Turcio, City’s Building Boom Boss, To Retire

Jim Turcio looked down from 14 stories above New Haven and marveled at a landscape that has been changing before his eyes — with his OK required at every step.

Turcio was taking in the view Wednesday from the 14th floor of Yale’s Kline biology tower off Prospect Street. He has walked through the tower every week or two ever since Yale launched a $110 million-and-counting gut rehab. As city government’s building official, Turcio must sign off at each stage of construction to ensure that the 100 construction workers there are safe and so that the building won’t collapse when they complete the job.

He pointed to the similar work occurring below at the next-door Peabody Museum. Turcio has been there twice a week recently to enable the crew to complete another $110 million-plus expansion.

“That was a hole in the ground,” he noted about one of the new buildings Yale has squeezed onto the block.

In between ensuring that every ceiling and wall and elevator meets the building code, Turcio manages to discover wonder and excitement in these daily treks — even after 27 years of conducting inspections for city government. Within the cracks of his gravelly voice and businesslike manner, you can tell.

Those treks are coming to an end. Turcio, 63, is retiring as of the end of December. He has accepted an offer to serve as Meriden’s building official; hours will still be long, but he’ll be able to collect a pension as well as a salary and return to a position with union protection. Deputy Bob Walsh is set to fill in running the New Haven department while the city seeks a permanent replacement.

New Haven is losing a crucial official with not just decades of institutional knowledge, but countless personal relationships that enable projects ranging from breweries and stores to skyscrapers to proceed without threat to public safety.

As top building official since 2015, he has overseen an historic building boom in New Haven, not just at Yale but throughout town. The number of annual building permits submitted to his office has risen from 3,000 to 5,000; the annual dollars brought into the city treasury from those permits has risen from $10.5 million to as high as $22 million.

Turcio has also found himself called often in the middle of the night to race to imminent building collapses and an uptick in cars crashing into homes and a synagogue, to make quick, tough calls about whether structures need to come down or can be secured. A judge ordered his crew into the ultimately unsalvageable Church Street South housing complex, where after decades of neglect ​“there were no roofs” and ​“four feet of sewage!” in some units. It was Turcio who ordered a crumbling Norton Street complex cleared out, as well as an illegal warren of artist apartments in a Hill fire trap (shortly before Oakland artists lost their lives in a fire in a similar facility). He promptly cracked down on slumlords, ordering emergency repairs at large rental complexes like the former Strouse Adler/Smoothie building. (His eventful first year at the helm earned him the ​“New Havener of the Year” title.)

Turcio found himself scrambling to keep the office functioning at full tilt during a pandemic (“We never shut down”), during which he took on added responsibility of coordinating citywide responses and helping construction sites and then businesses safely restart; and amid an ongoing statewide crisis shortage of inspectors and building officials. Up to 30 percent of cities and towns have been without permanent building officials; communities are competing to lure away inspectors. Turcio has struggled to fill two clerical workers and two inspectors. 

“He works just about all the time he’s awake,” observed Tomas Reyes, who served as former Mayor Toni Harp’s chief of staff when Turcio was promoted to building official, then worked closely with him for years. ​“He may not have been the most polite guy in the world — I’m sure that everyone who knew him knew that — but he got things done. I don’t think I ever heard him say no to anything he was asked to do.”

Mayor Justin Elicker called Turcio a ​“reliable” ​“solid guy” and ​“workhorse” who has made New Haven ​“a better place.”

“The amount of work he and his team have been able to process, in particular with the dramatic increase in construction in the last several years, is remarkable,” Elicker remarked.

“Is someone going to get hurt?”

Turcio said that question also comes first in his mind when he runs around town and decides whether to sign off on permits or demolitions. Public safety comes first, even if that means people get mad at him. He took heat, for instance, for deciding that the building on the corner of Orange and Elm had to come down in 2015. ​“I couldn’t leave that building up — bricks were falling in the street.”

Reflecting on his tenure during a conversation Wednesday in his fifth-floor office at 200 Orange St., Turcio said he’s perhaps proudest of the less dramatic moves he made as building official. He digitized the permit process, for instance. When he started out in 2015, contractors and homeowners had to submit paper applications; 25 people would show up in person each day at the counter. Now that many may show up in a week. 

“The roofers and the siders embraced it the best. They went online — boom,” Turcio observed. His guess at the reason: ​“They didn’t have to plug the meters and get tickets.” Turcio, who grew up on the East Shore and still lives two blocks from his childhood home, understands what construction workers do all day: He went right into the business, doing roofing and siding and framing, after school. He took his first inspection job with the city for the reason many other tradespeople used to make that move: for the pensions and health insurance. Over time those benefits improved in the trades, part of the reason cities now have a harder time filling slots, Turcio observed.

The computerized permitting shift was complete just in time for the onset of the pandemic, helping to keep New Haven’s boom moving. ​“That’s what saved us in Covid: We never missed a day,” Turcio said.

Turcio also went into the vaults upon becoming building official and retrieved the original blueprints for houses built over centuries all over town. The city didn’t need those blueprints anymore. Then he and his crew went door to door to deliver them to the homes’ current owners. His staff worked with Xerox to digitize 1.4 million pages of building permits.

In leaving the New Haven post, Turcio said, he’ll also miss his daily interactions with business owners, contractors, government workers. In New Haven the building official oversees not only code enforcement and permitting, but liquor licenses and zoning enforcement.

“I like helping people” and ​“maneuvering around the city and departments” to help people wrestling with precarious trees or permit approvals or public nuisances, Turcio said. ​“I know the city. I know every bar. I know the regulations.”

As he spoke, one such person he has helped, Armada Brewing founder Johnny Kraszewski, walked in. He needed a signature on an application for an expansion of his state liquor license so he can start serving wine and cider in addition to beer. 

A conversation ensued about Kraszewski​’s other expansion plans and the bureaucratic hoops he’ll need to navigate.

“I’m leaving” the city, Turcio informed Kraszewski. ​“I’m going to another city.”

“No way!” Kraszewski responded. ​“Who will I deal with now?”

Turcio told him about the succession plan.

Then he added: ​“I’ll give you my new cell number” in case he needs help with those future plans.

After chatting, Turcio headed to Yale’s Science Hill, where he’s been spending much of his time recently on inspections of the ongoing Kline tower and Peabody construction. He met up with Austin Hoag, the on-site supervisor for general contractor Gilbane. They embarked on a routine they have down pat, beginning with a ride on the temporary outdoor elevator 14 stories to the top floor. 

Then they took the stairs to each floor, wading amid the workers and the skeletal frames of newly constructed rooms.

Turcio eyed the mechanicals and electrical hook up and frames and fire caulking. He gave the go-ahead when he deemed ceilings or steel ready for sheetrocking or first coats of sprayed-on fire caulking. He checked out wiring, lighting, exit signs. He asked about progress on permanent installations.

“The sprinkler system — when is that up and running?” Turcio asked.

“My estimate would be early February,” Hoag responded. Like bandmates in the latter stages of a coast-to-coast tour, they had the steps, interactions, down pat, the updates, the questions, the noting of needed fixes.

“You’re good,” Turcio told Hoag. Back on the ground floor, they shook on it. Then Turcio was on his way to the next stop in the homestretch of a tireless tenure keeping New Haven booming and secure.