Boathouse Fees Bomb At City Plan

City planners pushed the pause button on a proposed new fee schedule for the Canal Dock Boathouse after criticizing the resident-discount prices — up to $4,500 for a wedding, $500 to store a rowing shell, $1,000 to rent the Lanson Room — as too high for New Haveners to bear.

That criticism arose this past Wednesday night during the latest regular monthly City Plan Commission meeting, which was held online via Zoom.

The local land-use commissioners took no action on the city’s proposed new fee schedule for the Canal Dock Boathouse on Long Wharf. The city-owned, state and federally funded waterfront property opened in 2018.

The site has boat storage bays on the first floor; a museum, a classroom, offices and meeting spaces on the second floor; and boating ramps and docks for rowing, kayaking, canoeing, and sailing.

“I don’t see these fees as being attainable or affordable for the general population of our city,” said City Plan Commission Chair Leslie Radcliffe, raising a concern brought up Wednesday by several of the commissioners. ​“It does appear to be quite expensive to me. … I would like to see us reduce the resident fee to something that might be a little bit more affordable.”

By taking no action on the proposed fee schedule, the commissioners left the alder referral on their agenda for further discussion and debate at next month’s meeting. The City Plan Commission’s vote on this proposal is purely advisory; the Board of Alders will have the final say on what fees are ultimately adopted for the boathouse.

Economic Development Administrator Michael Piscitelli told the commissioners that the city has pitched this new proposed fee schedule to the Board of Alders because the Covid-19 pandemic has thrown off the two ​“big revenue streams” that the city had banked on for the boathouse when the rebuilt property first opened.

Those were rental fees associated with a rowing program run by the nonprofit in charge of the boathouse, which is called Canal Dock Boathouse Inc, and lease fees associated with University of New Haven’s planned setting up of its marine biology program at the city-owned site.

Both of those initiatives have experienced significant delays due to Covid, Piscitelli said. ​“Without those big revenue streams, it’s a little harder to make the budget work.”

So the City Plan Department took a look across the landscape of similar publicly-owned waterfront sites to see how they stay fiscally afloat, and decided to put together a list of proposed fees for individuals and groups looking to use the property.

“We continue to get requests and lots of interest from the public in having events at the boathouse,” City Plan Director Aicha Woods said. ​“We think that once we’re able to open, it will be very successful.” She said the fee schedule proposed seeks to strike a balance between ​“being something that is a reasonable fee scale, and also generating enough income to cover some of the operating expenses for the boathouse.”

“There’s a lot of pent-up demand there,” Woods continued. ​“We’re really hoping to put it back into operations and have it be a self-sustaining facility.”

In a cover letter written to the Board of Alders on June 30 about this very matter, City Plan Deputy Director of Comprehensive Planning Anne Hartjen wrote, ​“In order to relaunch the Boathouse after a significant shutdown due to the pandemic, we are requesting the creation of a revolving fund to segregate operation expenditures and event income. … 

“Fees will be utilized to operate the facility in alignment with its original mandate from the federal government: using event income to pay for building maintenance and utilities and ongoing robust community programming which is water (Harbor)-based.”

The proposed fee schedule, which can be read in full here, includes separate sets of prices for New Haven residents and non-resident.

The proposed schedule includes:

• Storage of rowing shells: $500 for residents, $600 for non-residents.

• Storage of kayaks or canoes: $200 for residents, $225 for non-residents.

• Renting the Adee Room for four hours during the day: $600 for residents, $700 for non-residents, with a $200 per hour fee for additional hours and a $250 kitchen fee.

• Renting the Lanson Room for four hours during the day: $1,000 for residents, $1,200 for non-residents, with a $300 per hour fee for additional hours and a $250 kitchen fee.

• Hosting a wedding: For residents $1,500 for Mondays through Thursdays, $3,500 for Fridays and Sundays, $4,500 for Saturdays; for non-residents, those fees are $2,000, $4,000, and $5,000 respectively.

• Renting the outdoor platform: For residents, $250 per hour during the day, $300 per hour during the evenings for Mondays through Thursdays, $500 per hour on Fridays and Sundays, and $600 per hour on Saturdays; for non-residents, those fees are $300, $350, $550, and $650 respectively. Tables and chairs and security cost extra.

“Only For Certain Class Of People” Benefit

“These numbers seem awfully high to me, and I really fear that it’s going to be self-defeating to have numbers that are so high that people decide they can’t do it,” said Commissioner Vice-Chair Ed Mattison. ​“If somebody just passes up this opportunity, there’s no income there. I think these numbers maybe should be rethought, because I don’t think they’ll work.”

Commissioner Ernest Pagan reframed Mattison’s critique. ​“I think these numbers would work, but these numbers would work only for a certain class of people,” he said. If affordable housing is such a priority for this commission, the Board of Alders, and the city more broadly, why does the city not seem to care about the affordability of using this public asset?

Radcliffe suggested that city staffers spend the next month retooling these numbers so that non-residents have to pay heftier fees to take the financial burden off of city residents.

She also said that the city should not justify these prices purely based on their being comparable to prices used at similar facilities in other towns.

“Those facilities are not in New Haven,” she said, and therefore do not take into account the economic realities faced by many New Haven residents.

Before the commission stopped discussing the matter Wednesday, Mattison raised a few questions he said he’d like answered by city staff the next time the commission picks this matter up for debate.

“What are the projections for the income that is going to be made with this fee schedule?” he asked. ​“Are they plausible as a fiscal matter? If we are charging amounts which are very high, it is likely that people will go to alternative facilities and we’ll have no income from an event that doesn’t take place. … Where did the targets come from of how much we’re supposed to raise using the interim fee schedule, and are those realistic?”

With that, the commissioners took no vote, and left the matter on the agenda for more discussion next month.