City-Yale Deal Advances

A deal for Yale to increase voluntary payments to the city by $52 million over six years — and design and control a pedestrian plaza on High Street — won a key preliminary aldermanic approval, as supporters hailed a potential turning point in town-gown relations.

That vote of approval came Monday night at a Board of Alders Finance Committee meeting, which took place in the Aldermanic Chamber on the second floor of City Hall.

Over 50 people filled the back benches of the room as Finance Committee Chair and Westville Alder Adam Marchand welcomed the masked attendees to the first in-person gathering of the committee since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.

After nearly two hours of city staff presentations, public testimony, and aldermanic deliberations, the committee alders voted unanimously in support of a proposed order detailing a new Yale-city deal first announced at a celebratory City Hall press conference last November.

If approved by the full Board of Alders, the deal would see Yale increase its annual voluntary payment to the city, the conversion of a section of High Street into a pedestrian- and bicycle-only plaza, the phasing out of property taxes for newly acquired tax-exempt Yale properties, and the creation of a new Center for Inclusive Growth at Yale’s business school. (See more details below.)

The proposed agreement marks the culmination of a year’s worth of negotiations between the Elicker Administration and Yale. Local labor activists and alders also framed the accord Monday night as the fruits of a years-long campaign by grassroots activists, local unions, and labor-sympathetic politicians to pressure the phenomenally wealthy university to do more to help its impoverished host city.

“The university has grown. The city has grown. … Certainly the time is right to take a second look at the voluntary payment,” city Economic Development Administrator Michael Piscitelli said about one of the four main components of the proposed city-Yale accord. 

Both Yale and the city ​“recognize that it’s a really important moment, and it’s a moment to reset [Yale’s voluntary payment to the city] at a significant number.”

“I am excited about New Haven’s future,” Yale Associate Vice President and Director of New Haven Affairs Lauren Zucker told the committee alders while explaining the university’s commitment to this proposed new agreement.

“The idea behind this partnership is to continue to propel New Haven forward as a community and continue to foster inclusive economic growth,” she said, and thereby take some of the long-term focus off of measuring the university’s contributions to the city primarily by the size of its annual voluntary payment.

Westville resident and New Haven Rising member Ian Skoggard said that the shift in town-gown relations heralded by this deal is as important as the actual dollar amounts associated with it. With this agreement, he said, the relationship between the city and the university is heading in the direction of ​“mutual respect and true collaboration. It is a win-win situation.”

“This historic agreement that we’re talking about tonight between New Haven and Yale is the culmination of all those years of hard work,” retired former Hill Alder and UNITE HERE Local 34 organizer Dolores Colon said about the labor-backed movement over the past decade to pressure Yale to contribute more to the city. ​“But it is not the end. To adequately address decades of disinvestments and change the maps of segregated development, New Haven will need much more.” Nevertheless, she said, this agreement represents ​“steps in the right direction.”

The proposed agreement now heads to the full Board of Alders for a final review, debate, and vote.

Deal Details

A quick refresher. What are the terms of this deal again? 

There are four main parts:

• An increase in Yale’s voluntary payment to the city by $10 million for each of the next five years, and by $2 million in the final year of the deal, which would be Fiscal Year 2026 – 2027 (FY27). That would mean that Yale’s annual voluntary payment to the city would increase from the current amount of $13 million to over $23 million for each of the next five fiscal years.

That increased contribution comes a year after Yale saw its endowment skyrocket in value by $12.1 billion. After the latest citywide revaluation, Yale’s tax-exempt properties have also increased in value by $700 million over the past five years, to a new tax-exempt total of around $4.2 billion.

• The conversion of High Street between Chapel and Elm Streets downtown into, as Piscitelli put it, ​“a new public street, but one that’s for people and not for cars and large delivery vehicles.” Yale would be responsible for designing, converting, maintaining, and controlling the pedestrian- and bicycle-only plaza, even though the city would still legally own the land. Piscitelli and Zucker framed the street conversion as similar to what the university has already done on nearby stretches of Wall Street and High Street, but, again, with the city rather than the university actually owning the land.

• The establishment of a new 12-year sliding scale for local properties taxes on properties newly acquired and converted to tax-exempt status by the university. That would see Yale pay 100 percent of a property’s local property tax amount for three years after acquisition. It will then pay the city a sliding scale of payments that reduces steadily from the fourth year to the 12th year after acquisition, resulting in no property taxes paid on that property from the 13th year on.

• Yale’s creation of a new Center for Inclusive Growth to which the university will contribute $5 million in the first six years. That center will be run by Yale School of Management Dean Kerwin Charles.

Click here, here and here for previous articles about the proposed deal.

Click here, here, here, and here for the documents included in the formal aldermanic submission.

No Hot Dog Vendors Allowed On High St?

How many metered parking spaces currently exist on that stretch of High Street? East Rock Alder Anna Festa asked. And how much parking meter revenue would the city be giving up thanks to the conversion of that section into a pedestrian- and bicycle-only plaza?

Piscitelli said that there are 30 metered parking spaces on High between Chapel and Elm. Parking meter revenue for that stretch peaked at around $68,000 in 2019, and has subsequently fallen to around $48,000 last year.

He said that the increase to Yale’s annual voluntary payment to the city is designed to take into account that loss of parking meter revenue on High Street. Many of the cars that would have parked on that stretch of High will likely still park in the city’s on-street parking system downtown, maybe on Chapel Street or College Street or York Street, ​“because there are very few off-street alternatives on this particular block,” he said.

That may or may not be true, Festa replied. She said she fears that frustrated drivers will instead simply leave the city, relegating New Haven to be a ​“pretty picture in the rear-view mirror,” if they can’t find a convenient place to park downtown.

Who’s going to plow this closed-off stretch of High? Festa asked. ​“Who’s going to actually, truly maintain it?”

Yale will come up with a design for the converted street, Piscitelli said. That design must be reviewed and approved by the City Plan Commission. The city Traffic Authority must also sign off on the removal of the metered parking spaces. Yale has then committed to converting and maintaining the street, even though it will remain owned by the city.

Could the city still permit vendors to sell hot dogs and other food on the closed-off stretch of High? Prospect Hill/Newhallville Alder Steve Winter asked.

“A question like that hasn’t been posed” yet, Piscitelli replied.

He said the design as currently envisioned by the city and Yale ​“is to have it as a bike-ped walkway.” It is ​“conceivable” that food vendors could be permitted on this stretch, but he advised the committee alder to ​“look at this tonight as a bike-ped walkway, nothing more, nothing less, as far as its use.”

Has the city looked at how this will impact traffic downtown? Winter asked.

“No, a formal traffic study has not been done for the use of High Street,” Piscitelli said. ​“As a general point, you’ve got two main arteries on Chapel and Elm. We have a high level of comfort” that existing traffic can be servicd by these main roads.

Center For Inclusive Growth: "A Work In Progress"

What is the timeline for the proposed new Center for Inclusive Growth? Festa asked. When will that department be up and running? When will the city see the center’s first report?

Piscitelli and Zucker offered few details Monday night on when exactly the center will start, and what exactly it will do, in part because Dean Charles — whom the city and Yale has tapped to head the initiative — was in London on Yale business. (Zucker read a letter from him apologizing for his not being present at the meeting, and expressing his enthusiasm for the new venture.)

Piscitelli added that the proposed new center ​“is intentionally not well defined in the letter [outlining the Yale-city agreement] and you should see it as a work in progress.” 

Some of the city’s short-term goals for the center is to have it support ​“business planning and business strategies for small businesses in our community, things that will set up a small business for long-haul success,” Piscitelli said. 

How can local small businesses reach out for guidance? Festa asked. 

That’s yet to be determined, Piscitelli replied. ​“We’re going to take this in incremental steps to make sure we move with our community, and not move too fast.”

Who exactly controls the new center and who will appoint its advisory board? Prospect Hill/Newhallville Alder Steve Winter asked. Is that Yale? Or Yale and the city together?

“This will be lead by Dean Charles,” Piscitelli said. ​“That is a decision we mutually arrived at.”

"An Important Step"

During the public testimony section of the meeting, 20 people — including Yale undergraduates, graduate student-teachers, university staffers, and local labor organizers and advocates — all spoke up in support of the proposed city-Yale deal. 

They all heralded it as the culmination of years of hard organizing work, and they all said that Yale still has a long way to go to contribute its fair share to New Haven’s bottom line.

“I’m so happy that my employer has chosen to do the right thing, listen to the community and its own workers, and increase its contributions to its home city,” said Local 33 Co-President Ridge Liu. ​“This is an important step,” but the university must do more.

Yale first year and Students Unite Now member Nathaniel Rosenberg agreed. ​“I am glad to see this increase to Yale’s voluntary contribution,” he said, ​“and I urge the university to go further and fully make up for their tax exemption and pay their fair share to New Haven.”

Yale has taken ​“an important first step, and we’ve gotten Yale to do more for us than any other university in the country,” said New Haven Rising organizer Abby Feldman. ​“But we cannot ignore the fact that a poor city is subsidizing one of the most elite universities in the world. We must continue the fight.”

After the public testimony section of the meeting had closed, Board of Alders President and West River Alder Tyisha Walker-Myers — who is also a leader of Yale’s blue-collar Local 35 union — urged her colleagues to support the city-Yale deal.

“I think that this agreement is a move in the right direction,” she said. ​“I’ve been a part of knocking on doors since 2010, talking to residents about what they wanted to see. I think this agreement is a testament to how the community actually stood up for what they wanted over the years.”

Hill Alder and Finance Committee Vice-Chair Ron Hurt agreed.

“The work was done and we have seen a great victory,” he said, ​“but there’s still more work that needs to be done for us to say that Yale is a good neighbor in our city.”

While still supporting the deal, Winter said that the city still has ​“a long way to go” in ironing out many of the details.

“It seems like there’s a lot more to be fleshed out in terms of the Center for Inclusive Growth,” he said. ​“What its priorities are, and if that will have a meaningful impact on the city and the deep problems that the city faces.” He called for city oversight of that center, and for a close monitoring of how it ultimately affects New Haven’s economy.

As for the High Street conversion, ​“I do think we have to be assertive if we’re going to really say this is a public space, and that this remains open for public uses,” he said. ​“Otherwise, I can see why people would feel like it’s the sale of a street.”