Ground Broken On 100 College — & A Rebirth

I'm frankly shocked that neither Toni Harp for Henry Fernandez showed up to photobomb the groundbreaking :)


As to this....
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Alexander credited aldermanic President Jorge Perez with choosing to focus on a "business-friendly" initiative, a jobs pipeline called New Haven Works, instead of using the legislative process to enforce requirements that would thwart the project.
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That's very revealing. So Jorge forces the union members to pay for the pipeline, instead of using developer-unfriendly laws to make sure New Haven people get work. Maybe Anonymous will be happy to see some money being sucked OUT of the suburbs into New Haven, for once.

Alexion simply will be relocating its corporate headquarters from Cheshire to New Haven and has received $51 million in state aid in exchange for a promise to create 300 new jobs. Now that the groundbreaking has concluded, voters should take a look at the reality of such "job creation" aid. "Connecticut has bestowed more than $500 million on businesses in loans and tax credits over the last decade to create and retain jobs, but many of the deals have not produced the promised jobs…despite the huge money spent on economic development, the number of jobs in Connecticut has actually declined since 2000… At the same time, total government jobs, whether state, local or federal, grew by nearly 28,000…'State incentives are politically popular because they can be sold as business-friendly policies that support "private sector" jobs,' the Connecticut Policy Institute said in its January [2012] study. 'Many economists and other analysts believe that these incentives are often imprudent public policy. It is questionable whether many forms of incentives create jobs at all,' the Institute said… In a 2011 report, Good Jobs First said Connecticut's job creation programs are often not worth the money spent. The report, 'Connecticut Economic Development Subsidies: Costly and Blunt,' maintained the state is mostly paying companies to stay here." Like simply move from Cheshire to New Haven—with no substantial penalty if Alexion fails to meet promised job-creation goals. "Good Jobs' report concluded that in the 10 most expensive subsidy packages the cost to taxpayers was an average of $98,672 per job… If Connecticut is serious about rebuilding its manufacturing base, the state would reduce taxes on personal property such as equipment, which is collected and retained locally, and do away with tax credits." http://www.ctpost.com/local/article/When-jobs-don-t-follow-dollars-3537524.php

Smart move for Alexion. Knowledge workers don't want to work in strip malls - witness the even larger biotech firms moving to downtown Boston & Cambridge, where their workers can easily walk, take trains, or bike to the offices. Pfizer relocated from sprawly Groton to Cambridge recently, and Alexion might eventually do that as well, if we don't work harder to create a walkable and transit rich downtown.

In fact, New Haven has reached its "growth limit" - if we want to add any more jobs here, we will need major transit and bus investments. Unfortunately, Perez led a wildly shortsighted effort to shoot those down last year, much to the dismay of Mayor DeStefano, the State, and the city's business community.

Given that most of the rest of CT is an economic basket case of suburban sprawl, making major transit investments in the only areas of CT with any significant job growth potential - namely, New Haven and Stamford - should be Malloy's top priority as governor.

Curious, you display a misunderstanding of metropolitan-level economic development. Almost all the good jobs in our area are located in New Haven, a trend which will only accelerate. Almost all the people who have those jobs live outside the city.

If the city's thousands of current businesses are any indication, 80% or more of the high paying jobs created here by Alexion will be held by suburbanites. If any New Haven residents find work here, they will likely move to the suburbs too.

Because their residents are entirely dependent on our city's high-paying jobs, our suburbs need an economically vibrant and walkable downtown core, and critical mass of tech industry that can compete with Boston/NYC/Austin, much more so even than the city itself does.

If they want their residents to have better jobs (instead of more and more suburban strip mall type jobs, which is where things are headed out there), leaders of suburban towns should be lobbying Malloy to refocus the State's infrastructure investments into New Haven's core. Instead of building a new train station in West Haven, the State should be building a real system of buses and bike lanes, and a better airport, in New Haven.

The real problem is that while we do much to provide jobs and revenue to the State by having a growing downtown and institutional base, City Hall does too little to make our own neighborhoods competitive as places to live or start businesses. The job pipeline public relations project, which is not scalable to make any impact on New Haven unemployment (and even if it were would be essentially a pipeline to the suburbs), is a good example of the city's failed approach to local revitalization.

If you think CT is a basket case of urban sprawl, you obviously haven't traveled that far out of CT. The statement doesn't really apply anywhere in the north-east corridor. Not to mention considering the city had 165,000 people right up to the 1950's while we're currently at 130,000, I'd say we're pretty far from our growth limit.

MadCap, the city has hit a growth limit. The city is much larger today than it was in 1950. The city's population is smaller only because entire neighborhoods were demolished for highways, off ramps, and office buildings that now primarily serve suburban commuters. For example, two thirds of Cedar Hill was destroyed to create I-91 and a connector road to Hamden which would have bulldozed all of East Rock. Households also have slightly fewer children today than they did 50 years ago.

Anonymous says, "Curious, you display a misunderstanding of metropolitan-level economic development. "

Actually I work in close partnership with Pfizer's New Haven research center, and have direct and intimate knowledge of why they moved out of Groton. It's got nothing to do with urban planning, and everything to do with their own corporation. They might even be shutting doors here in New Haven, and for absolutely no reason linked to New Haven whatsoever.

The city is not larger today. No, just no. I don't even know how to respond to that because it's a statement devoid from reality. The highways destroyed a lot of areas, but they weren't the cause for the exodus of 40,000 people. Every city in the country since 1950 has lost a lot of people mostly due to suburban flight. As the last census showed, both in New Haven and nationally, the trend has actually now been reversed. But most cities in the country are still smaller than they once were. In more extreme cases like Pittsburgh, some cities are almost only 1/2 as big as they use to be.

$51 million tax dollars with the promise to create 300 jobs which no one will keep track of? Con JOB! If you spread that same money around the thousands of SMALL businesses in CT struggling to keep people employed - they would have created thousands of jobs. I'm fairly certain I will hear that the contractors who will put up this building are all union based and big contributors to everyone in the picture.

This is why I know so many people trying to get out of Connecticut as soon as possible.

Madcap, that is certainly the conventional wisdom at a national level, but it is not applicable here. You have to adjust for density. With the exception of a tiny handful of isolated areas such as Newhallville, "white flight" in cities such as New Haven, Boston, and Hartford didn't result in mass depopulation in the same way that it has in places like Pittsburgh, Detroit, Youngstown, or Buffalo.

Depopulation in New Haven was the result of planning to grow our jobs base and highway system to better serve suburban interests. For example, the lower Dixwell neighborhood, which was extremely dense (like the Ninth Square today) was demolished to build Elm Haven and Florence Virtue, which housed fewer people per acre. MOre recently, Elm Haven was demolished to create Monterey about 10 years ago, which has even lower density. In Downtown, an extremely dense residential area was replaced by job centers for suburbanites, highways, and other institutional buildings. Cedar Hill and half of Wooster Square were virtually eliminated.

Even East Rock Park and Wooster Square itself were nearly demolished.

The current ruling coalition would probably like to demolish more neighborhoods in New Haven if it means more Union jobs - witness the recent destruction of a huge swath of the Hill neighborhood, under DeStefano/LCI, to build a school.

Anyhow - back to the main point, which is that without rethinking its transportation and streets, the most valuable areas of our city are approaching a job growth limit. This has huge economic implications for the entire State of Connecticut, and to Unions, not just to local taxpayers.

As NYC, Boston, Charlotte, DC, and most other growing cities realize, you can only fit so many jobs into a city without creating viable alternatives to highways and parking lots. We need to replace our leadership with people who will push New Haven to do the same, not keep voting against transportation investments (like most of our current Aldermen).

The $51 million isn't going to just support 300 jobs. The $51 million is going towards the fact a giant piece of land needs to rebuilt and no company is going to spend money to do it themselves when there's plenty of existing land to build on. Have you missed the giant hole in the Earth that is the Rt.34 connector that's been there for decades?

I'm pretty sure that rendering is a section perspective with the main facade chopped off. ( just in case anyone gives a damn about how it looks....sigh; probably not)

I think anonymous makes some good points. The only place I'll disagree is the population limits being reached. I do think New Haven can reach 150-160k in the next 5-10 years. Most of that will be due to redevelopment in the Hill, near the train station, Coliseum site, and also more dense housing throughout downtown and its outskirts. Also, with that added density will bring more offices and more jobs to the city, as hopefully the trend in building suburban office parks ends when corporations realize people don't want to work in an island.

We can achieve growth without investments in transportation, but yes - there will be a ceiling. It's really a shame the streetcar lost steam because of the shortsightedness of certain local politicians. That whole anti-Yale, anti-downtown attitude that has nearly killed that initiative is incredibly damaging to the city. Fact is, there's a stigma against buses (fair or not) and the streetcar would've been a great network for commuters arriving via the train station to safely and conveniently get to work. That would've very encouraging for companies to move to NH. Hopefully the project moves forward eventually.

The other part of the puzzle is Tweed. Big business involves a lot of travel. Hartford, Boston, and NYC know this. Tweed needs to grow to the size of, say, Westchester Airport. Westchester is small in comparison to other regional airports, but is highly usable and convenient for domestic business travel. It seems as if East Haven is holding back any expansion there, so when does the state take over and do what's right for the region vs. one town?

Where is the development agreement that deals all the taxpayer largess Winstanley is getting for this deal? Why have these details not been published? Winstanley has his tin cup out, two cups in fact to catch all the dough; and Alexion does too - with Malloy's failed First Five program. Dr. Bell and Alexion should turn the money down as a good corporate citizen.

From Alexion's 2000 10-K filing with the SEC:
"In May 2000 we entered into a new lease for our headquarters and research and development facility in Cheshire, Connecticut. The lease commenced in August 2000 and has a term of ten years and six months….. At this site we will lease and occupy a total of 82,000 square feet of space. We expect to incur initial leasehold improvements and relocation costs aggregating approximately $2.5 million, of which $16,000 were incurred as of July 31, 2000. At our option, the landlord is required to fund up to $2.5 million of these lease improvements under a financing arrangement payable over the term of the lease at 11% per annum. In addition, we will be required to pay a pro rata percentage of real estate taxes and operating expenses. Monthly fixed rent starts at approximately $80,000, increasing to approximately $95,500 over the term of the lease. We have issued a $200,000 open letter of credit to secure the lease." ~ http://ir.alexionpharm.com/sec.cfm

Total conservatively estimated cost to Alexion using above numbers: $12,000,000 to $14,000,000 over 10 years for 82,000 sf or $14.60 to $17.00/sf/year.

Compare to present state subsidy:
-10-year loan of $20,000,000 at a rate of 1 percent with principal and interest deferred for 5 years. 80% to 100% of the "loan" will be forgiven for creation of 200-300 full-time jobs.
-$6,000,000 grant construction and equipment.
-Tax Credits of up to $25,000,000.

Estimated cost to Alexion under above numbers if job creation targets missed: $21,024,989 over 10 years for 400,000 sf, or $5.5/sf/year for Class A new construction.

Estimated cost to taxpayers if 200-300 jobs created: $51,000,000.

Cost to CT taxpayers for each job: $170,000

@ MAC1: Thanks for providing these revealing statistics! In my previous post, I quoted the Good Jobs' report that revealed "in the 10 most expensive subsidy packages the cost to taxpayers was an average of $98,672 per job". So perhaps we can conclude that this sham "job creation" deal with Alexion, which will cost CT taxpayers $170,000 for EACH job, is the result of inflation—by crony, careerist politicians who remain in office for years by continually fooling voters with fake hype, promoting a region's popular ideologies and portraying themselves as "public servants" while they reach deep into your pockets. Both political parties play this game, the difference only being which party happens to predominate in a particular town or state. Solution? Clear the deck at the next election—and get rid of ALL incumbents at federal, state and local level. Crony careerists never will allow for term limits. But YOU have the power to create term limits—by throwing them all out.