Thomas Breen photos
Port Authority's Sally Kruse: Planning for harbor growth.
Ghost ships ahoy? A foggy look at the port district on Wednesday from the Tomlinson Bridge.
Steel rods on Stiles Street.
Need a spot to store lots of steel rods or planks of wood?
Then you’re in luck, because the New Haven Port Authority has now bought more than three acres of previously state-owned land in the city’s industrial waterfront district — and is looking to lease to companies needing a place to put their shipped-in goods.
According to a March 1 filing on the city’s land records database, the New Haven Port Authority purchased six different parcels of land from the State of Connecticut across two different transactions for a combined sum of $902,500.
One purchase was for $205,000 for a 0.83-acre plot, the other was for $697,500 for five different parcels ranging in size from 0.11 acres to 1.49 acres, making up a total of around 2.98 acres.
The parcels sit at the corners of Stiles Street and the Waterfront Street Connector, at the corner of Alabama Street and Fulton Terrace, and off of Connecticut Avenue, all a few blocks inland from the warren of oil tanks and warehouses that line the Annex waterfront on the east side of the Tomlinson Bridge.
All six parcels are land that the state Department of Transportation “deemed surplus after they completed the Q Bridge rebuild,” said Sally Kruse, the executive director (and sole staff member) of New Haven’s port authority.
Kruse has helmed the agency for the past two and a half years. She and port authority board Chair Nick Fabiani credited past and present port authority board members and staff, state legislators Al Paolillo and Martin Looney, the state port authority, and city staffers for working for years to make these most recent property acquisitions by the port authority a reality.
“I and my colleagues on the New Haven Port Authority Board of Commissioners are excited about the opportunity to work with our partners to put these currently unused parcels to productive use,” Fabiani told the Independent in a written statement for this article. “The Port of New Haven is the busiest port between New York and Boston, and there is very little available land in the Port District. These parcels will be key as the Port Authority pursues its mission to support maritime commerce, create jobs, and increase revenue for the City.”
Kruse told the Independent that the port authority plans to lease or license these newly acquired empty lots to further the authority’s ordinance-mandated mission “to stimulate the shipment of freight and commerce through the port … and thereby to create jobs and increase taxes.”
It’s most likely that this land will be for “material storage,” she said.
None of the properties currently have any buildings on them. Some are already leased by private port operators like Gateway Terminal for the outdoor storage of, for example, bundles upon bundles of steel rods.
On a fog-shrouded tour Wednesday of this ex-state-owned land, Kruse said that the port authority’s first order of business now that it owns these properties is to repair and install new fences.
Next up: Put out a request for proposals (RFP) to attract the highest bidder to lease this land, likely for storage purposes.
She pointed to a port authority-owned lot at the corner of Alabama and Stiles that is already leased by Gateway Terminal, and that is piled high with tarp-wrapped planks of wood. That is what the port authority would like to see these newly acquired plots look like, she said. And she knows that Gateway, among other port operators, “would just love to have more space” to store their wares.
Kruse noted that these plots likely won’t hold any petroleum products like oil because there aren’t any tanks atop them. Instead, they’ll likely be used for the outdoor storage of dry construction materials.
Will New Haven’s port district always focus on petroleum products and construction materials?
Asked that question, Kruse said the authority is looking to hire a consultant to help craft a “strategic port master plan” to envision what the port’s future.
She noted that the Army Corps of Engineers is still in the design phase of a $63 million federally funded New Haven Harbor Navigation Improvement Project, which will see the federal navigation channel within the harbor deepened from 35 to 40 feet so that larger ships can drop off goods at New Haven’s industrial ports in the Annex.
Looking towards the water on Alabama Street from Stiles.
A port authority-owned parcel already leased up by Gateway.
Some of the ex-state parcels newly acquired by the port authority off of Stiles Street...
Its great that the port is doing well. I trust that as these properties are leased, the authority will enter into a Payment in Lieu of Taxes agreement with the city, as authorized by CGS § 7-329u.
A couple of related points. The federal Inflation Reduction Act has funding to reduce the environmental impacts of ports. Ms. Kruse is undoubtedly a very busy person. But I hope she or other people in city government are pursuing this funding.
The harbor-side oil tanks are sitting on what could be very valuable real estate, even considering the cost of site remediation. As oil use declines, the authority should phase out or relocate the tanks, permitting more valuable uses of the property. For example the foreseeable future, the port will need oil-pumping facilities. But the tanks can be located elsewhere.
The properties described in this article are not the only ConnDOT excess takes. They range in size from slivers, like the one at the end of my block, to developable lots. The citys legislative delegation should seek the transfer of these properties to the city or responsible developers.