Prognostication time.
(Opinion) Like broken grandfather clocks, rusty old reporters who dare to make predictions occasionally get it right.
Or do we? The next 12 months will offer proof.
Broken grandfather clocks end up telling the correct time once every 720 minutes.
This grandfather reporter offers the following New Haven predictions for 2023 with the hope of scoring better (by getting at least one prediction right).
Yale will buy the 300 George Street medical-tech center and reveal how thoroughly it took New Haven to the cleaners in its “historic” “game-changing” deal.
Yale and Yale-spawned companies already pay much of the rent at the successfully redeveloped former SNET complex. By buying it outright Yale will ensure the rental revenue flows directly back into its pockets.
That will switch yet another property to nonprofit ownership at a time when more than 60 percent of the grand list is off the tax rolls.
City leaders will hail the fact that at first Yale will continue paying real estate taxes on the property under the terms of the 2022-approved town-gown deal that included Yale upping its annual voluntary contribution to New Haven by $10 million. However, those provisions expire. Yale pays full taxes on newly obtained former for-profit property for only three years, then less each year until it pays nothing more forever after 12. The $10 million increased voluntary payment (which turned out to be chump change that failed to prevent a tax increase) likewise expires, after five years. Just as a promised less-than-$1 million annual payment to fund a supposed center to boost long-term town-gown initiatives expires after six years. And even that less-than-$1 million won’t do much besides cover recategorized university overhead expenses and create one or two make-work jobs for friends or relatives of insiders, just as the $50,000 contained in the previous big town-gown deal three decades earlier meant to spawn long-term budget-stabilizing initiatives through a new “Center for the City” ended up funding a one-time summer rec program.
The $41 billion-endowed university’s as usual played the long game with the impoverished city that nurtures its existence: It will continue to take properties off the tax rolls for a century and, in this deal, gain control of yet another “public” street to advance its private interests.
205CHURCH.ORG
Mixology Central?
The historic 17,322 square-foot two-story domed-ceiling marble-floored Corinthian-columned former Union Trust public bank-teller lobby across from the Green at the corner of Church and Elm Streets (now the empty first floor of a renovated apartment building) will become a lunchtime food court incubator and happy-hour and evening flapper or speakeasy-themed bar/nightclub rented often for private weddings or galas.
A proposal to move from two-year to 4‑year mayoral terms will appear as a charter-reform referendum question in November, but two factors will make the outcome too close to call and may doom its prospects of passage: The proposal will be lumped together with other less popular proposed charter changes in a single up-or-down question. And opponents will have more incentive and energy to make their case to voters than supporters will.
The DiBlasio-Adams Elicker-Abdussabur Democratic mayoral primary will upend traditional political calculations on two scores:
1) Race always plays a role in elections in New Haven. But political insiders and pundits tend to overestimate the role. That has become increasingly true, as this race will demonstrate: Both candidates will emerge with surprising support across expected racial lines.
2) The campaign will also feature a spirited discussion on schools, policing, taxes/budgeting, slumlords, economic development — all in ways that defy categorizing either of them as “liberal” or “conservative” or “centrist.” Traditional ideological labels will prove irrelevant in this election. Throw in interesting policy proposals from third expected candidate Liam Brennan (perhaps more easily grouped as “left”). That will add up to a meaningful campaign debate of ideas. So whichever individual ends up with more votes, New Haven will be the winner: It will become a better city as a result of the campaign debate — the way that clear issue differences and proposals in the elections of 1989 (policing), 1999 (ethics), and 2009 (education) led to better governance.
New Haven will hire its first Latino or Latina schools superintendent to succeed retiring Iline Tracey. The new superintendent will commit to abandon teaching outdated debunked “cueing” techniques in reading instruction like guessing words by their appearance or by looking at accompanying pictures, and to focus more on sounding the words out.
Megalandords will continue snapping up poverty properties but at a slower pace. That’s no thanks to the city: Its self-defeating trickle-up property tax revaluation phase-in (thankfully at least shrunk to two years by the Board of Alders from the Elicker administration’s requested five), reward-blight deals and upward-wealth-distribution method of assessing properties will continue to put more money in the pockets of out-of-state investors who are running down neighborhoods. But market forces — higher interest rates and possible tightening credit — will prove a stronger force in the opposite direction.
The lot at the corner of Orange and Elm will remain a hole in the ground. That same market slowdown will prevent the Spinnaker Real Estate developer from lining up capital and beginning construction on new apartments on the land where it demolished a bank to (originally) build a hotel. Instead the company will focus on carrying out the ambitious $76 million first phase of its new-urbanist project down the street at the former Coliseum site.
That mirrors a larger trend: The red-hot market-rate building boom will slow down in 2023. Focus will turn to completing and filling all those new projects that have broken ground, from 201 Munson to Olive and Chapel. Government economic development efforts will focus more on helping existing local business grow to occupy much of the new retail space.
Paul Bass photo
Future force: Crisis team's Yichu Xu and Nanette Campbell help Ollie Cooper on the Green.
Cops, firefighters and 911 operators (once their ranks are replenished) will learn to love the new “crisis response team” of emergency-response social workers and peer counselors, which will move on schedule or faster from its pilot phase. That will make the city incrementally calmer and more humane, preventing some problematic police encounters. Everyone will forget how this win-win idea morphed into an unnecessary ideological malign-your-enemies-and-mischaracterize-their-position culture war argument. Community policing fans and foes alike, “Defund the Police” advocates and opponents all agree: “Cops aren’t social workers. We shouldn’t make them be.” That’s what this initiative does.
No more than seven out of the city’s 30 incumbent or Democratic Party-endorsed alders will have even token opposition in either the Democratic primary or general election. I hope this is wrong! Contested elections benefit everyone, including incumbents.
Green initiatives will fuel much of the exciting new energy in town. A new “ClimateHaven” Yale-community-state-backed eco-incubator at 770 Chapel St. will be announced in January and tap into both a flood of federal money and private investment to turn planet-saving innovations into new companies. Meanwhile, a new city government climate office will help spark new efforts to compost and make homes energy efficient at the grassroots level. A needed recycling policy reckoning may unfortunately be further off into the future.
The Civilian Review Board will hold at least one meeting in the final six months of the year. Scratch that one. Too unpredictable.