Paul Bass Photos
Starwood Hotels’ Ohlsson and Salvatore mingle on the future hotel site Thursday.
As a parade of powerbrokers onstage Thursday spoke about how new state dollars will help remake downtown New Haven, a pair of Stamford-based developers stood quietly to the side on the spot where they’re looking to bring a four-star hotel.
The makeshift stage was erected on lower Orange Street on the 5.5‑acre grave of the former New Haven Coliseum. The occasion was part economic development announcement, part barely-disguised late-hour campaign rally for Gov. Dannel P. Malloy (at center in top photo), who needs a large New Haven turnout to prevail in a neck-and-neck reelection battle next Tuesday against Republican Tom Foley.
Malloy took the stage Thursday to announce that he’s committing $21.5 million in state bond money to reconfigure that stretch of Orange Street to reconnect it to lower Orange — the latest elimination of portions of the Route 34 Connector mini-highway-to-nowhere — and to shoot two feeder roads off it to send drivers to the Air Rights Garage and to Alexion Pharmaceuticals’ new 100 College St. office building. (Read about all that reconfiguration here.) The state money will come on top of $12 million the city has committed to the road work.
Herb Newman Architects
That money is the missing piece developer Max Reim of Montreal-based LiveWorkLearnPlay said he needed to get started on construction of his $400-plus million new urbanist mini-city of hundreds of apartments, offices, 30 – 40 storefronts, a pedestrian plaza, and a luxury hotel on the old New Haven Coliseum site. Reim announced at Thursday’s event that he now expects “to have shovels in the ground by next summer.” In a city accustomed to passionate debates over development projects, this one has enjoyed an unusual near unanimity of support from new urbanists, neighborhood leaders, government officials and civic leaders alike.
Parsons Brinckerhoff
The road plan.
Malloy said he had held off approving the money for the road improvements until Reim satisfied him with two guarantees: That the private financing (which constitutes $395 million of the project) was solid. And that he had a firm commitment to place a four-star hotel in phase one. Reim originally planned to include the hotel in the second phase. Malloy told the Independent in an interview last month that he didn’t want to end up just “own[ing] infranstructure,” he said.
“He did hold our feet to the fire,” Reim said of Malloy at Thursday’s event. “I respect him for that.”
As many as four four-star hotel developers have competed to build the hotel, according to officials. (Like the fictional rock band Spinal Tap turning its amplifiers up to 11, officials have referred to luring a “four-and-a-half-star” hotel.)
At least one of those hotel companies was represented in the crowd Thursday morning, according to officials. One of them was Stamford-based Starwood Hotels and Resorts, believed to be a leading finalist. Starwood builds Sheraton and Westin, among other, luxury hotels.
Reim (at right in photo) introduced Starwood Vice-President of Development Chip Ohlsson and Starwood Director of development John Salvatore (at left in photo) to Mayor Toni Harp before the event began. Ohlsson and Salvatore told the Independent only that they’re “looking at” the New Haven project.
Reim said a final announcement of a hotel developer is “imminent. The hotel has to be the right hotel to thrive for decades to come.”
Malloy said after the event that his decision was not tied to any one hotel being chosen. He said he’s “glad” that Starwood is based in Connecticut, but that he was satisfied with any of the leading contenders getting the deal.
The LiveWorkLearnPlay project and the remaking of Orange Street is part of the broader Downtown Crossing effort that is undoing what is now widely considered a colossal mistake of mid-20th Century urban renewal: building the Route 34 Connector mini-highway that cut downtown off from the Hill and the train station. Downtown Crossing in total will create 4,700 “direct and indirect” construction jobs and 2,800 permanent jobs, Malloy said Thursday.
WTNH reporter Mark Davis asked Malloy whether he was holding this press conference days before the election in order to get votes.
Without breaking into a smile, Malloy responded that he would have been “playing politics” if he had not held the announcement on Thursday. For political reasons it would have made sense to hold the announcement earlier, he said: “I wish we had announced it before. You have to have your ducks in a row. … One we reached those agreements” on financing and the hotel, “I said I would participate.”
In her remarks at the announcement, Harp expressed her hope that Malloy will serve another four years as governor.
“Gov. Malloy has been a champion of New Haven on so many, many levels,” she declared.
Malloy proceeded to official campaign stops at the food carts outside Yale-New Haven Hospital, at Hillhouse High School’s public safety academy, and then at a planned rally at Wilbur Cross High School with First Lady Michelle Obama.