Hyatt Eyes Coliseum Site

The putative builders of a new development at the old New Haven Coliseum site may finally have a deal with a hotel — but they also have a new set of headaches threatening to further delay the long-stalled project.

So Mayor Toni Harp and her development chief, Matthew Nemerson, said Monday.

They were discussing the plans by Montreal-based LiveWorkLearnPlay to build a $400 million new-urbanist mini-city at the Coliseum site, with 1,000 mixed-income apartments, 30 – 40 new businesses, a four-and-a-half-star hotel with 160 – 90 rooms, 30,000 square feet of stores, and a public square.

The state has approved $21.5 million in bonding money to pay for road changes around Orange, George, State, and George streets to make the project possible. Releasing most of that money depends on LWLP having a hotel deal lined up as the first phase of the project. That hotel deal has proved elusive — and stalled a project that was originally supposed to have broken ground by now.

Speaking on her weekly ​“Mayor Monday” appearance on WNHH radio, Mayor Harp revealed that LWLP has reached a deal with Hyatt hotels to be part of the project.

“That will help with the state” in releasing the bond money, ​“but they want to see the contract,” Harp said.

In a subsequent interview, Nemerson said LWLP and Hyatt have reached a deal giving LWLP the right to ​“fly the flag” — that is, use the Hyatt name — at a four-and-a-half-star hotel in the development. But many details remain to be worked out between the parties, he said. And LWLP still has the right to negotiate with other potential hotel developers.

He said the agreement includes having neither Hyatt nor LWLP speak publicly about the deal yet.

LWLP principal Max Reim did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

Hyatt spokeswoman Stephanie Sheppard offered this emailed statement: ​“We are certainly interested in increasing Hyatt’s brand representation in New Haven, and we are actively pursuing opportunities to do so. That said, it is our practice only to discuss potential deals once an agreement has been reached.”

Underground Woes

Meanwhile, the city continues to negotiate with United Illuminating to figure out how to relocate underground electrical wires and who should pay which parts of the bill. Those continuing negotiations have been a major reason the project hasn’t moved forward yet, according to several participants.

The Friday before last, a new twist emerged to those negotiations: UI presented an engineering report showing that the company would need an additional eight months or more to dig and recable distribution and transmission lines and then hook them up to the Olive Street substation, according to Nemerson. That meant that construction on the project itself wouldn’t begin until the end of 2018 or even later, not to mention adding millions of dollars in costs.

The city had been planning for construction to begin in March or April in 2018, Nemerson said. The city considered the new envisioned date ​“unacceptable.”

So Nemerson headed up to Montreal to meet with Reim last Monday. He said they talked about the matter for five hours. He said he pushed Reim to redesign the project to avoid having to move all those underground utilities.

Reim did not make any commitments, Nemerson said.

“We had a good conversation. I explained the growing complexity of our growing complexity with UI. I explained some of the new challenges UI has discovered. And the legal challenges we have, Max and the city,” Nemerson said. ​“Max said the line in Casablanca: ​‘I’m shocked!’ Let’s talk.”

14 Years?

While the city feels time pressure, Reim doesn’t need to. It turns out that the deal to sell the land to Reim’s LWLP gave the company 14 years to build the project, according to Harp and Nemerson. The former DeStefano administration negotiated that deal.

“The way it was sold, it didn’t seem it would take this long. They were good salespeople,” Harp said.

The state’s deputy economic development commissioner, Tim Sullivan, said it’s normal for complex development projects like these to encounter such delays and newly arising problems.

He said the city met a deadline for submitting some design plans to the state, and the state has been in the process of releasing an initial $3 million of the $21.5 million in bond money to fund the ​“first chunk” of predevelopment work. Sullivan said the state is pushing LWLP to submit needed designs in the coming weeks so the project can begin the state traffic permitting process.

Local employers are telling the city they need the hotel built because of a shortage of rooms in town, Harp said. No one wants to wait 14 years.

“We have them on a short leash,” Harp said of LWLP. ​“We’re trying to get them to really move forward. It’s a valuable piece of land. If they’re not going to do anything about it, we have to know before 14 years are up.

“I’m hopeful. If the project goes through, it’s going to be phenomenal.”

Click on or download the above audio file to hear the full ​“Mayor Monday” interview with Harp on WNHH radio. The discussion also covered her plans as a delegate to this week’s the Democratic National Convention, the national and local discussion about race and policing, and breakthroughs in plans for building a new bio tower and Yale and a development in the Hill.

Monday’s episode was made possible in part thanks to support from Gateway Community College.