Maya McFadden photo
Inside Adult Ed at 540 Ella T. Grasso Blvd.
The city’s Adult Ed program is likely staying put in its rundown Ella T. Grasso Boulevard building through 2025 — as alders reluctantly advanced a renewed lease that would see rent jump by tens of thousands of dollars each year, and that calls on the new landlord to repair an old HVAC system, leaky ceilings, and damaged carpeting.
Local legislators discussed that proposed lease renewal during the latest regular monthly meeting of the Board of Alders Finance Committee. The three-hour virtual meeting took place online Monday evening via Zoom and YouTube Live.
The committee alders advanced the lease by formally taking no action on a proposed order authorizing the execution of a three-year, nine-month lease between the Board of Education and SP Ella LLC. That lack of action is a procedural move that allows the full Board of Alders to take the matter up for an expedited debate and final vote at its next meeting on Feb. 22.
If approved, the lease would allow the New Haven Adult and Continuing Education Center to continue to operate out of its long-time home, a 40,000 square-foot building at 540 Ella T. Grasso Blvd.
The proposed lease would run from Oct. 1, 2021 through June 30, 2025.
And it would see the Board of Education’s annual rent at the property jump to $16.50 per square foot (or $660,000 in total) for the first year of the agreement, and then rise to a high of $18.03 per square foot (or $721,200 in total) by the final year.
The deal has already been approved by the Board of Education. Because it’s a multi-year contract, the deal is now before the Board of Alders seeking legislators’ final blessing.
“This has been a very difficult journey for me,” New Haven Public Schools Chief Operating Officer (COO) Thomas Lamb said as he kicked off a discussion Monday night that alternated between rueful and resigned.
He said the Board of Ed has been leasing space at 540 Ella T. Grasso Blvd. in some capacity since 1995.
Over the decades, the school system has tried to move all of its schools and programs out of privately owned rented space and into publicly owned buildings. That’s what makes the most sense “from a financial planning point of view, as well as from a fiscal health point of view,” he said. Adult Ed remains one of the last major programs to operate out of a rented space.
Last year, SP Ella LLC — a company controlled by local landlords Mendel Paris and Sim Levenhartz — bought 540 Ella T. Grasso Blvd. for $6.85 million.
According to a letter written by Lamb to Board of Alders President Tyisha Walker-Myers in support of the new lease agreement, Paris and Levenhartz’s company is now looking to hike the rent by 27 percent, and then by an additional 3 percent for each year of the multi-year deal.
A recent walkthrough of the site, meanwhile, revealed missing ceiling tiles, a broken bathroom sink, ceiling leaks, and bathrooms, HVAC, heating, and walls in need of repair. (Click here and here to read more about the rent hike and maintenance problems, as well as about Paris’s estimate that his company will invest between $300,000 and $500,000 to improving the Adult Ed building when the lease is signed.)
Lamb said Monday night that he’s working with Adult Ed assistant Principal Toni Walker and with City Engineer Giovanni Zinn to find a new place to relocate the program.
“Even under the best of circumstances, that process would take two to three years,” he said. Which is why he was recommending approval of the three-year, nine-month lease at 540 Ella T. Grasso Blvd. as the school system looks for a new home for Adult Ed.
Board of Alders fiscal impact statement for proposed Adult Ed lease.
Lamb and City Budget Director Michael Gormany noted that there are a few portions of the lease that are quite beneficial to the public school system.
For one, the landlord is now taking on the property’s tax burden. Under the previous agreement with the prior landlord, the city and the school system paid that tax bill as part of its rent of the property.
Lamb said the new landlord has also committed to making a host of repairs once the lease is signed. “HVAC will be upgraded and fully functional at Landlord Expense,” Lamb’s letter to Walker-Myers reads. “Roof and exterior leaks to be fixed. All damaged ceiling tiles replaced throughout. Damaged Carpeting replaced throughout. Repair or replacement of damaged or leaking windows.”
The landlord will also be granting the school board a $100,000 “tenant improvement allowance” to be credited to the tenant “in the form [of] reduction from the base rent” for capital improvement work completed by the tenant.
And, Lamb said, the proposed lease will allow the school board to give 90 days notice in the final year of the agreement if it wants to leave the building before the lease is up.
Gormany said that the majority of the funding for this lease will come from the $2.8 million the state sends the city every year for its Adult Ed program.
The committee alders who spoke up during the hearing were clear in the urgency with which the city and the school board should be seeking out a new home for Adult Ed.
“Definitely, we need to really get out of this property,” Hill Alder and Finance Committee Vice-Chair Ron Hurt said.
“It’s taking advantage of the city, quite honestly,” East Rock Alder Anna Festa said about the proposed deal.
Lamb said that, indeed, he is prioritizing finding a new permanent home for Adult Ed.
“I would much rather maintain a building within the city than pour money into something we don’t own.”
