nothin 100 College Promises Jobs, No Guaranteed #s | New Haven Independent

100 College Promises Jobs, No Guaranteed #s

Thomas MacMillan Photo

Carter Winstanley

When the city’s biggest developer stopped by City Hall to pitch his new $140 million Downtown Crossing project, he faced the inevitable question from a member of the Board of Aldermen’s new labor-backed majority: How many jobs do you guarantee for New Haven residents?”

The question came from Edgewood Alderwoman Evette Hamilton during a Monday night briefing in City Hall. She and other new aldermen took office this year embracing a platform that in part seeks to wrest specific job-creating promises for New Haveners from developers like Carter Winstanley.

City economic development chief Kelly Murphy was ready with estimated predictions of jobs to be created by Downtown Crossing, and representatives from job-training agency Workforce Alliance, Gateway Community College, and the New Haven school board spoke about a new cooperative program to ready people for the jobs of tomorrow.

Promises, yes. Guarantees, no.

Downtown Crossing developer Carter Winstanley promised to create a mentoring” program that will make it easier for smaller, local contractors to work on the project. And he said he’ll work to meet the city’s local-hiring requirements for construction jobs, which he has exceeded in the past.

When the building is up, however, Winstanley is not the guy who will be doing the hiring. The question of permanent Downtown Crossing jobs for New Haveners is not really his to answer, he said. Therefore he and officials are not ready to put specific job-creation numbers in ink in a formal agreement.

Ultimately, I’m not an employer,” he said. I facilitate employers coming in. I can’t really speak for them.”

Click here to read a recent Independent pundit dream team” debate on whether it makes sense to require specific job-creation guarantees from developers.

City Plan Director Karyn Gilvarg speaks about proposed zoning changes for Downtown Crossing.

Monday night’s meeting was the latest in a litany of informational — and sometimes contentious—public events held to discuss Downtown Crossing. The project is being designed to fill part of the Route 34 corridor with a 225,000-square foot bio-tech and medical research building at 100 College St. Winstanley claims the development will knit the city together, joining the train station and the medical district with downtown New Haven.

Downtown Crossing is seen by some as a way to undo the city planning mistakes made by urban renewal-era Mayo Mayor Dick Lee, who ripped up the old Oak Street neighborhood near Yale-New Haven Hospital to put in an uncompleted mini-highway, creating a barren wasteland in the heart of town in the process.

Monday’s presentation was also part one of a road tour in town selling Downtown Crossing to the public in anticipation of a formal submission by City Hall next month of the first major development agreement for the project. Winstanley and city officials next make their pitch to the public Wednesday night in the Hill.

The presentation Monday included a PowerPoint in a darkened meeting room. It was the first given to the Board of Aldermen’s current roster, most of whom are part of a union-affiliated group of candidates who toppled incumbents to take power in January. The group campaigned in part on a platform of employment creation, and is working to set up a jobs pipeline” to connect local neighbors with jobs created by new developments coming in the city.

Winstanley is at the helm of two of the largest of those projects, both high-tech-oriented, one in Dixwell, the other one Downtown Crossing. Downtown Crossing is predicted to cost $140 million and be complete by 2015. That means new bio-tech and medical research jobs coming to New Haven.

Just how many of those will be held by New Haveners? Hamilton wanted to know.

Murphy.

The construction of 100 College St. will create about 2,000 jobs, said Murphy. Once the building is complete, it will create between 600 and 960 permanent jobs, she said. The question for New Haven is how it will develop the requisite interests and skills among its residents so they can get those jobs, Murphy said.

The city will work with the Board of Ed, Workforce Alliance, Gateway Community College, and the Economic Development Corporation (EDC) to create a program to prepare New Haveners for jobs in bio-tech and medical research, Murphy said. The EDC will pitch in $100,000 to the program, and Winstanley’s company will put in $150,000.

William Villano of Workforce Alliance said his agency will recruit and place workers into the entry-level jobs at 100 College St., the kind that are present in all office buildings: security, maintenance, office work.

Meanwhile, Gateway Community College will recruit students to its certificate programs in science and medical subjects so that those students can be placed in jobs at 100 College St.‘s new tenant companies.

Gateway’s Mike Buccilli said Gateway has already successfully done something similar with local hospital jobs. If you’ve gotten an X‑Ray in New Haven, chances are your technician was educated at Gateway, he said.

In the long term, New Haven public schools will work to prepare students for the bio-tech industry, said Dolores Garcia-Blocker, who oversees guidance for the school district. That will require changes in the way math and sciences are taught, she said.

We’re talking about our young people who are sitting in elementary schools right now,” she said. Everything has to look different.”

We can be a partner to the city,” said Winstanley, speaking about construction jobs to build 100 College St. We are wiling to commit to an aggressive mentoring program.”

The program would include backstopping” payroll for smaller contractors, so that they can afford to bid on contracts they might not otherwise be able to afford, Winstanley said.

After a couple hours, as the meeting broke up, Hamilton said she wasn’t satisfied with the answer to her question. She said she wants hard numbers and specific guarantees about jobs to be created and filled by New Haveners.

The residents of New Haven have to be considered,” she said. They’re not being specific on much of anything.”

It’s a tough question to answer,” Winstanley said. He’s not the employer, he said. He’ll build the building, then rent it out to employers. He has no way of knowing yet who most of those employers will be.

There has to be a more comprehensive view of what we’re trying to do,” he said. The question is how are we as a community going to tackle this problem?” he said. The partnership with Gateway and the Board of Ed is about addressing that question, he said.

The next public hearing on Downtown Crossing will be at 5:30 p.m. at the Wilson Branch of the New Haven Public Library, at 303 Washington Ave.

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