Thomas Breen photo
The vacant commercial space at the bottom of the Crown Street garage.
The next occupant for a vast, publicly owned commercial space on Crown Street will be either a mid-size music venue run by a successful local concert promoter, or two smaller performance spaces and a rehearsal studio run by a consortium of local theaters in collaboration with a small private Catholic college.
Those were the results of the New Haven Parking Authority’s three-month-long Request for Proposal (RFP) process to find a new business for the nearly 10,000 square-foot, publicly owned commercial space on the street level of the Crown Street parking garage at the corner of Crown Street and College Street.
The parking commissioners released the RFP in May, and formally closed the submission period on Thursday afternoon at the Parking Authority’s headquarters at 232 George St.
Reading the applicant names at the Parking Authority’s George Street headquarters.
At exactly 3 p.m., Brian Seholm, the Parking Authority’s chief financial officer, opened the applications and read the names of those who had applied.
He announced that the Parking Authority received submissions from two applicants.
It received one application from the New Haven Center for the Performing Arts (NHCPA), the nonprofit that runs the successful College Street Music Hall across the street.
The second application came from a consortium of Long Wharf Theatre, the Shubert Theatre, and Albertus Magnus College.
Shubert Theatre ED John Fisher and Shubert Theatre Director of Communications Elisabeth Verrastro.
John Fisher, the executive director of the Connecticut Association for the Performing Arts (CAPA), which runs the century-old Shubert next door to the vacant space on College Street, said the consortium of Long Wharf Theatre, the Shubert, and Albertus Magnus hopes to build two performance spaces and a rehearsal studio in the vacant commercial space.
Local attorney Steve Mednick.
Local attorney Steve Mednick, who represented NHCPA at Thursday afternoon’s announcement, said that his client hopes to replicate but on a slightly smaller scale what College Street Music Hall has been doing across the street for the past several years.
“We think this space can open us up to some performers that New Haven is not currently getting,” Mednick said about NHCPA’s plans for a mid-size concert venue in the garage commercial space.
Update: Mednick contacted the Independent Sunday to reiterate that the plan is for a concert venue, not a dance club. He was responding to what he called inaccurate assumptions made by some commenters to this story.
Parking Authority counsel Joseph Rini.
After the reading of the applications, Parking Authority counsel Joseph Rini said he was a bit surprised that the Parking Authority received only two proposals, considering how 45 people visited the space during a venue-bid tour in July. However, he and city transportation chief Doug Hausladen noted, the space is huge at nearly 10,000 feet.
Rini said that now a review committee consisting of three members from the Parking Authority, three members appointed by the mayor, and the mayor’s chief of staff will review the two proposals.
That review committee will provide comments to the Parking Authority hopefully within the next month, and then the Parking Authority will ultimately decide between the two. Rini said the Parking Authority will likely pick between the two applicants during its October meeting.
Click on the Facebook Live video below to watch the reading of the submissions.