Theater Plan Still Alive For Crown Garage Spot

An arts consortium’s bid to open a theater, cabaret, and rehearsal space downtown isn’t dead yet.

Doug Hausladen delivered that message at Monday night’s New Haven Parking Authority meeting at the authority’s headquarters at 232 George St.

Hausladen, the authority’s acting executive director, told the commissioners that he and authority staff met with representatives from Long Wharf Theatre last week.

During the brief meeting, he said, they discussed a proposal that Long Wharf, the Shubert Theatre, and Albertus Magnus College had put forward in a competitive bidding process last year to build out a 200-seat theater, a 90-seat cabaret, and a rehearsal studio in the 10,000 square-foot, ground-floor commercial space of Crown Street Garage at Crown Street and College Street.

The big question that the consortium members still have to decide before moving forward with lease negotiations, Hausladen said, is how much they would need to spend on capital improvements in order to develop the dilapidated former club space.

“We anticipate hearing more from them next month,” Hausladen said.

Joshua Borenstein, the managing director of Long Wharf Theatre, confirmed after the meeting that Long Wharf, the Shubert, and Albertus are still discussing the viability of their initial proposal considering the magnitude of the current site’s disrepair. During a tour of the former Alchemy club space earlier this month, one parking authority commission estimated that fixing up the property could cost as much as $300 or $400 per square foot.

“We are still talking with each other,” Borenstein told the Independent by email on Tuesday afternoon, ​“with an important planning meeting coming up in the next few weeks. We will have a more detailed update at the end of March.”

The authority had initially selected a bid from the College Street Music Hall owners to open a small music venue in the garage commercial space. But the College Street applicants pulled out of lease negotiations earlier this year, claiming frustrations with years of delays and tens of thousands of dollars already spent in negotiations.

The authority initially decided against going with the theater consortium’s application for primarily financial reasons, citing the consortium application’s request that the authority waive a $60,000 signing fee as well as an annual additional payment in lieu of taxes (PILOT) based on the city’s value assessment of the property.

Hausladen said that, if the theater consortium decides not to pursue lease negotiations for the garage commercial space, then the authority has two options: It could host another bid for use of the commercial space, or it could undertake a ​“sole source” process whereby the commissioners recommend a single prospective occupant to the Board of Alders.