Melissa Bailey File Photo
One of New Haven’s hottest new-media entrepreneurs and his landlord, a deep-pocket New York developer, are competing to turn a vacant former CT Transit bus garage into what the city envisions as a slice of Brooklyn.
The city’s about to take over the 195,000-square-foot building (pictured) and surrounding 6.95-acre land at 470 James St. from the state. It wants to find a buyer to turn it into a mix of stores, offices, and/or industrial space …
… like the former Robby Len building right across James Street, right by I‑91 at the gateway to Fair Haven. A New York developer named Jason Carter bought that building last year for $3.5 million with aims to restart its sputtering rebirth as “Trolley Square,” a funky mix of start-up businesses, specialty shops, and artist studios.
New Haven has issued a request for proposals looking for developers with ideas of how to transform 470 James St. the same way.
The two respondents so far happen to already be in the neighborhood.
One is Carter himself. He said Thursday he hopes to renovate the former bus property into a corporate headquarters or a spot for a “school-related functionality” — administrative offices for for-profit or not-for-profit businesses that serve New Haven schools. He said reviving that property would complement his plans to overhaul Trolley Square across the street, an effort that he said has grown into a $20 million or $30 million job.
The second potential buyer to have met with city officials this week includes Carter’s showcase tenants across the street at Trolley Square: A partnership including principals of Crossfit gym and Digital Surgeons, an online marketing company. Digital Surgeons has grown over its eight years, with clients ranging from the city of New Haven to Ovation guitars to Lady Gaga.
The Harp administration is looking to return the tax-exempt property to the tax rolls and to continue the gradual evolution of the Mill River industrial/commercial district. A city-commissioned plan for the district included the property; bidders are asked to consider the plan in their proposals, and to propose “an innovative use of the space that focuses on mixed use commercial redevelopment.”
Combined with Trolley Square, the former bus garage could create “our own little Brooklyn/Williamsburg industrial area,” said city development chief Matthew Nemerson, who has regularly spoken of turning swaths of New Haven into neo-Brooklyns. “I see tech companies. Maybe people who are doing artistic things. I see a Brooklyn.”
Clean-Up Needed
The lot sits right off of I‑91’s Exit 6 and the one-day-to-reopen (fingers crossed) State Street bridge (whose closing has devastated business on both sides). The lot features the 195,000-square-foot brick former CT Transit building, including two stories of offices in the front and garage bays stretching out towards the rear. City appraisers pegged the fair market value at $5.6 million in 2011. The building used to house the local division offices for CT Transit. Over 100 buses were maintained and stored there. About 190 bus drivers would report to work there, pick up their buses, and head out to their routes, he said. The site also housed administrative offices.
The building was erected the building in 1950 as a garage for a private bus company that used to provide regional bus service, according to the state Department of Economic and Community Development (DECD). In 1976, as private bus companies across the nation were going bankrupt and getting bought out by government entities, the State of Connecticut bought the company and changed the name to CT Transit. The state bought the James Street lot that year, too.
The lot has been abandoned since September 2010, when CT Transit moved its New Haven operations to a new facility in Hamden. The state tried selling the lot in 2012. At the time the state had identified toxins at the James Street site that need to be cleaned up including hydrocarbons in soil, asbestos and lead.
The state Department of Transportation has been in the process of sealing and cleaning up “hot spots” at the site for years, said DOT spokesman Michael Sanders.
The state DECD has committed to finishing a clean-up once a developer is chosen, Nemerson said. DECD Deputy Commissioner Tim Sullivan will sit on the city committee reviewing the proposals for the site along with Alder Jessica Holmes, whose ward includes the property.
Sullivan confirmed in an interview Thursday that the state will fund a clean-up if a “viable proposal” emerges. He said money is available under a program aimed at creating jobs by cleaning state-owned brownfields.
The state received “a couple of limited expressions of interest” that “didn’t pan out” when it put hte porperty up for sale in 2012, Sullivan said. Both the state and city have recently seen an increase in interest.
Oy, The Roof
Jason Carter said he doesn’t think of the area as a potential Brooklyn. He sees it as New Haven. That’s better, he said.
“New Haven has a birthright more meritorious than Brooklyn in my opinion. I’m trying to reinvigorate a deteriorated portion of the city,” Carter said.
He has a lot at stake on the block. When he bought Trolley Square across the street last year, he figured he could repair it for “probably a quarter-million dollars.”
That cost has now grown at least 80 fold. It turns out he has 105 years of “band-aids” to repair, he said.
A new roof alone will cost $4 million to $5 million. Because it’s not just any old roof.
“Think of it like an elevator hangar where planes go inside,” he said of the building, which used to house the Robby Len swimsuit factory. “The roof is not just a flat 130,000 square-foot roof. It was built about 105 years ago in a saw-toothed shape. It was built so the roof goes up in a triangular geometry. It goes up ten foot three inches. It recedes down on the hypotenuse about 26 feet. There’s about 4,000 lineal feet. …
“It turns out it’s all layers of asbestos. It’s leaking in dozens of areas. …
“Then there are a couple thousand-plus windows inside the roof. The building’s 270 feet wide. The only way to get natural light into the building was to put it on the altitude portion of that triangle. They put it on the north face wall. Each window is two feet wide by five feet wide.
“All of that has to be brand new, conforming to the energy code.”
Carter has enlisted local architect Barry Svigals’ firm to design the renovations. To clear space, he has not renewed many of the leases once they expire. The leases for his two main tenants, Digital Surgeons and Crossfit gym, on the other hand, run through the end of 2016. At which point, depending on the outcome of the bus-garage bidding, Digital Surgeons might have a bigger home of its own to move into.