DeStefano, Murphy and perhaps a couple of others need to sit down for some long talks with Rell and several of her department heads. Our question should be, how will the best interests of New Haven resident taxpayers be represented at that table?

Posted by: Bruce | August 6, 2007 9:02 AM

Our Town: people often overlook the fact that moving Gateway will open up prime Long Wharf real estate with immediate access to I-95. Ikea was so intent on opening on that strip that they tore down half of a historical building in order to make room. I suppose other large retailers or maybe manufacturers would also see the value in this property. In the long run this might be more valuable than developing residential properties downtown -- creating jobs and tax revenue without additional burden on our schools etc.

Posted by: pedro | August 6, 2007 9:34 AM

Just to follow up on Bruce's point: the moving of Gateway and Long-Wharf and the possible move of the Food Terminal opens up tremendous retail opportunity for New Haven. IKEA in almost every location looks for buildable lots in their immediate vicinity on which to develop more retail. An optimal solution would be to pair this with downtown retail, however having two downtown campuses (with their attendant retail of restaurants and other services), Long Wharf theater downtown and a thriving retail strip along I-95 certainly doesn't sound like a bad future.

Posted by: Esbe | August 6, 2007 4:49 PM

I understand the arguments for putting Gateway downtown, but I still don't think that it is OK for the State to act like it is doing a New Haven a huge favor by taking up all that potentially taxable land to house a regional college. This is a state college and the state ought to pay for it and stop trying to force expenses back on the city. The head of DPW can't really be surprised to learn that finding more asbestos than expected tends to delay a project.

Posted by: Taxed To Death | August 7, 2007 12:03 AM

BugUpIt: I agree with you. Nobody is pulling it together and formulating a cohesive policy on any of these development projects. There doesn't seem to be a master plan for how all these individual parcels fit together to form a bulwork of taxpaying development.

As for state commissioners: When it's state money, guess who gets to call the shots. Reality is we don't even generate 50% of our operating expense in the City of New Haven. We are dependent on the state handouts. The only way those are gong to continue, is to keep building public schools with state money; move Gateway with state money, probably move Long Wharf with state money too.

Re: Long Wharf area becoming retail -- possible, may even be likely. It's pretty far away. Further, I seriously doubt anybody connected to City Hall has even invisioned that possibility. I do believe there will never be any serious manufacturing on this site. DeStefano has run every manufacturer out of New Haven with all matter of taxes and an extraordinary cost of doing business. Real job growth has been anemic for at least a decade. So, don't count on that aspect to bail out a tax and development policy that keeps putting cars and traffic in a downtown and nothing but wall to wall non-profits that pay less than market rate in property taxes.