When it came to his first vote on a major development project, Adam Marchand hadn’t read the 200-page plan before him. He voted yes anyway.
Why? Because, Marchand said, he made up for it with a close reading of the executive summary. He put nearly an hour of questions to city officials and to the project’s developer. They convinced him.
The vote in question concerned Downtown Crossing, and the $140 million proposed first step in filling in the Route 34 Connector mini-highway-to-nowhere with a 10-story medical office building called 100 College St.
Marchand has an important role to play in that process. He is one of the newly elected labor-backed candidates who now hold a majority on New Haven’s Board of Aldermen. Those candidates promised to bring a new spirit of independent scrutiny to a board previously criticized as a mayoral rubber stamp.
He’s also that board’s point man on big development projects, as the aldermanic representative to the City Plan Commission. The commission must vet and approve major projects before they come to the Board of Aldermen for final approval.
Marchand got his first test in that role when City Plan approved the proposed land disposition agreement for 100 College St., which developer Carter Winstanley is to build with government help. The project has drawn intensive criticism in some quarters for what some see as a return to large corporate projects that give away too much power to developers or divide neighborhoods and destroy the streetscape and pedestrian and cyclist access in favor of planning for massive car traffic. Supporters say the plan would add much-needed jobs and millions in taxes to city coffers. (Read about that here and here.)
Contrary to what some critics have suggested, Marchand said, he is no “rubber stamp.” And he did not engage in “tit for tat” politics.
Marchand acknowledged that prior to his yes vote on Winstanley’s project, he publicly thanked the developer for contributing money to an emerging “jobs pipeline” he and others on the Board of Aldermen have been promoting to link local people to local jobs.
But that doesn’t mean he gave the developer a pass, Marchand said in an interview. (Click on the play arrow on the video above for highlights.)
Marchand made those comments Wednesday night after the regular monthly meeting of the City Plan Commission. He was explaining his actions at an April 18 City Plan hearing, when commissioners, including Marchand, green-lighted a deal between Winstanley and the city.
(The commission Wednesday night scheduled a June 6 public hearing on the zone-changing portion of the Downtown Crossing plan, to address a legal snafu that came to light last week. That hearing will not include a repeat consideration of the land disposition agreement, which remains in front of the Board of Aldermen.)
Marchand voted to approve a change in zoning and a development agreement between the city and Winstanley. The developer would put up the $100 million building after $40 million of traffic improvements paid for by the city, state, and federal government.
Proponents of the plan say it will reconnect the Hill to downtown, create new permanent jobs, and bring in new property tax revenues. Critics say the plan repeats past mistakes by prioritizing cars over pedestrians and cyclists and creating an area that no one will want to visit.
Critics also say that the city has turned a deaf ear to complaints, and despite dozens of public hearings, has not substantively altered the plan to address public concerns. Those critics found new fodder in a couple of Marchand’s statements at the April 18 meeting of the City Plan Commission.
When Marchand began asking city officials about the land disposition agreement at the hearing, he prefaced questions with a disclaimer that “the answers may be in the full text. I just haven’t reviewed that.” He said he’d read the executive summary only.
Second, near the end of his questions, Marchand thanked Winstanley for giving $150,000 to a training program at Gateway to prepare workers for jobs in the new businesses that will move into 100 College St. He said: “I just want to say thank you for your leadership on the jobs pipeline issued and for pledging some monetary support for the training initiatives that we’re working on. I was kind of wondering where would that money come from, and could there be more?”
On Wednesday, Marchand explained both of those comments.
He said he still hasn’t read the land disposition agreement. “At the time of the meeting I hadn’t had access to that. I read the executive summary.”
The full agreement was available online as a PDF linked to this story, published nearly two weeks before the April 18 City Plan Commission meeting.
“I still haven’t read the whole document,” Marchand said. “I have talked to colleagues and among all of us we have [read the agreement].” Aldermen have “pooled their resources” and made sure the entire agreement is covered, he said.
“I think we’ve given pretty close scrutiny to the agreement,” Marchand said. He said asked city officials questions at the City Plan Commission meeting for quite some time. “I kept that group of people at the table for more than a half hour, maybe an hour. I don’t remember how long it was, but we had lots of questions. I spent a fair amount of time examining the documents I had, formulating questions that I thought were important for us to understand as a city.”
For instance, Marchand said, he asked about limits on liability for cost overruns associated with the project. “These are the kind of things you need to think about if you’re going to represent residents, taxpayers — [if] you’re going to be a steward of city finances and protect our interests.”
“There is no rubber stamp going on here.”
Marchand asked about a provision buried in the document that some independent observers and experts (not on the city’s payroll) say give Winstanley a veto over city street design decisions. Marchand said he was satisfied with officials’ answer at the hearing; they say it doesn’t. (Read about that here.)
As for thanking Winstanley for his contribution to the jobs pipeline, Marchand dismissed criticism that that could be seen as a sign that he was giving the project a pass in exchange for a donation to an initiative that has been at the center of the agenda of the new Board of Aldermen he’s a part of.
“There’s not tit for tat,” he said. “It was to say, ‘Thank you for making this contribution. Could you make a greater contribution?’”
“I have a great deal of confidence in my colleagues that we’re taking a look at the entire project and judging it on its merits, and that is one of the merits of the project,” he said. “We take very seriously our charge of being the stewards of the city, and that has many different dimensions. Jobs being one of them.”
Marchand said aldermen are looking at the plan closely and asking many questions, with more to come. He encouraged people to come to the June 6 City Plan Commission meeting.