What’s Up Nemerson’s Sleeve?

If a Montreal developer doesn’t take steps soon to get started building a long-delayed project on the old Coliseum site, New Haven might play a new card to try to force his hand.

Matthew Nemerson alluded to holding such a card during an interview on WNHH FM’s ​“Dateline New Haven” program.

Nemerson, the city’s economic development administrator, has been negotiating for over three years with Montreal-based LiveWorkLearnPlay, the developer chosen by the previous DeStefano Administration to build a new urbanist mini-city atop the old New Haven Coliseum site with 1,000 mixed-income apartments, 30 – 40 new businesses, a four-and-a-half-star hotel with 160 – 190 rooms, 30,000 square feet of stores, and a public square on the grave of the old New Haven Coliseum at Orange, George, and State Streets and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

As Nemerson’s crew has succeeded in jump-starting building projects elsewhere in town, the Coliseum site plan has stalled. Years after the developer promised to put shovels in the ground, it hasn’t even produced a final drawing or announced the selection of a hotel operator necessary to free up $21 million in state money for preliminary road work. Despite a posting on the developer’s website that continues to announce a ​“Spring 2015” ​“construction start.” (Click here and here for previous stories detailing some of the stated reasons for the delay.) Some observers have grown skeptical about whether the project will ever happen.

Now the city has given LWLP a June 30 deadline to produce those plans. LWLP Principal Max Reim did not respond to a request for comment on how that’s shaping up.

What happens if he misses the deadline?

Under the deal struck in late 2013 with the then-DeStefano administration, Reim received 14 years to hold onto the property and remain the city’s preferred developer whether or not he built the project. That would seem to offer New Haven precious little leverage. At least that has been the commonly understood terms of the deal.

In the WNHH interview, Nemerson suggested that city lawyers have scoured the 100-plus-page agreement with Reim and discovered they may have leverage to insist Reim produce or else move aside so someone else can build on that prime piece of real estate in the shadow of boomtown downtown New Haven. Nemerson declined to elaborate on that leverage.

Plus, Nemerson said, the city has a new ace in the hole: the Knights of Columbus, which has recommitted to the Tootsie Roll-reminiscent headquarters next to the Coliseum site.

Following are excerpts from the conversation with Nemerson.

Lawyers Get Busy

WNHH: Matthew, I know you inherited this deal that gave the developer all the cards by giving him 14 years before he has to do anything, but …

Nemerson: Can I say that there are many different interpretations? You’re saying he has 14 years. I am not going to say that we agree with that. 

It sounds like your lawyers have been doing some work to see what leverage you might have. …

We have many lawyers. Well, we think that each side has to do certain things and that they might be concurrent. So, while it is clear that there are some things we haven’t done, we think that there are some things that the developer hasn’t done.

So, in other words, we are now getting to the point where you’re gonna tell him: ​“Look, this has gone on too long. If you don’t start making some progress, we are going to take this away from you and give this to someone else, because we have been waiting too long”?

Well, I wouldn’t use those words. But, I would say that we have June 30th as a deadline for all of us to decide that this the development and the scheme that we have [is moving forward]. 

But if they say: ​“We are not going to do what you want but we still have 11 years,” what are you going to say? ​“We’ve looked at the documents and you don’t have that freedom that you think you have because you failed to fulfill certain obligations”?

That’s possible, you might say. 

So what did you find? What did you re-examine?

These development documents are like 150 pages. 

I’m curious what page it is. Sounds like you found a good page. What page?

You know, we didn’t find any one page, and we certainly aren’t going to tell you what page we found. 

You should tell us what page you found.

We aren’t gonna do that. We believe that this thing has to make sense for everybody and at some point, we are great believers in what LiveWorkLearnPlay has done around the world. We think that their vision is spectacular, and we think that they have, as partners with other people, built projects that we would be proud to have in this location. And we are hoping that they will be able to come to the table by June 30th. 

That sounds like it means in translation: ​“Put up or shut up time for Live Work Learn Play is June 30th.”

Were there other questions you had?

When this plan was put together — and you didn’t put it together — the developer wowed the city. This was prime real estate. A lot is happening in New Haven, right in the center of our town by the train station, by Wooster Square, in the Ninth Square. We have this big piece of property that nothing is happening with, the former Coliseum site, and this developer came and said everything New Haven wanted to hear, a rare project that got everybody happy that usually argue… 

… And don’t forget, a large union hotel. 

Maybe it was too good to be true. Come on Matthew, you gotta admit, stepping back from PR, that it’s now been four years and nothing has happened [at the Coliseum site] while these other projects have gone up around town. Do you think it’s possible in fact that this was a loser idea that’s never going to happen because this guy can’t pull it off, or the idea just does not work in the market?

Well, it’s not a loser idea. 

Well, I haven’t seen it [happen] then, if it’s such a good idea.

It’s a great idea. Well, because of the way it was presented to us in December of 2013, it was like a $380 million deal; $380 million deals often take five to ten years.

It’s actually much smaller now. Which actually makes more sense. It was a lot of wine in a smaller bottle.

Look, projects of this complexity actually take a long time. I know you’re going to say this is just PR, but we have done so many other projects that have brought vitality to the core of downtown. This is a project which was, in a sense, one of the reasons this was so exciting when it was first conceived by [architect] Herb Newman in the late ​‘90s as a way to rethink where the Coliseum was and then rethink the connection to the train station …

George Street has development that no one could have even dreamt of in 2012 or 2013. What’s happening all along from Park Street and Howe Street down along Chapel Street, amazing stuff. So, in a funny way, we are getting all of the development that we had hoped for — we are just getting it in other places So, we’re actually doing things that we needed to do to support restaurants, to get more people on the street. This [the Coliseum site] was always sort of the ​“10th square” as people have called it.

Of course we are going to do this project, and of course we are excited about the project, and yes we do need a big hotel. We are under-hoteled right now. But in terms of all the things it was going to bring, hundreds of housing units, lots of retail, those are all coming [at other locations]. We are getting many more restaurants, streets that we never thought would fill in. I mean, look at how dark the corner of Crown and Temple was just two years ago. And we were like, ​“Oh, what’s going on with Crown and Temple?” We now have two of the hottest restaurants that are packed every night, Olive’s and Oil and Jimmy’s, on that corner and the restaurant K2 across the street, which wasn’t doing very well, is now booming and has jazz night.

And yet a block from the train station, which should be the best place the market the people who want to walk …

What I’m saying is that we don’t have to worry whether the Coliseum project is under construction right now, because when you start seeing Spinnaker go up, when we start implementing some of the plans that we have to sort of redesign State Street and sort of fill in on both sides of the Chapel Street quarter, there is so much going on.

It’s like New Haven has this death wish. It’s the old Jewish joke: Your mother gives you two ties, and you go upstairs and come down with one of them and you say, ​“Mom what do you think about my tie?” And she says, ​“Why didn’t you wear the other one? What’s wrong with the other one?”
The point is we have so many developments going on. We have so many things about to happen.

Hail The Knights!

So you’re not worried that the prime real estate there [at the Coliseum site] is sitting fallow for three years after you got it and there’s no hope in sight?

I am not worried at all, and I’ll tell you why. Because right now, the main weakness we have in downtown is parking because of the success of Gateway [Community College]. Gateway took 700 spaces, prime spaces that we had in Temple Street.

So you’re kind of glad we have a surface lot there?

I am delighted we have a surface lot here. 

That’s the first time I’ve ever heard you say that. You hate surface lots. You want to build on them.

I do, but Paul, if I had to pick one block for the next three to four years that was a surface parking lot, that wouldn’t impact many restaurants … I mean there are no restaurants facing that, the Knights of Columbus [lots] are also surface lots.

You know, we have some very good news: The Knights of Columbus spent the last 10 years looking around, deciding if they were gonna make a major commitment to stay in New Haven. They had bought some spectacular land down in the Northern Virginia area; they have a lot of connections.

Obviously they are a huge North American fraternal insurance company and fraternal organization. And as much as their roots were here, you know they were wondering: ​“Is this the place were we are gonna spend the next 50 years, 100 years?”

The fact that they have decided yes, that they are recommitting to their building, they are recommitting to the block, that they’re selling lands in other places, that they are committing to this — that’s huge. That’s a major story that no one talks about. I don’t know why, I guess ​‘cause they are kind of secretive. 

When did they make that decision?

They have been making it over the last year and a half. I mean it’s a very, very interesting story. 

Thatʼs one block from the Coliseum.

Well, what I am saying is that that’s where we are focusing on right now. What are their office needs? What are their parking needs? What kind of hotels are they looking for? 

They want to build on the plaza, correct?

Well, I don’t know exactly where they want to build. We have sold them all the parking lots that were on the west side underneath where the Coliseum was, so they’ve got parking lots.

They’ve got the old park there. You know, right now a city of our size would be really focusing on what are the needs of one, if not their major private corporation, their big insurance company. Look at all the attention all the insurance companies are getting up in Hartford or other places. So we are very, very delighted that they have made their decision to commit, not only to New Haven but to that location. So right now, as important as the Coliseum project is, the Knights are our quiet number one. We are trying to figure out what their expansion needs are, what their parking needs are .

Might they ever want the Coliseum site?

Well, we’ve talked to them, not about wanting the whole block, but: Is there a possibility of some of the buildings that would be on that site to be integrated into a development? It just sort of makes sense to look at that.

So, they might be your backup if Live Work Learn Play never becomes a reality?

Well, it isn’t a backup. It’s more of looking at it more holistically.

Are they not-for-profit when they have these areas? Do we get to tax them?

Well, I’m pretty sure we tax them. I mean, that’s a good question. I don’t think that their non-profit organizations have submitted for tax exception.

Click on or download the above audio file to hear the full interview with Matthew Nemerson on WNHH radio’s ​“Dateline New Haven,” which also covered other developments in New Haven as well as the proposal to create a new zoning procedure in town for university development.