Thomas Breen photos
UI Project Manager Shawn Crosbie answers neighbors’ questions.
The decommissioned 4 kV subtation at 88 Olive.
United Illuminating plans to knock down a decommissioned Olive Street electric substation and leave a vacant lot at the heart of Wooster Square in order to reduce its local property tax burden and cut down on security costs.
A project manager and a community outreach manager for the Orange-based utility company admitted as much Tuesday night during a presentation at the Downtown-Wooster Square Community Management Team’s (DWSCMT) regular monthly meeting on the second floor of City Hall.
UI Project Manager Shawn Crosbie and Public Outreach Manager Samantha Marone told neighbors that UI plans to demolish the decommissioned 4 kV substation at 88 Olive St. starting on June 17. The demolition should take six to eight weeks.
The company doesn’t currently have any concrete plans to sell the property or use it in any other way, they said. For the foreseeable future, it would remain a vacant, fence-enclosed lot. (UI made a similar presentation to the management team nearly three years ago, according to this New Haven Register article. At that meeting, UI’s reps said they planned to market and sell the property after demolishing the building.)
Tuesday night’s community management team meeting.
When pressed by neighbors Tuesday night as to why UI plans to knock down the industrial building if it is still structurally sound, Crosbie and Marone said the demolition plans are guided by “corporate strategy.”
“Ratepayers would be paying to maintain that building,” Marone said. “It’s no longer being used. It has no useful life. And we need to create a situation where it’s the least cost for our ratepayers.”
Crosbie emphasized that, as long as the vacant building remains on the lot, either UI has to pay for regular security of the premises or it becomes a liability for squatting and illicit use.
Wooster Square resident Henry Auer.
“Is there any indication for what plans there are for the property once the building is gone?” Wooster Square neighbor Henry Auer asked.
“It would be a vacant lot with a fence around the perimeter,” Crosbie said.
“So it really looks like it’s a matter of removing a tax liability,” Auer replied.
“That would be a logical statement,” Crosbie said.
The city last appraised the property at a value of $297,500, according to the city assessor’s database. This fiscal year the utility company paid a total of $8,950.60 in municipal property taxes for the parcel.
LCI Neighborhood Specialist Carmen Mendez.
Livable City Initiative (LCI) Neighborhood Specialist Carmen Mendez asked if UI plans to do any environmental clean-up at the property as part of the demolition project.
“We will be removing some of the soil around the foundation of the building” and will dispose of that soil off-site, Crosbie responded. But, as of now, the company does not plan any more extensive environmental remediation for the property.
“Is it a brownfield site?” Auer asked.
No, Crosbie replied.
Wooster Square neighbors Anstress Farwell and Ian Dunn.
“Do you know that the building is clean?” Wooster Square neighbor Ian Dunn followed up. If the low-voltage substation had an active electrical transformer in place prior to the 1980s, then the property is almost certainly contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), he said.
Crosbie said that UI fully abated the 88 Olive St. property of all asbestos hazards several years ago. He said he’d be happy to share a report on the property’s environmental remediation history with the group at a later date.
“I don’t understand why you wouldn’t just sell the building” rather than demolish it and leave the site vacant, Dunn said.
“We’re following protocol that has been given to us,” Marone replied.
UI spokesperson Ed Crowder told the Independent after the meeting that the electric company took the Olive Street substation out of service in 2013.
“We performed some environmental abatement work at the site in the 2016 – 2017 time frame, in preparation for demolition,” he said. “When demolition is complete, the site will be suitable for future use consistent with its zoning.”
He reiterated that UI does not yet have any definite plans for the disposition of the property. When asked about the specific type of environmental remediation done at the site, he replied, “just building hazmat abatement” and that “materials” were removed in anticipation of demolition.
New Haven Urban Design League Founder Anstress Farwell asked the UI representatives to delay the scheduled demolition past the planned June 17 start date and to come back to present to the group at a special meeting within two weeks. The building, though not on the national historic registry, is in a historic district, she said, and the neighbors deserve an opportunity to engage with the electric company in a robust conversation about whether or not demolition is the best, and only, option.
“This seems like a corporate bulldozer heading down the street that will not be stopped,” Wooster Square resident Steve Hamm said to Marone and Crosbie. “I just wonder if that’s the way you want to associate with this neighborhood?”
Crosbie and Marone declined to commit to delaying the demolition date, though they said they would consider it. They asked the group to send along detailed follow-up questions via email so that UI could have the appropriate people on hand to answer questions at a subsequent community meeting.
Urban planner James Kunstler addresses this problem in his 1996 book, "Home from Nowhere." Under the present tax system, property owners like UI are simply acting in self interest, leaving empty lots festering in prime real estate.
Kunstler suggests that cities tax site value instead of the value of structures. The more desirable the site (e.g., close to the center of town or convenient to mass transit), the higher the tax is on the property -- whether anything is built on it or not. So this encourages landowners to develop vacant lots and put up structures built to last. Surface parking lots owned by land speculators in prime real estate would disappear.
Under Kunstler's plan, affordable apartments would thrive in cities, improving their availability, lowering rents, and increasing the density of livable, vital urban areas. Site-based taxation is a more equitable plan -- homeowners aren't penalized for improving their property.
The daunting problem is finding politicians (and citizens) with the courage to tear apart the existing tax structure and risk trying something completely new -- no matter how much sense it makes.