Biotower Plan Proceeds Despite Pandemic

The developer of a planned new half-a-million square-foot bioscience lab and office tower at 101 College St. said the Covid-19 pandemic has only encouraged him to proceed with the estimated $100 million building project.

He said that’s because the dual public health and economic crises have underscored the need for more employment and venues for scientific research — both goals this development hopes to meet as part of a broader mission to make New Haven look a bit more like Cambridge, Mass.

Winstanley Enterprises Principal Carter Winstanley announced those intentions Wednesday morning during the latest regular monthly meeting of the city’s Development Commission, and Tuesday night in a Zoom visit with the Hill North Community Management Team.

As City Hall remains indefinitely closed to the public because of the state of emergency around the novel coronavirus outbreak, the meeting took place online via the Zoom teleconferencing app.

Winstanley told the development commissioners that his Massachusetts-based real estate investment and development company does not plan to push the pause button on the 101 College St. development.

Quite the contrary.

He said he has seen the pandemic slow down and shutter construction sites across the state and the country over the past two months.

Initially, he said, he too planned to take a step back from the 101 College plans and reassess its scale and timeline.

Then he realized that the best contribution his company could make towards the long-term economic recovery of the city and towards scientific efforts to prevent future pandemics would be to continue apace.

“This is a massive economic project,” he said, ​“and we have the ability [to build it] and our investors have the confidence in what we’re doing and in New Haven.”

He said his company plans to begin construction as early as August, pending the alders’ approval of a proposed Development and Land Disposition Agreement (DLDA) and a proposed update to the district’s underlying zoning regulations. 

Click here, here, here, and here for background on the project.

Winstanley (pictured) said the development should create roughly 1,000 construction jobs ​“on the back side of this pandemic,” assuming that the coronavirus outbreak does abate during the summer.

The prospective building will include an incubator space of at least 50,000 feet designed for start ups to gain access to space, equipment, mentorship, venture capital, and community.

“An incubator space is critical when unemployment is at its highest,” he said, because it helps entrepreneurs with relatively little capital get their businesses off the ground.

And he said the building would have a conference center and community space open for building tenants as well as members of the public to ​“come together and meet again” as social distancing mandates ease up.

The building will remain taxable ​“for at least the next 30 years,” he said, per the terms of the proposed DLDA.

While city development chief Mike Piscitelli (pictured) cautioned against pegging any specific dollar amount to how much this building might ultimately contribute in property taxes considering how early the development is in its planning and construction timeline, Winstanley ventured that the site could ultimately contribute ​“in excess of $4 million to $5 million a year in tax revenue.” That’s up from the vacant site’s current property tax contribution of $0, he said.

Development Commissioner Miguel Pittman (pictured) asked Winstanley and Piscitelli to elaborate on the community benefits associated with the planned development.

Winstanley said that the building will have an enclosed ​“public corridor” that will function a bit like a city street, cutting from the front entry of the building to the east side public plaza.

“It will run through the building and allow people to walk through and out onto the plaza, effectively giving a shortcut to the train station.”

The incubator space will also include a classroom space open to New Haven Public Schools teachers and students, he said. And the conference center will be open for community and public use.

Winstanley said the developer has committed to following the city’s construction hiring guidelines. That means that at least 25 percent of the construction work will be done by minority-owned businesses and 25 percent done by New Haven residents.

He said Winstanley followed those same hiring commitments when building the Alexion building at 100 College St. He said that construction hiring returned $7.5 million to the city’s neighborhoods in the form of temporary construction jobs.

And Piscitelli (pictured) said that the developer has agreed to work with the city to establish a new ​“Together We Grow” inclusive growth fund.

“That’s tied to the size of the building,” he said. ​“If the building gets larger, the fund gets larger.” He said the city, the neighborhood management teams and the neighborhood alders will all work together to decide how to spend the money in that fund.

Piscitelli added that the DLDA will also require the building owner to create workforce pipelines, teacher training programs, and a climate awareness plan.

When will this building start contributing to the city’s tax rolls? asked commissioner John Martin (pictured).

Piscitelli said that the developer, just like any other eligible local builder, has the option to take advantage of the city’s existing assessment deferral program and the state’s enterprise zone program. He underscored that the DLDA requires the building to remain on the tax rolls, even if its ultimately taken over by a nonprofit, for the next 30 years.

“We don’t have a special tax deal on this,” Winstanley said. ​“It gets taxed just like any other new construction in the city.”

Visions Of Kendall Square

Development Commission Vice-Chair Anthony Sagnella (pictured) asked Winstanley to elaborate on a point he had brought up earlier in the meeting: That much of the lab and office construction Winstanley has engaged in in New Haven over the past two decades has been motivated by Winstanley’s interest in building out a ​“life science cluster” similar to that which exists in Kendall Square in Cambridge, Mass.

Winstanley said he lived in Kendall Square soon after he graduated from college, and witnessed first hand how zoning changes and a rush of construction and investment changed that somewhat vacant warehouse district into a hotspot for life science companies.

Winstanley said that he believes such companies have congregated in Kendall Square over the decades because of the density of intellectual property, relevant talent, physical lab spaces, and opportunities to collaborate with like-minded professionals and scientists.

“It’s a little bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy,” he said. The more life science companies that move to a place, the more others are interested in following suit.

“You need enough massing in a space so that people stop moving when a company fails,” Winstanley said. That’s because startup companies fail all the time, he said. New Haven needs to get to a place where, if a company fails, there are enough other employment opportunities and talen tfor that company’s scientists and entrepreneurs to stick around and start something new.

He pointed to his company’s past development and redevelopment of such buildings as 100 College St., 25 Science Park, 300 George St., and its plans for 101 College St. as part of that effort to create ​“massing.”

“We’re where Kendall Square was 20 years ago,” he said. ​“We’re late. Or, we’re very early on in the cycle of building the massing. That’s why we’re continuing to push to put more buildings up.”

After Winstanley’s presentation, the commissioners voted unanimously in support of allowing the Development Commission staff to forward the plans for the proposed development to the City Plan Commission for the latter to create an advisory report.

The proposed DLDA and related BD‑3 zoning change will be heard by the aldermanic Legislation Committee and Community Development Committee on May 27 and May 28, respectively.

The Night Before

Winstanley (pictured) struck a similar note during Tuesday evening’s monthly Hill North Community Management Team meeting.

“We’re anxious about the market as a whole, but rather than pull back, we actually felt it was important to move forward. Maybe we could be part of what helps Connecticut to come out of this,” Winstanley told Hill neighbors over Zoom.

Piscitelli offered some background on what the economy looks like right now in New Haven. He said that many of the new housing units and lab space that promised economic growth for the city before Covid-19 hit are still happening.

At the same time, restaurants and hotels have taken a hit with Covid-19 public safety measures and the number of small businesses at risk of folding keeps going up, Piscitelli said. Statewide, there are over 400,000 people seeking unemployment benefits.

Piscitelli said that the advice from local and national economic development groups on how to handle the crisis has been consistent.

“Don’t stop doing things. Don’t think we’re coming back the same way we left the world, with everyone going back to their same restaurant jobs and the same companies doing the same things,” he said.

The tenants will be more relevant than ever in this new future, Winstanley said. He said that tenants conduct research on viruses, antibiotics and vaccines relevant to the Covid-19 public health crisis.

“Many tenants address these very issues in addition to cures for cancer and Alzheimer’s, among other terrible diseases,” Winstanley said.

The office space is projected to create 1,000 permanent jobs as well as those necessary for the construction of the building. Piscitelli said that 100 College Street had similar requirements for hiring locally and from minority and women-owned businesses. That project disbursed $7.5 million in wages to New Haven residents, he said.

Winstanley has planned to include an incubator space for startups. He said that people have asked him whether that is wise in this economy.

“I think more and more people who get let go of larger and more secure jobs will have the opportunity to start a business. A space like this will help people access mentorship and put the technology together to start the next generation of jobs,” Winstanley said.

Piscitelli said that the project has commitments in place to make the recovery inclusive.

100 College hosts the city’s first bioscience career pathway through Southern Connecticut State University, he said. 101 College would have a similar program for K‑12 students.

“This chases that pathway down into the public schools. It gets students into a state of the art building with the most innovative companies to familiarize themselves and create mentorship,” Piscitelli said.

There were fewer neighbors at the virtual Hill North Community Management Team meeting than the team hoped. Members asked Piscitelli whether he would be willing to do a separate workshop just on the new development. Piscitelli agreed.

“We wanted to get here first. If Ms. Dora heard we were at the downtown meeting first, we would hear about it,” he joked.

Management Team Chair Howard Boyd said that some of the information from the meeting was helpful, particularly the developer’s commitment to keep the building on the city’s tax rolls for 30 years.