Robert A.M. Stern Architects
City Hall got an early holiday present in the form of a larger-than-expected fee bounty for the construction of Yale’s new residential colleges.
The city’s building official, Daniel O’Neill, earlier this month OK’d a permit for the construction of the colleges on Sachem Street. (Pictured: A preliminary architectural sketch.)
Yale listed the construction cost as $279,532,522, according to the permit. The listed fee paid was $7,621,277.24.
The fee was a windfall for city coffers. The city had projected it would receive a total of $10 million in permit fees this year. The Yale fees puts this year’s receipts already at $11.5 million — and the second quarter hasn’t even ended yet.
City budget chief Joe Clerkin said the Harp administration originally projected receiving $8 million in permit fees for the year when it submitted the proposed budget last spring. (In the previous fiscal year the city had projected collecting $9 million in fees, but only $7.8 million came in.) That estimate did not include fees from Yale, since the Yale residential college plan had been on hold. During budget hearings, members of the Board of Alders mentioned that the Yale project appeared back on track. So they conservatively added $2 million to the expected total, to the total of $10 million.
Yale has been planning for years to build the two new residential colleges — tentatively titled North College and South College (that’ll change) — and cleared land near Ingalls Rink, as part of an expansion of the undergraduate population. It received an initial site plan approval from the City Plan Commission in 2011. Then it put the project on hold as it struggled to raise enough money. Then the money started pouring in, and a $500 million fundraising goal was reached. Hence the application for the permit. It is to be Yale College’s first expansion in over 40 years.
The contractor on the project is Dimeo Construction. The permit was granted pending a final plan review.
Yale Vice-President Bruce Alexander said Wednesday that the project’s anticipated completion date is the summer of 2017.
This should be used to pay down debt, not inflate the budget which has been bloated for years.