Paul Bass Photo
New Haven’s insurance giant plans to expand its downtown footprint — and hand New Haven $3.37 million in the process.
Those plans were revealed at a Development Commission meeting in City Hall Tuesday morning.
The commission voted unanimously to approve the sale of two city-owned downtown lots to the Knights of Columbus for the price of $3.37 million. The deal now goes to the Board of Aldermen for final approval.
It covers two plots of land directly adjacent to the K of C’s iconic Tootsie Roll tower on Church Street, the fraternal organization and insurance company’s headquarters. One plot is the brick-paved, tree-lined 26,169-square-foot Columbus Plaza at the corner of Church and George; the other is the adjoining 40,492-square-foot surface parking lot currently run by ProPark.
K of C plans eventually to build more office space, probably on the surface parking lot. Under city zoning laws, it can build 78 feet into the air, or about four or five stories. The organization may also build a parking facility at some point. But it has no definite plans for either parcel now.
Deputy Economic Development Administrator Tony Bialecki (pictured) pitched the deal to the Development Commission at Tuesday’s meeting.
He noted that K of C pays around $1 million a year in taxes and employs 725 people. Its insurance business has been growing, especially in South America and Eastern Europe.
“This is their world headquarters. This is home for them,” Bialecki noted. “New Haven is the place we want to keep them. We want them to stay and grow.”
The surface parking lot currently has 100 spaces. It’s unclear whether New Haven will lose spaces after the sale, since some 400 K of C employees park downtown, according to Bialecki. K of C plans to move some of its commuters to the lot for now.
K of C spokesman Pat Korten said Tuesday that the group has no definite plans yet for either parcel. “We did some preliminary work several years ago,” he said. “I don’t think anyone should expect to see construction in the near term.”
The company’s 725 employees work in the 22-story tower, as well as in the second-floor space at the Knights of Columbus Museum one block away, and in the company’s small printing plant near the train station.
One big question mark is the plaza right in front of the building (pictured at the top of the story). Bialecki noted that K of C employees don’t tend to use it. They don’t sit on the benches on their breaks or stop under the trees. Rather, they cross the street to “sit on the wall.”
He theorized that may be because they want to leave the workplace premises, or because the city hasn’t done much to keep up the plaza over the 45 years beyond recently fixing some of the bricks and removing some dying trees.
“We’ll probably keep the plaza the way it is for the foreseeable future,” Korten said.
K of C will not be able to build on a seven-foot-wide stretch that cuts through the properties above the Church Street Tunnel, through which delivery trucks can reach central business district buildings.
K of C and city officials have discussed this sale for two years, according to Bialecki. The sale’s based on a city-commissioned appraisal of the property that came in at $58 per square foot. A K of C‑commissioned appraisal put the value lower, but the organization agreed to the city-commissioned figure, Bialecki said.
The Development Commission OK’d the proposal with only a moment of discussion. Chairman Jonathan Koppell asked one question. “It makes total sense to do this,” he said. “Is there any doubt that it might stay as a parking lot in perpetuity for its employees? Most of us would be sad if it remained a parking lot for 40 years.”
“It’s my understanding that they need” more office space and plan to build it, Bialecki responded.
The $3.37 million won’t be of help with the difficult budget the city’s trying to put together for the upcoming fiscal year. Rather, the city has always counted on the sale proceeds for this year’s budget, which ends June 30, according to Budget Director Larry Rusconi.
http://www.fathermcgivney.org/en/index.html
Bialecki Tuesday noted that a bigger K of C development bonanza might be in the offing: the pending sainthood of K of C founder (and New Havener) Father Michael J. McGivney (pictured). Religious authorities need to confirm a McGivney miracle first. If they do, New Haven could see an economic mini-miracle.
“Other places that have saints, they build shrines,” Bialecki noted. “They have hundreds of thousands of people visit every year.”
The city needs to adopt strict zoning and codes that are not the Euclidean suburban-based zones and codes we currently have. The city also needs to work the the state and the federal government to help artificially lower the price of downtown lots so that modest buildings can be erected similarly to how they were when New Haven was a young city. Lots need to be subdivided and made affordable to developers and small business people to build mixed use structures that replicate the places that people most love about New Haven-Chapel Street, Broadway, Crown Street, etc.
And as beautiful as the KoC plaza is-nobody uses it because it perfectly illustrates terrible urban design and planning 101.
If we continue to allow our downtown to only be affordable to the very rich then we will continue to have a decaying overall city that consists of superficial, temporary and uncaring investors and the very poor. We need to get smarter.