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Mayor Elicker, President Salovey and Dean Charles: Job now posted (below)
A year after Yale committed to funding a New Haven-focused economic development hub, no such center yet exists — but a job description for an executive director who will figure out how to get it up and running is now online.
Yale and city leaders convened on the third floor of the Schwarzman Center at 168 Grove St. Tuesday morning to announce the start of a search for an executive director to lead the upcoming “Center for Inclusive Growth,” one of several initiatives that was approved as part of a broader development deal between the city and university negotiated last April. (Top Yale officials and city leaders first broached the idea of creating a new Center for Inclusive Growth at a City Hall press conference back in November 2021.)
Mayor Justin Elicker, Yale President Peter Salovey, and Yale School of Management (SOM) Dean Kerwin Charles said the release of that job posting and the naming of a location for the center’s offices are the latest in that center’s development.
Read more about the Yale-city deal here, which involves an increase in Yale’s voluntary payment to the city by $10 million for the next five years; the establishment of a sliding scale for local property taxes on land newly acquired by Yale; and the conversion of High Street downtown into a pedestrian plaza.
The fourth component of that plan was the topic of Tuesday’s press conference: The creation of a new “Center for Inclusive Growth” to which Yale would contribute $5 million in the first six years of the city-Yale accord.
School of Management Dean Kerwin Charles: One goal of center is to avoid "displacing" extant community development initiatives.
School of Management Dean Kerwin Charles is currently overseeing the project, which Elicker announced Tuesday will operate out of already-Yale-owned property at 65 Audubon St. Elicker later told the Independent that nobody is currently working out of that Audubon office.
Nobody has yet to be hired to staff the initiative, nor does anyone know how many staff will ultimately be hired. Before any of that is decided, an executive director must be selected, Elicker said.
The job posting is available here on employment firm Kaiser Whitney’s website. The job, according to the posting, will involve “adhering to robust grassroots community engagement and outreach,” “enlisting Yale faculty, students & staff, and cultivating and sustaining partnerships with City departments, New Haven residents and organizations” and monitoring funding sources. Alternative power sources, bike lanes, affordable housing, and access to public transit are all listed as priorities in any development opportunities sought out by said director and their team.
Asked for clarity on exactly what the Center for Inclusive Growth at large is meant to accomplish, Yale President Peter Salovey said Tuesday that the Yale-city deal was “not entirely about money,” but about how to “examine, develop and implement new strategies for growing the city’s economy.”
While Elicker spoke Tuesday to how the financial terms of the deal have brought in millions that’s contributing to the city’s pension fund and easing outstanding debts, Salovey said that he wants “Yale University to be the most civically engaged institution of higher education in the country.” That means not just paying some financial dues, he argued, but establishing a center that will promote the development of retail opportunities to bring more people from outside New Haven in, while also investing in homeownership opportunities, public education, and job creation.
No programming has been put into place as of yet through the center, but Dean Charles offered a few examples of how Yale would like to engage with New Haven through the new initiative. He said the Yale School of Management will establish an “education and leadership program to support local entrepreneurs” and will send paid Yale student interns out into the community and to City Hall to provide support for both city staff and independent business owners.
Once the brick and mortar offices are occupied, he said community members will be encouraged to stop by the site to receive support for their own sets of questions and challenges.
“We are working actively on finding ways to bring the growing entrepreneurial sector here in New Haven into the bounds, under the umbrella, of SOM,” Charles said.
An earlier version of this article misstated a direct quote from Dean Charles.
Why doesn't Yale Corp and YNHH just pay their fair share of taxes?
And why does this sound ominous?
"The idea, he said, is ultimately “to bring the bounds of development in New Haven under the umbrella of SOM."
Start practicing: "The SOM is my friend". Repeat. Repeat.