Christopher Peak photo
Temple Medical: New tenant coming soon?
Owners of a nine-story downtown medical office building won a 20-year extension to an existing city garage parking permit agreement, which they hope will help pave the way towards bringing in a new tenant to fill office spaces left empty by Yale New Haven Hospital.
Thomas Breen photo
Park New Haven CFO Brian Seholm: Financials remain the same in extended parking agreement.
Temple Street Associates won that parking agreement extension Monday night during the regular monthly Park New Haven meeting at the city parking authority’s headquarters at 232 George St.
Parking commissioners voted unanimously in support of providing an initial 10-year extension followed by two successive five-year options to renew for 525 parking permits that Temple Street Associates pays for every month for spaces in two city-owned downtown garages: the Temple Street Garage and the Temple Medical Garage. The existing agreement was set to expire in 2026. The new agreement, with the five-year options to renew, would extend through 2046.
Temple Street Associates, a partnership led by the Fusco Corporation and neurosurgeon Alvin Greenberg, owns the Temple Medical Center complex at 40 Temple St. and 200 George St.
Monday night’s Park New Haven meeting.
Last year the office building owners lost one of the complex’s anchor tenants, Yale New Haven Hospital, which chose to move outpatient services and radiologist and anesthesiologists practices previously at Temple Medical elsewhere, including to the hospital’s York Street and St. Raphael campuses.
Fusco Corporation President and CEO Lynn Fusco said after Monday night’s meeting that the medical office spaces formerly occupied by Yale New Haven Hospital should hopefully be reoccupied soon.
“We’re now in negotiations with a large tenant,” she said.
She added the owners are not looking to sell the building, and described as a “myth” the notion that Temple Medical Center is on the brink of insolvency because of the loss of YNHH as a tenant.
She said the complex’s largest tenant was never the hospital, but rather was and remains Yale University.
“These spaces have served the tenant population of the Temple Medical Center very well,” Fusco wrote in a Dec. 24 letter to the parking authority in which she requested the parking agreement extension.
“Our tenants include the Yale School of Medicine, the Yale New Haven Hospital, multiple community physician practices and biotech companies. As these Med/Ed tenants’ leases renew and as they grow in square footage, we must be able to provide their employees with the continued privilege of parking spaces in both garages.
“As you know,” she continued, “much has been said in the public realm about New Haven’s future with biotech and medical industries. New Haven’s growth is tied very closely to available office and laboratory space in the vicinity of both Yale New Haven Hospital and Yale University. We have and will continue to invest heavy capital in the infrastructure of Temple Medical Center in order to assure the market place of our attractiveness to these types of tenants.”
Temple Street Associates successfully petitioned the city in court last year to drop its appraisal of the two office buildings from a combined value of $30,885,600 to a combined value of $23,000,000.
“This gives the owner as well as the potential tenant or tenant expansion some certainty as to parking,” Park New Haven Chief Financial Officer Brian Seholm said Monday night about the extension of the existing agreement with Temple Street Associates.
Does this new agreement change any of the financials of the previous agreement? asked Commissioner Larry Stewart (pictured).
No, Seholm replied. It leaves the current arrangement as it is.
“They pay per permit at the market rate. This is simple a guarantee” for Temple Street Associates that it will continue to have access to 525 parking permits for these two garages for up to 20 years to come.
The “market rate” for a parking permit is decided by the commissioners once a year, Seholm explained. It’s currently set at $145 per month per permit. That’s what the Temple Medical owners pay currently. That rate is liable to change each year at the discretion of the commissioners, he added, based on market analyses conducted by parking authority staff.
Temple Medical garage has a total of 371 spaces, for which the authority has sold a total of 483 permits. The Temple Street Garage has a total of 1,247 spaces, for which the authority has sold a total of 9,113 permits. (Seholm explained by email that that latter number of active Temple Street Garage permits is so high because Gateway Community College holds 8,531 active permits at that site for its students.)
“Fusco will continue to be billed and pay in monthly installments (like all parking agreements in our portfolio); Fusco is paying market rent per permit,” Park New Haven Executive Director Doug Hausladen (pictured) confirmed by email after the meeting.
He also noted that the Temple Medical Center office building is attached to the garages in question, and that the Temple Street Associates partnership is the owner of both the below ground parking portion of the garage as well as the office space above the garage.
“The New Haven Parking Authority is now duly authorized by its board of directors to support at market rate the leasing of our neighboring properties to further the growth engine of downtown and Connecticut.”
Glad they may have lined up a new tenant but I don't understand the math. If you have 1200 parking spaces, how can you give out 9,000 permits? I realize not everyone parks in the garage everyday, but that's 7 or 8 permits for each space. If I paid $145 per month for a permit, there better be a spot available when I get there. What am I missing?
[Reporter's note: Excellent observation! I just spoke with Park New Haven CFO Brian Seholm, and he said that latter number of active Temple Street Garage parking permits is so high because Gateway Community College holds 8,531 permits at that garage for its students.]