New Haven’s state legislators (including state Sen. Toni Harp, pictured) stopped off on their way to a special session at the Capitol to mend fences with the DeStefano administration over a parking battle tying up downtown development plans.
The dispute concerns a key portion of the Route 34 corridor, which Mayor John DeStefano sees as a linchpin of future economic development — land that state legislators took out of the city’s control this past session as leverage to negotiate nearby parking issues.
Tuesday’s morning meeting in City Hall was the first time the delegation has sat down with the city since last spring, when, in the words of Rep. Patricia Dillon, “all Hell broke loose” over a parking issue for the state Connecticut Mental Health Center (CMHC).
The mental health center’s state employees currently park at the city’s Lot E surface lot, at a total cost of about $327,000 per year, according to the state.
Dillon said she and other legislators became alarmed when they heard that the cost would jump to $1.5 million after Lot E was conveyed to the Yale-New Haven Hospital as part of the cancer center project.
“Asking CMHC to cough up the money for parking in their existing budget is going to be difficult,” said Dillon Tuesday. Parking is an integral part of the CMHC budget because according to labor contracts, the center must guarantee free parking to all its state employees.
Dillon took offense that the state delegation was not included in conversations about developing Route 34 or Yale’s Smilow Cancer Center that affected CMHC’s parking needs: “They were making a lot of plans without talking to the delegation — a lot of plans took place with zero communication.”
Tuesday’s talks were an attempt to fill that “zero communication” void. When the city sat down for continued talks with CMHC and Yale-New Haven Hospital, this time they invited New Haven’s delegation to the table, too. Harp, Dillon and state Rep. Juan Candelaria stayed long enough to delay their arrival to a 10 a.m. special session in Hartford on criminal-justice bills.
Nothing concrete came of the City Hall talks, but legislators appeared pleased with the meeting.
“It looks like we’re moving in the right direction,” said Harp as she rushed off to special session after the 90-minute meeting, “but we’re not ready to sign off” on any deal yet. Harp said once the delegation is satisfied that the parking dispute had been solved, legislators would break the logjam that threatens to hold up the city’s plans for major downtown development.
Precious Sliver Lot
That logjam was created last year, when legislators, fuming over the unforeseen spike in state parking costs, searched for a piece of leverage. They made a move on a sliver of the Rt. 34 corridor, a lot that the city had been asking for as part of major economic development plans. Mayor DeStefano seeks to use that lot to expand downtown from Temple Street into the medical district.
The Rt. 34 corridor, where a neighborhood was leveled to make way for a highway that was never built, is the site of what would be the most significant development in the city’s future.
The little sliver lot was owned by the state Department of Transportation. Instead of giving the sliver lot to the city, legislators conveyed it to the state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services. The city had held conversations with the Winstanley family, owners of 300 George St., about possibly building on that lot.
“Transferring that little piece of land” was a way “to buy time,” explained Dillon in the hallway of City Hall.
No concrete timetable was set Tuesday, but Dillon called the meeting “a good start.”
Chrissy Bonanno, the city’s deputy director of economic development, said the meeting focused on identifying CMHC’s parking needs and priorities. CMHC currently uses 273 spaces in Lot E. One partial solution was pitched to absorb those parkers when Lot E becomes a parking garage and fees escalate: The city has identified 220 spaces available for CMHC employees in the under Air Rights Garage, which is run by the New Haven Parking Authority. Those spaces would accommodate state employees, but details remained to be worked out over how much the Parking Authority would charge the state for parking there. Also, spots need to be found for visiting families, patients and Yale employees who work at CMHC.
Bonnano called Tuesday’s meeting “positive,” but stressed the urgency for working out these details, quickly. The city plans to transfer Lot E to Yale-New Haven Hospital before June so it can start construction in September. With that time constraint, Bonnano said, “Finding them parking is imminent.”
Wayne Dailey, spokesman for the state DMHAS, said CMHC is still calculating its projected parking needs. He called Tuesday’s meeting, which included a DMHAS representative, “productive.” There remain “a number of issues that need to be worked on,” Dailey said, “and we expect that the spirit of cooperation will continue.”
Let's hope that the "spirit of cooperation" continues much more quickly than it has.
We are going into a recession, and our elected officials are just sitting on land that is potentially worth thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in tax revenue. The lack of foresight is just incredible.
Why aren't these people meeting 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to resolve this issue? Are we not paying them to serve us?