State DOT’s design for the new garage.
New Haven is pushing the state not just to redesign its planned new Union Station parking garage, but to let the city build it instead.
That’s the latest wrinkle in the 20-year state-city wrangling over a planned second garage at the train station to handle all those commuters who often have no place to park if they arrive after sunrise.
The state recently approved the money and design for a $40 million-$60 million, 1,000-space, seven-level garage to be constructed on a current 260-space surface lot next to a perpetually full existing garage.
But New Haven officials and citizens rose up against the design as ugly and out of step with new urbanist “transit-oriented development.” They call for street-level retail, better bike storage, a CT Transit bus depot, and a pedestrian bridge over the tracks to Long Wharf.
Paul Bass Photo
Malloy blasts city car critics at August press conference., including Nemerson is pictured at rear.
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy publicly told the city last month to take the plan or leave it. But behind the scenes negotiations continue, not just on whether to tweak the design, but whether the state should even be building the garage.
The state owns the land. So the state gets to make the call. It owns and operates garages at other train stations along the Metro-North line.
But New Haven currently operates the New Haven Union Station garage as well as the station itself. And it has run consistent budget surpluses. Recently the state Department of Transportation (DOT) agreed to renew the city’s lease for the next three years, with two one-year options to renew.
Now the city is arguing that it should have the same deal at the new garage, including the ability to design it and float its own bonds to pay for building it.
Mayor Toni Harp called the ownership question the “real discussion” underlying the current negotiations.
Thirty-five years ago, she noted this week on the “Mayor Monday” WNHH radio program, the city “took over the train station and built the garage when the state wanted to wash their hands of it. We took it over. We made it a going enterprise. It’s going well. It’s making money. They want it back because we cleaned it up and made it look good.”
Park New Haven
The existing Union Station garage has consistently run a surplus. The parking authority posted a $1.7 million surplus on $6.8 million in total revenues from the garage in the fiscal year ending on June 30, 2015, according to audited figures. The authority overall posted annual operating surpluses for years as well.
“They own the land. And they absolutely want to control it,” Harp noted about the state. “They want all the revenues. It is the most productive parking garage in the state. So the [New Haven parking authority] has done a wonderful job of making it earn money.”
DOT spokesman Kevin Nursick confirmed that the department’s position remains unchanged: “The DOT is designing and building the new garage.”
City Economic Development Administrator Matthew Nemerson acknowledged that the state still officially says “no” to altering the design or allowing New Haven to build the new garage.
“But in negotiations people often say no until they say yes,” and those negotiations are continuing, Nemerson said.
He said the city has brought in architect Herb Newman, who designed the first garage as well as the renovation of Union Station, to “offer design solutions. We feel we are a jewel box of a city where great civic construction projects need to be designed by world-class architects. They need to be designed always with a contextual element of streetscape and massing and coordination with other buildings.”
DOT’s Nursick welcomed Newman’s advice but not the idea of replacing the state’s own architect.
“We have met with [Newman] and will likely meet / interface on various occasions in the future as the design process moves forward,” he stated in an email message. “We are not turning over design authority, but we are allowing feedback and input.”
Here’s Nemerson’s pitch for why it would be in the state’s interest to surrender its longstanding insistence on building and managing the new garage: “We can build that garage. We can keep it off the state’s books. We can give them the spaces they need at a fair price. We can make it something they cross off the list and never worry about and deal with the other billions of dollars they need to fix bridges and build highways. We are offering them partnership and an ongoing relationship that’s worked for the last 34 years. We can continue it for the next 35 years.”
The city administration’s position got a shout-out from one of Nemerson’s predecessors, former city development chief Henry Fernandez.
Fernandez recalled that the control issue was on the table back when he worked for Mayor John DeStefano in the early 2000s.
“At different points the city has gotten very close to an agreement. At one point while I was responsible for negotiation, the people we were negotiating with got arrested on the state side because of some issues related to other transportation projects they were involved in. This has been a long-term dispute. It’s gone up and down over time. I think this will continue to be a negotiation. The city and the state legislators are fighting a good fight both here on design and I would hope on management,” Fernandez said during a recent appearance on WNHH radio’s “Dateline New Haven” program.
He argued that people should not see the state’s plan as a gift of money to New Haven.
“The garage itself will pay for the bonds being issued. It’s not like the state is giving the city tens of millions of dollars. The garage is a money maker and will pay for the bonds. The parking authority certainly has the ability to issue the bonds on its own, as it has done for other garages. The state doesn’t want that because it wants control,” Fernandez said.
“No train station in the state of Connecticut is more attractive or better run than the one that the parking authority and the city of New Haven run,” he added. “We don’t want our train station to look like the train station in Bridgeport or Stamford. They’re hideous.”
Click on or download the above audio file to hear Henry Fernandez’s interview on WNHH radio’s “Dateline New Haven” program, which in addition to the garage issue touched on the presidential campaign, the public schools, swimming, and other local, national, and international issues.
Click on the above sound file to listen to the full interview with Toni Harp on WNHH radio’s “Mayor Monday.”