New Haven Independent

State Department of Public Works Commissioner Raeanne Curtis said the ceremony would have to wait at least 15 days after the state Bond Commission approves the project for the money to be available.

Gov. M. Jodi Rell, Curtis, and other state education and public works officials traveled to the college’s Long Wharf campus to announce that the project is expected to clear its final hurdle, that approval by the Bond Commission. In a short press conference in the college’s library, Rell said the project is on the Bond Commission’s agenda for the last Friday in October.

“I expect to have approval,” Rell said.

She and New Haven Mayor John DeStefano Jr. lauded the state’s continued commitment to the project despite the state’s fiscal crisis. Click on the play arrow at the top of the story to watch their remarks.

The college expects the first students to arrive downtown in September 2012. Gateway will meld its Long Wharf and North Haven campuses at the downtown location. The automobile-education program will stay in North Haven.

Gateway President Dorsey Kendrick, shown introducing Rell, said before the governor’s arrival that the final approval would be a welcome step. Although the project is one of the most expensive in the state community college system, there never was any doubt that it would go forward, officials said many times during the past few months.

“Of course, the real payoff for taxpayers is all about three little words: jobs, jobs, jobs,” the governor said in prepared remarks.

The governor’s announcement was the first to nail down the expected cost of the project to $187,730,057. The cost always had been estimated, anywhere from $147 million to $198 million, because of the bidding process. Dimeo Construction is the general contractor, working for the state public works department.

The governor digressed from her prepared remarks to laughingly urge DeStefano and other local officials not to complain too much about the construction activity at the site of the four-story, 360,000 square-foot project. The school’s projected campus is bounded by Church, Temple Crown and George streets, all heavily traveled roads.

The campus will include a 600-car parking garage and will lease another 700 spaces at the nearby Temple Street Garage.

In fact, city and Dimeo officials will host a meeting Wednesday evening at 6:30 at the Omni Hotel at Yale on Temple Street, to lay out expected construction-related inconveniences and invite questions from people who live or travel in that area.

The new campus would be the state’s first gold certified Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) public building, according to the governor’s statement. “The LEED rating system is a voluntary standard for achieving the goal of producing a new generation of buildings that are energy efficient” with an environmentally friendly design and sustainable building construction, the statement said.