Kelly Murphy, City Hall’s brand-new development administrator, made her first contact with key business players at Thursday’s Chamber of Commerce breakfast at the Lawn Club, from Len Smart of the Greater New Haven Business and Professional Association (in picture) to the state’s economic development chief.
“Let me introduce you to Jim Abromitis,” said City Plan Chief Karyn Gilvarg (at right in photo) as she guided Murphy over to the state development chief. “And these two ladies are lobbyists. She used to work in City Hall…”
On her ninth day on the job as New Haven’s point person for business development, Murphy was still getting her bearings. She’s commuting from the Bronx, occasionally staying with family in Milford, as she looks for a home in town. And she’s getting a handle on the faces and the economic terrain.
She has taken the job at a critical juncture: She’ll shepherd through the remaking of downtown’s southern end as Gateway Community College and Long Wharf Theatre replace the condemned carcasses of Macy’s, Malley’s and the Coliseum. And she’ll navigate the controversial, stalled plan for Yale-New Haven Hospital to build a new $430 million cancer center, the largest proposed development in city history.
New Haven has already surprised her, said Murphy, who on first impression exudes more of a Chamber of Commerce chirpiness than your typical City Hall development chief’s button-downed reserve. She knew the city had a lot of energy, she said. She didn’t know quite how much until she got here.
“I’m good overwhelmed,” she said. “I’ve been New York- biased. New Haven is smaller than one of my 12 community districts” which she oversaw in her previous job as New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s city planning deputy for the Bronx. “The amount of people who already want to come in and meet with me who want to pitch proposals” has caught her by surprise. (She wouldn’t identify these suitors or their plans.)
She said she believes, based on her experience in New York, that New Haven can use all its arts, dining and other energy to its advantage in building the economy. She loved living in Manhattan because of all there was to do there. But she had to pay $1,400 a month to rent a claustrophobic 350-square-foot apartment. She almost felt she had to get out of the house all the time. So she bought a condo in the Bronx for $89,000 and expanded to 1,150 square feet. The Bronx was able to use that comparative affordability to its advantage in luring people to move and invest there, she observed.
Now, as Murphy house-hunts in New Haven, she’ll probably get even more room for less money. (She does have to sell that Bronx condo, which she just finished fixing up and moving into.)
Add the hassle and cost of suburban commuting to New Haven’s comparative affordability, and the city is bound to keep attracting new people, Murphy argued. New Haven already has more people living downtown than any other Connecticut city. “People are rediscovering downtowns. New Haven is in a good position to capitalize on the trend.”
Raise the Rent?
Murphy and the others in attendance at the Chamber breakfast heard about some other trends affecting the city and the state during an address by Richard S. Guralnick (pictured), H. Pearce’s senior commercial real estate broker.
The city has done better attracting new people to live downtown than it has in attracting new business. Downtown commercial buildings have an 11 percent vacancy rate. The region’s rate is 18 percent. New Haven’s is lower only because major office and retail buildings — 227 Church, 80 Temple, Church and Chapel — have converted to residences.
Even with a smaller supply, New Haven still has trouble renting out commercial space. According to Guralnick, the average downtown commercial rent has dropped from $23.55 to under $19 a square foot since the first quarter of 2003. (Rents for apartments, meanwhile, have zoomed upwards.)
Guralnick called the situation “bad news” for commercial building owners but good news for tenants. “Landlords are very willing to negotiate,” Guralnick reported. He recommended that prospective tenants seek concessions, and current tenants seek to renegotiate their leases.
Overall, is that good news or bad news for New Haven?
New Haven’s new development administrator sees it more as the latter. “It’s harder to get development that way when the rents are going down,” Murphy said. If she succeeds in her mission here (fortunately for her, City Hall development administrators last on average about five times longer than mayoral spokesmen), rents will go back up.
