Paul Bass Photo
Victors O’Brien & Salinas after Friday’s vote.
The city has chosen homegrown New Haven tech over national big-box retail in selecting a developer for a 6.95-acre property that used to house a state bus depot.
The choice was made Friday afternoon in a fifth-floor City Hall conference room.
There, a seven-member committee unanimously voted to name a partnership between two city entrepreneurs — David Salinas and Eric O’Brien — to become the preferred developer to purchase and remake the property at 470 James St. into a $20 million technology incubator center along with an expanded home for a CrossFit gym as well as a kayak launch and riverfront beer garden and bakery run by Caseus’s Jason Sobocinski, featuring suds from his Black Hog craft brewery. A local start-up investment fund called Launch Capital, co-founded by a Yale School of Management graduate named Elon Boms, has committed to renting 5,000 square feet.
Working title for the project: “DISTRICT.”
Salinas runs Digital Surgeons, the city’s fast-growing digital marketing company along with co-founder Peter Sena. O’Brien runs a local CrossFit gym and has been buying, selling, and renovating housing in the city for 20 years.
Both of their businesses are currently housed across the street from 470 James inside a former trolley storage building and Robby Lens swimwear factory at 1175 State St. Both said they plan to expand their businesses in the new location. They also said they have commitments from enough tenants already to fill 73 percent of the building. They said that three different banks have agreed to finance the deal; they just have choose one.
The operator of another fast-growing New Haven tech company, Ben Berkowitz of SeeClickFix, said Friday he has also expressed interest in moving in to the development if it can be completed within 18 months to two years. Berkowitz said his company is outgrowing its space on Chapel Street, with not enough room left there to fill.
“It’s really exciting,” Berkowitz said of the Salinas‑O’Brien project. Noting the pending arrival of Alexion Pharmaceuticals in town in a new 13-story downtown building, among other tech growth, Berkowitz remarked, “It feels like we’re on the cusp of something.”
The man who owns that 1175 State St. building, deep-pocketed New York developer Jason Carter, competed with the Salinas‑O’Brien team to purchase 470 James. (He had refused to renew their leases at 1175 State.) Carter proposed putting in a 50,000 to 60,000 square-foot supermarket with a 450-space parking garage. On Friday before the decision, Carter said he has “spoken with some larger employers who have a national presence,” including Wegman’s and Trader Joe’s. He wouldn’t proceed with the project until he gets a signed lease with one of them, he said.
Committee members said they chose the Salinas‑O’Brien team because the members were local; because they had tenants lined up, also local entrepreneurs looking to grow; and because financing was in place.
Also, their plan represented New Haven’s current development vision, which emphasizes entrepreneurship and mixed-use neighborhoods geared to biking and walking, as opposed to suburban-style big retail.
City Economic Development Administrator Matthew Nemerson noted that in two weeks the long-closed State Street Bridge will open, linking the project to the new market-rate apartments under construction at the former Star Supply factory on the other side. He sees a hot new-economy, new urbanist district developing where people walk to tech jobs that wouldn’t fit with a suburban-style big-box store and garage.
He called the emerging district “our Brooklyn — I know I’m not supposed to say that … our New Haven” technology and residential area.
Lemar with Sullivan after the vote.
“We chose New Haven over a supermarket,” State Rep. Roland Lemar, another committee member, said after the vote. “Everything about that [Salinas‑O’Brien] proposal only happens here.
“It’s exciting to think of national retailers coming to New Haven. It’s more exciting to build off the assets that we’ve got.”
The Sailnas‑O’Brien team’s preferred developer status is set for three months. During that time it is to negotiate a memorandum of understanding with the city about terms of the deal. It must also negotiate with the state, which owns the property and will sell it either directly to the developers or through the city. The state has also promised to pay to help clean up pollution on the site, which the state caused when it used it as a bus depot.
The clean-up is estimated to cost between $3.5 and $5.5 million. The state has not committed to how much it will contribute.
“We’re excited about the project,” state Department of Economic and Community Development Deputy Commissioner Tim Sullivan (pictured) said after the vote. “The financial elements very much remain to be worked out.”
Displeased
Carter at the vote.
The two development teams vied to buy and redevelop the 195,000-square-foot building (pictured) and surrounding 6.95-acre land at 470 James St., a former CT Transit facility, at the gateway of Fair Haven’s emerging Mill River industrial/commercial district.
The teams made their pitches on City Hall’s fifth floor Friday to the seven-member review committee. Each team got 30 minutes Friday to present its proposal, followed by up to an hour of questions. Then the committee deliberated. All that took place in executive session.
Then at 2:45 p.m. committee members opened the doors to vote, at least, in public.
Committee members included Pedro Soto (the chair) of Space-Craft Manufacturing, City Plan Director Karyn Gilvarg, Nemerson, Sullivan, East Rock Alder Jessica Holmes, Lemar, and neighbor Deborah Rossi.
Svigals + Partners
Both development teams promised to feature access to the Mill River through a kayak launch. Both also planned to tear down the maintenance shed on the western end of the property while keeping and renovating the main building.
Besides that, the two proposals offered two different visions — a big-box supermarket versus a “cool space” incubation hub for “a new generation of makers — along with two kinds of developers.
Svigals + Partners
Carter’s plan.
Carter runs the Manhattan-based real-estate firm Carter Management Company, which has “newly constructed, rehabilitated and restored over twenty buildings throughout Manhattan,” according to its website. It states that Carter has “owned, built and managed a billion dollars of Manhattan real estate since 1978.” Through a limited liability corporation called Cultural Enrichment, Carter purchased the vacant former bank building at the corner of Church and Center streets for $1.65 million two months ago.
After the vote, Carter sounded less optimistic than before about his future in New Haven.
In fact, for the first time he spoke openly about selling the 1175 State St. complex, where he had promised to invest in a $20 million to $30 million upgrade. He said he’d like to land a 50,000 to 60,000 square-foot restaurant/entertainment tenant there. But if he doesn’t find a strong tenant within “a few more months” he will “put it up for sale.”
Same with the Church and Center building — he’ll look to unload it if the city doesn’t “find a good use for it” within a year.
Svigals + Partners
Carter’s plan.
Carter’s local support team for the 470 James proposal included Svigals + Partners architects from Orange St., represented at Friday’s City Hall review by partner Jay Brotman; and New Haven attorney James Segaloff.
Nemerson shrugged off Carter’s remarks. He said he looks forward to discussing ways to keep his projects going, including finding additional parking Carter said he needs to support 1175 State.
“We’ll work with him on Monday,” Nemerson said.
And if Carter walks?
“I have a list of people from northern Jersey to north of Cambridge saying, ‘What sites do you have for me?’ People want to buy in. I have people wanting to build on 50-acre sites.”
Years ago New Haven might not have had two viable developers clamoring to build on a site like 470 James. In fact, the state tried to sell it, and failed.
“It’s a testament to the direction the city’s going that we have two proposals as strong as these are, ” Soto remarked.
David Salinas
The Digital Surgeons-CrossFit team’s proposal submitted to the city promised to preserve and renovate 100,000 of the current building’s current 195,000 square feet to create “a unique and functional campus where forward thinking individuals/companies of any size can collaborate and grow.” The team also said it will build a “cool” new 5,000 square-foot incubator, a “‘placemaker’ workspace (incubator and maker-space) … to provide entrepreneurs interested in making conceptual and physical goods access to office space, manufacturing/tech equipment, training, funding potential, and other resources to reduce the exposure to excessive up-front capital expenditures that could stifle their development.
David Salinas
“Axial to this cool space is the main building with a central atrium. Windows and skylights abound allow for natural light to fill the work spaces, providing a creative, nurturing atmosphere. Directly attached to the western side of the building is a bistro style restaurant that acts as a focal point to connect the main building with the grounds. Public access to the Mill River Trail is enhanced by a river walk garden and kayak launch that promote the aesthetics of the area. Incorporating an amphitheater will allow for educational, inspirational and entertaining events for the local community and visitors alike.”
Besides running two CrossFit gyms (one in Rhode Island), partner O’Brien said, he has bought and sold over 70 units of housing in New Haven, including overseeing many condo conversions.
He said he has experience with a project bigger than the one he and Salinas are taking on now: He designed and oversaw the construction of a 100,000-square-foot production facility and visitor center for Woodchuck Cider, a Middlebury, Vermont, company he had co-owned and then sold.
Sounds promising. And this:
"City Economic Development Administrator Matthew Nemerson noted that in two weeks the long-closed State Street Bridge will open."
I think that's called 'burying the lede', NHI.