Thomas Breen photo
A 472-space surface parking lot in West River will remain a 472-space surface parking lot for at least another year, per a newly signed agreement between the city’s parking authority and Yale New Haven Hospital.
Park New Haven commissioners unanimously approved that renewed agreement for the Sherman/Tyler lot during Monday night’s regular monthly parking authority meeting at 232 George St.
The authority’s chief financial officer, Brian Seholm, explained that the terms of the updated agreement with the hospital are exactly the same as they have been for the entirety of the lot’s five-year existence: The hospital will rent every space in the lot at a market-rate price set by the authority that is scheduled to increase each Spring according to the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI‑U).
Park New Haven CFO Brian Seholm.
Per the terms of the new agreement, which covers July 1, 2019 through June 30, 2020 with an option to renew for an additional year after that, the hospital will pay $126.61 per space per month, netting the parking authority $59,759.92 per month, or over $717,000 for the year.
“They had run out of extensions on the prior agreement,” Seholm told the parking commissioners. Thus the need for the new lease.
The signing of the new agreement signals not just a sustained source of revenue for the local parking authority, but also a few delays in the city’s longstanding efforts to attract developers to that stretch of the Rt. 34 corridor in West River where the surface lot sits.
Earlier this year, parking authority staffers had budgeted that they would be losing the right to lease the lot to the hospital, and the concomitant $700,000-plus in annual parking revenue, because of apparent movement in the redevelopment of the Rt. 34 corridor into a variety of residential, commercial, and office uses.
In particular, West River Housing LLC, a partnership between the New Haven-based West River Self Help Investment Plan (SHIP) and the New-York based National Housing Partnership Foundation, is planning to build 56 townhouses on a 4.3‑acre vacant site immediately adjacent to the Sherman/Tyler lot.
Park New Haven ED Doug Hausladen.
At a February parking authority meeting, staff and commissioners discussed the likelihood that the city would not renew the authority’s right to lease the lot to the hospital this fiscal year because of how attractive the lot would become to prospective developers due to the adjacent West River Housing LLC project.
But the developer partnership failed to get state financing for the expected $22 million housing project during the latest round of Connecticut Housing Finance Authority (CHFA) applications, the National Housing Partnership Foundation’s Jamie Sparr told the Independent on Tuesday.
He said the group is submitting another round of applications to CHFA this year. The application deadline is Nov. 6, and CHFA should announce whether or not the local partnership’s funding request will be granted by Spring of 2020.
Thus the new parking agreement with the hospital, as well as an Aug. 7 license agreement between the city and the parking authority, both of which point towards at least another year that the vacant land will remain vacant land in the neighborhood.
“The Community and the administration is in support of the extension,” Livable City Initiative (LCI) Executive Director Serena Neal-Sanjurjo told the Independent Tuesday. “We are committed to development on the Sherman Tyler lot and have been discussing potential plans for the site. The West River Housing project is moving full speed ahead. The West River Housing Partnership is working to secure total development funds and will seek to move forward the first quarter of 2020.”
“The license agreement is for just one year,” Acting Economic Development Administrator Michael Piscitelli added. “There are no current development plans for Sherman/Tyler so the one year provides a little more time for YNHH and the Parking Authority to plan on vacating the lot permanently.” He noted that the City Plan Commission has already approved the site plan for the West River SHIP project, “so it’s the financing and conveyance pieces which still need to be done.”
The Aug. 7 city-parking authority agreement grants the parking authority the right to run the Sherman/Tyler lot as a parking lot from July 1, 2019 through June 30, 2020.
It grants the authority the same right for the city-owned, 460-space Orchard/Sherman lot, the 45-space 25 George St. lot, the 28-space State & Audubon lot, the 38-space State/Grand/Olive lot, the 36-space 432 State St. lot, the 28-space State/Pulaski lot, the 26-space lots at 253 State St. and 183 State St., and the 57-space lots at 31 and 39 George St.
Per the terms of the city-parking authority agreement, the parking authority must pay the city $18 per space per month for the right to run each of those lots.