New Haven Independent

Long Wharf will share 4.5 total acres - soon to be occupied by temporary parking where the Coliseum stood until its demolition this past January.

Sharing with whom? To find out, the city’s office of economic development’s Tony Bialecki said, in an update on the Gateway Downtown Development Project, that a “Request for Qualification” (RFQ) will be sent out to developers in December soliciting general plans for development of the entire Coliseum site, which also includes a 1.5 acre plot along George, and a small half-acre plot behind the Knights of Columbus. The RFQ will be coordinated with and include Long Wharf’s memorandum.

Parking

Reporting to the Development Commission at City Hall Tuesday, Bialecki said that the RFQ is just the beginning of the process to involve developers. In the meantime, the site has been leased to ProPark to operate the 300-plus spaces of temporary parking on a year-to-year basis. ProPark’s proposal beat out three others, including the New Haven Parking Authority. ProPark’s proposal provided the most revenue to the city — $6,000 in the first year, then $40,000 $50,000 and then $60,000 in the fourth year, if it goes on that long. The lot should be open by Dec. 1; before that Orange Street should have its signals made operable and be reopened from George south to Frontage.

Shartenberg
“This is all very convenient,” Bialecki added, “because Becker and Becker [developers of the Shartenberg site on which ProPark now sits] have just received their approvals and asked for access to the site so they can begin their foundation work. So the thought is by Dec. 1, ProPark can move some of those parkers over to the Coliseum site.”

Gateway Community College
At the old Macy’s site, legal and land transfer work are moving apace so that foundation work on the garage — an interior garage around which the college will wrap — can begin as early as the spring, Bialecki said. What’s exciting, he suggested, is that the design has changed so that the school is now pursuing a “gold” level rating, that is, the highest LEED certification.

New Business: 40 Elm, Lot O, Lot N

The Elm Garage, which is this lot sitting on 40 Elm, between Orange and State, may in the years ahead not be there. And the 1816 Greek Revival building (which houses Community Mediation) adjacent might have a new neighbor with whom to share the sunlight: a mixed retail-residential structure.

This site, along with two smaller, unsurfaced, dirt lots — Lot O is across State Street from the Knights of Columbus museum and Lot N is a sliver on State at Chapel — have attracted developers’ interest in the form of RFQs that have recently been received. Those firms submitting are two locals, Olympia Properties/Jonathan Rose and Hudson-Wareck, and Poko Partners of Norwalk.

The RFQ establishes the companies’ bonafides such as their boards and general financial reliability and the beginnings of proposal concepts. The submissions are the beginning of the development conversation, says Bialecki. This is how, for example, the Shartenberg project evolved. The general idea for these three sites appears to be mixed use, with retail on the lower levels and office and residential on the upper levels.

Bialecki added that an informal, ad hoc committee is in formation to review the RFQs. The committee includes City Plan’s Karyn Gilvarg, Traffic and Parking’s Mike Piscitelli, Economic Development’s Kelly Murphy, Alders Bitsie Clark and Michael Smart. The next step is for the committee to interview the developers, which will take place next month. Stay tuned.